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Research

Daily physical activity is critical during the early years of life for facilitating children's health and development. A large proportion of preschool children do not achieve the recommended 3 h of daily physical activity. Early childhood education and care (ECEC) services are a key setting to intervene to increase physical activity. There is a significant need for ECEC specific physical activity policy, including clearer guidelines on the amount of physical activity children should do during care, and strategies for implementation of these guidelines.

Research

Status epilepticus is associated with significant morbidity and mortality. While vaccine-proximate status epilepticus (VP-SE) has rarely been associated with cases of Dravet syndrome, it is not known whether VP-SE differs clinically from non-vaccine proximate status epilepticus (NVP-SE).

Research

Pneumonia is the leading cause of death in young children globally and is prevalent in the Papua New Guinea highlands. We investigated clinical predictors of hypoxic pneumonia to inform local treatment guidelines in this resource-limited setting.

Research

There is limited evidence on heterogenous co-developmental trajectories of internalizing and externalizing problems from childhood to adolescence and predictors of these joint trajectories. We utilized longitudinal data from Raine Study participants to identify these joint trajectories from 5 to 17 years using parallel-process latent class growth analysis and analyze childhood individual and family risk factors predicting these joint trajectories using multinomial logistic regression.

Research

We are working with the leadership and staff at foster care agencies and community members to provide information about cultural connection, and cultural activity and resources for Aboriginal children living in non-Aboriginal care arrangements.

Research

With an increasing number of grandparents providing care to their grandchildren, calls have been made for these caregivers to be considered important stakeholders in encouraging children's engagement in health-promoting behaviors, such as physical activity.

Research

Growing up in a language-rich home environment is important for children's language development in the early years. The concept of "technoference" (technology-based interference) suggests that screen time may be interfering with opportunities for talk and interactions between parent and child; however, limited longitudinal evidence exists exploring this association. 

Research

Whether vaccination during pregnancy could reduce the burden of respiratory syncytial virus (RSV)-associated lower respiratory tract illness in newborns and infants is uncertain.

Research

Irritability is a transdiagnostic indicator of child and adolescent internalizing and externalizing problems that is measurable from early life. The objective of this systematic review was to determine the strength of the association between irritability measured from 0 to 5 years and later internalizing and externalizing problems, to identify mediators and moderators of these relationships, and to explore whether the strength of the association varied according to irritability operationalization.

Research

Australia is the only developed country to consistently undertake a developmental census of its children nationwide. The repeated collection of the Australian Early Development Census (AEDC) has provided an unprecedented opportunity to examine the prevalence of developmental vulnerability across Australia's states and territories, the socio-economic distribution of developmental vulnerability across jurisdictions, and how these distributions might have changed over time.