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Research

School readiness is a construct used by educators and policy makers to describe a range of abilities that are beneficial for children transitioning to school. The association of socioeconomic disadvantage with developmental vulnerability when children start school is well established. Parents play a crucial role in supporting children’s transition to school and are acknowledged as their child’s first and foremost teacher.

Research

Early childhood investment decisions represent critical policy frameworks that ideally reflect a strong evidence base. This review seeks to assess early childhood intervention priorities based on return on investment without limitation by health, education or social science sector.

Research

Childhood obesity is one of the most serious public health challenges of the 21st century and is affected not only by individual choice but also by societal and environmental influences. Childhood obesity is higher in children living in regional and remote compared with major cities, in one-parent families and for those with a disability.

Research

Social disconnectedness and isolation are risk factors for poor mental health. Community-based friendship group interventions have been designed to increase an individual's social capital and consequently their mental wellbeing. Structured and unstructured friendship groups reflect two distinct approaches to friendship group interventions.

Research

The transition to parenthood is a high-risk period for many parents and is an important period for child development. Research has identified that parental mental health, reflective functioning (capacity to consider mental states of oneself and others) and coparenting (capacity to work together well as a parenting team) may be particularly significant predictors of later child outcomes, however these factors have seldom been considered together.

Research

Cereal foods are consumed globally and are important sources of polyphenols with potential health benefits, yet dietary intakes are unclear. We aimed to calculate the dietary intakes of polyphenols from cereal foods in the Melbourne Collaborative Cohort Study, and describe intakes by demographic and lifestyle factors.

Research

Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD) is a condition caused by prenatal exposure to alcohol and characterised by severe neurodevelopmental impairment which have lifelong implications. Impairments in executive function, memory, cognition, language and attention are common, and can lead to early and repeat engagement with the criminal justice system.

Research

This study developed and tested a highly usable, and moderately acceptable, smartphone app to improve the psychosocial health of young people living with CF

Research

Nonverbal IQ is not on the same causal pathway as language impairments

Research

Maltreated children are at high risk for low educational achievement, however few studies have accounted for confounding risk factors that commonly co-occur (including child, family and neighbourhood risk factors) and results have been mixed, particularly for adolescents.