Projects

Why are we doing this study? There’s still so much we don’t know about how diet might affect the health of pregnant women and their babies. A healthy diet during pregnancy is recommended for good health, but many women find it difficult to eat healthily during pregnancy. We’ve developed an educational dietary program for the third trimester of pregnancy, and we’d like to see how it compares to the support and dietary advice that women receive from their healthcare providers during pregnancy. We’d like to evaluate whether the program is effective in supporting pregnant women to eat healthily during their pregnancy. We will also be looking at the possible effect of the dietary program on the health of pregnant women and their babies. We are recruiting women in their second trimester (14 - 25 weeks) of pregnancy, so that they can participate in the study from the beginning of their...

The Kids in Communities Study (KiCS) is working to understand how different factors in our communities—physical environment, social environment, socio-economic factors, access to services, and governance—influence the way that children develop. We know that the early childhood years have a profound and lasting impact on children’s health and developmental outcomes. We also know that there are different factors in our communities that play a major role in the healthy development of children, particularly the resources that families can access. We don’t know exactly which community factors impact child development, and how we can modify those factors to help all children to have the best start in life. The what and the how is what KICS wants to answer.

The Early Language in Victoria Study (ELVS) aims to learn more about how language develops from infancy (eight months) to adolescence and in particular, why language development is more difficult for some children. This information will be helpful in developing early intervention and prevention programs for children.

The Children's Attention Project (CAP) is about the long-term effects that ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) have on children's behaviour, learning and day-to-day living, and also on their parents' well-being. We ask families with and without these difficulties to take part in the research, to compare. CAP is the only long-term follow up study of ADHD in Australia and one of the first studies of its kind worldwide.

The Childhood Resilience Study is a four year study aiming to develop a better understanding of how this happens, and in particular, how children grow up to be strong and resilient.

This project aims to identify the lifestyle factors which are common to children suffering from food allergy, assess the impact of food allergy on risk of asthma and severity and identify factors which likely to modify control of food allergy and asthma.