Children with rare diseases experience challenges at home and school and frequently require multi-disciplinary healthcare. We aimed to determine health service utilization by Australian children with rare diseases and barriers to accessing healthcare. ...

• 1. Telethon Kids Institute
• Our research
• Reports and Findings
• 2023
• January 2023

Parental support is strongly correlated with protective factors for trans youth yet most experience parental rejection or ambivalence regarding their gender. Many parents report a desire to support their child but indicate lack of understanding and support as key barriers. We aimed to develop a nuanced understanding of the challenges and facilitators experienced by Australian parents in developing understanding, support and acceptance of their child’s gender and their needs to do so. ...

• 1. Telethon Kids Institute
• Our research
• Reports and Findings
• 2023
• January 2023

Parental support is strongly correlated with protective factors for trans youth, however, most experience unsupportive parental attitudes. We aimed to better understand how youth perceive parental reactions to their gender identity disclosure and what they consider to be barriers to, and facilitators of, support. ...

• 1. Telethon Kids Institute
• Our research
• Reports and Findings
• 2023
• January 2023

People with intellectual disability experience a high risk of being neglected and family members are often identified as the perpetrators. Analysing the media provides insight into public narratives about social problems. A search of Australian newspapers published between 2016 and 2021 identified 27 articles that predominately reported on a single case of familial neglect of an individual with intellectual disability. ...

• 1. Telethon Kids Institute
• Our research
• Reports and Findings
• 2023
• January 2023

Children recovering from severe malarial anaemia (SMA) remain at high risk of readmission and death after discharge from hospital. However, a recent trial found that post-discharge malaria chemoprevention (PDMC) with dihydroartemisinin-piperaquine reduces this risk. We developed a mathematical model describing the daily incidence of uncomplicated and severe malaria requiring readmission among 0-5-year old children after hospitalised SMA. ...

• 1. Telethon Kids Institute
• Our research
• Reports and Findings
• 2023
• January 2023

Current differentiation protocols have not been successful in reproducibly generating fully functional human beta cells in vitro, partly due to incomplete understanding of human pancreas development. Here, we present detailed transcriptomic analysis of the various cell types of the developing human pancreas, including their spatial gene patterns. We integrated single-cell RNA sequencing with spatial transcriptomics at multiple developmental time points and revealed distinct temporal-spatial gene cascades. ...

• 1. Telethon Kids Institute
• Our research
• Reports and Findings
• 2023
• January 2023

People living with rare diseases (PLWRD) still face huge unmet needs, in part due to the fact that care systems are not sufficiently aligned with their needs and healthcare workforce (HWF) along their care pathways lacks competencies to efficiently tackle rare disease-specific challenges. Level of rare disease knowledge and awareness among the current and future HWF is insufficient. ...

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

Glioblastoma, a rare, and highly lethal form of brain cancer, poses significant challenges in terms of therapeutic resistance, and poor survival rates for both adult and paediatric patients alike. Despite advancements in brain cancer research driven by a technological revolution, translating our understanding of glioblastoma pathogenesis into improved clinical outcomes remains a critical unmet need. ...

• 1. Telethon Kids Institute
• Our research
• Reports and Findings
• 2023
• October 2023

For millennia, Aboriginal people's ways of knowing, doing and being were shared through art, song, and dance. Colonisation silenced these ways, affecting loss of self-determination for Aboriginal people. Over the past decade in Australia, hip-hop projects have become culturally appropriate approaches for health promotion.  ...

• 1. Telethon Kids Institute
• Our research
• Reports and Findings
• 2023
• December 2023

Studies on health insurance coverage often rely on measures self-reported by respondents, but the accuracy of such measures has not been thoroughly validated. This paper is the first to use linked Australian National Health Survey and administrative population tax data to explore the accuracy of self-reported private health insurance (PHI) coverage in survey data. ...

• 1. Telethon Kids Institute
• Our research
• Reports and Findings
• 2023
• August 2023