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Research

Screen time guidelines recommend no screens under two years due to the potential negative impacts on development. While current reports suggest many children exceed this, research relies on parent reports of their children's screen exposure. We objectively assess screen exposure during the first two years and how it differs by maternal education and gender.

Research

The EU LifeCycle Project was launched in 2017 to combine, harmonize, and analyze data from more than 250,000 participants across Europe and Australia, involving cohorts participating in the EU-funded LifeCycle Project. The purpose of this cohort description is to provide a detailed overview of the major measures within mental health domains that are available in 17 European and Australian cohorts participating in the LifeCycle Project.

Research

A comparative study to describe the increase in medical admissions of children and adolescents with anorexia nervosa (AN) in Western Australia in 2019 (pre-pandemic) and 2020 (peri-pandemic).

Research

Japan recently experienced a record surge in streptococcal toxic shock syndrome. Our environmental surveillance study reveals that Streptococcus pyogenes persists seasonally, peaking in autumn and winter in rural Japan. The dominant emm1 M1UK sublineage and csrS mutations heighten virulence, highlighting the urgent need for targeted surveillance and interventions.

Research

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander (hereafter respectfully named Indigenous) Australians are diagnosed with some cancers substantially more frequently than non-Indigenous Australians implying a different risk factor landscape. Additionally, poorer outcomes for certain cancers are exacerbated by lower cancer screening rates and later diagnoses compared to non-Indigenous Australians.

Research

Common food allergens have been detected in breast milk with wide inter-individual variations in concentrations. As maternal factors, such as age, smoking, and body mass index have been associated with breast milk composition, we aimed to identify maternal characteristics associated with the concentration of food allergens in breast milk.

Research

Ongoing advances in population genomic methodologies have recently enabled the study of millions of loci across hundreds of genomes at a relatively low cost, by leveraging a combination of low-coverage shotgun sequencing and innovative genotype imputation methods. This approach has the potential to provide abundant genotype information at low costs comparable to another widely used cost-effective genotyping approach-that is, SNP panels-while avoiding potential issues related to loci being ascertained in distantly related populations.

Research

Monitoring the number of COVID-19 patients in hospital beds was a critical component of Australia's real-time surveillance strategy for the disease. From 2021 to 2023, we produced short-term forecasts of bed occupancy to support public health decision-making. 

Research

Traditional birth attendance (TBA) remains common in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), impacting maternal and neonatal mortality rates. This study aimed at producing high-resolution geospatial estimates and identifying predictors of TBA-assisted childbirth in SSA.

Research

Abdominal pain is a common reason for children to attend the Emergency Department (ED) with acute appendicitis being the most common surgical cause. Various clinical prediction scores (CPSs) have been developed to assist in determining the risk of appendicitis; however, CPSs have been inadequately validated in children and haphazardly adopted in Australia and New Zealand EDs.