Jenny Bourke

Jenny has worked at the Institute in the field of intellectual disability and autism since 2002 and has been instrumental in establishing the IDEA Database. IDEA is a de-identified comprehensive database on children identified with intellectual disability or autism in WA. She has managed and coordinated the updating of the database over this time.

Jenny has been involved in many different studies investigating the determinants of intellectual disability and the outcomes for these children. She has authored a number of papers on the prevalence of intellectual disability in WA and provided data used as a basis of prevalence estimates for the AIHW Burden of Disease study.

In 2020, Jenny coordinated the addition into IDEA of information from the National Disability Insurance Agency to include individuals in WA who were receiving services through the NDIS for intellectual disability or autism. This has strengthened IDEA as a truly WA population-based database which provides the infrastructure for linked data projects in this often-neglected area of research.

Jenny has authored/co-authored over 60 papers related to her work.

Jenny received her Master of Public Health at UWA.