The Australian psychiatry workforce is under-subscribed and highly urbanised. Currently, 90% of psychiatrists work in the cities, and there are significant projected workforce shortages of psychiatrists throughout Australia, particularly in rural and remote locations. ...

• 1. Telethon Kids Institute
• Our research
• Reports and Findings
• 2022
• November 2022

Vaccine development and implementation decisions need to be guided by accurate and robust burden of disease data. We developed an innovative systematic framework outlining the properties of such data that are needed to advance vaccine development and evaluation, and prioritize research and surveillance activities. ...

• 1. Telethon Kids Institute
• Our research
• Reports and Findings
• 2022
• September 2022

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. ...

• 1. Telethon Kids Institute
• Our research
• Reports and Findings
• 2022
• February 2022

Multiple sclerosis (MS) is an immune-mediated inflammatory disease of the central nervous system that results in demyelination of axons, inefficient signal transmission and reduced muscular mobility. Recent findings suggest that B cells play a significant role in disease development and pathology. To further explore this, B cell profiles in peripheral blood from 28 treatment-naive patients with early MS were assessed using flow cytometry and compared to 17 healthy controls. ...

• 1. Telethon Kids Institute
• Our research
• Reports and Findings
• 2022
• February 2022

Identifying the causal variant for diagnosis of genetic diseases is challenging when using next-generation sequencing approaches and variant prioritization tools can assist in this task. These tools provide in silico predictions of variant pathogenicity, however they are agnostic to the disease under study. We previously performed a disease-specific benchmark of 24 such tools to assess how they perform in different disease contexts. ...

• 1. Telethon Kids Institute
• Our research
• Reports and Findings
• 2022
• February 2022

Research is needed to determine best practice for genomic testing in the context of child interstitial or diffuse lung disease. We explored parent's and child's health-related quality of life, parents' perceived understanding of a genomic testing study, satisfaction with information and the study and decisional regret to undertake genomic testing. ...

• 1. Telethon Kids Institute
• Our research
• Reports and Findings
• 2022
• February 2022

Directed evolution emulates the process of natural selection to produce proteins with improved or altered functions. These approaches have proven to be very powerful but are technically challenging and particularly time and resource intensive. To bypass these limitations, we constructed a system to perform the entire process of directed evolution in silico. ...

• 1. Telethon Kids Institute
• Our research
• Reports and Findings
• 2022
• February 2022

Invasive meningococcal disease (IMD) causes significant morbidity and mortality worldwide with serogroup B being the predominant serogroup in Australia and other countries for the past few decades. The licensed 4CMenB vaccine is effective in preventing meningococcal B disease. Emerging evidence suggests that although 4CMenB impact on carriage is limited, it may be effective against gonorrhoea due to genetic similarities between Neisseria meningitidis and Neisseria gonorrhoeae. ...

• 1. Telethon Kids Institute
• Our research
• Reports and Findings
• 2022
• February 2022

The purpose of this double-blind, randomised, controlled trial is to compare allergic outcomes in children following vaccination with acellular pertussis (aP) antigen (standard of care in Australia) given at 2 months of age versus whole cell pertussis (wP) in the infant vaccine schedule. ...

• 1. Telethon Kids Institute
• Our research
• Reports and Findings
• 2022
• February 2022

In 2019, the Murdoch Children's Research Institute in partnership with the Fiji Ministry of Health and Medical Services carried out an integrated mass drug administration (MDA) for the treatment of scabies and lymphatic filariasis in the Northern Division of Fiji. We conducted a retrospective micro-costing exercise focused on the cost of scabies control in order to inform budgeting and policy decision making in an endemic setting. ...

• 1. Telethon Kids Institute
• Our research
• Reports and Findings
• 2022
• February 2022