ORIGINS is celebrating a substantial funding increase for its world-class research into child and family health and wellbeing.
The funding, made possible by the Stan Perron Charitable Foundation, will be awarded over a three-year period enabling the ORIGINS research team to continue both core and new research initiatives across its locations at Perth Children’s Hospital, Edgewater and Jandakot.
ORIGINS is Australia’s largest longitudinal birth cohort study of its kind, following 10,000 families from conception into early childhood to better understand when and why non-communicable diseases develop, and provide evidence-based prevention and intervention strategies to improve child and family health.
ORIGINS Co-Director Dr Jackie Davis said the three-year funding will allow the platform to expand its research to address key priorities identified by ORIGINS participants and stakeholders.
“Our recent Community Conversation with participants highlighted the urgent need to address the rapid increase of poor mental health and anxiety in children and families, alongside behavioural issues and the impact and management of screen use at school and inside the home,” Dr Davis said.
“This generous funding will allow ORIGINS to commence the next phase of Kids Check appointments within our primary school-aged participants, which will have an additional focus on language, literacy, mental health, social media, screen use, and lifestyle behaviours.
“We’ll also be introducing wearable devices to track children’s physical activity, sedentary behaviour and sleep.”
To date, ORIGINS has:
- Over 10,000 participating families in the Joondalup and Wanneroo area
- Completed over 3,000 1-year Kids Check appointments
- Gathered over 400,000 biological samples
- Collected over 30 million data points
- Established over 60 nested sub-projects within ORIGINS’ nine research domains alongside global researchers
ORIGINS Co-Director and Director of Research at Joondalup Health Campus, Professor Desiree Silva, said the funding will propel ORIGINS’ capabilities as a research platform, enabling external researchers to rapidly respond to health challenges, deliver timely insights and immediate benefits for WA families and public health.
“Our globally unique platform allows scientists to deliver innovative, accelerated real-world research outcomes that improve the health and families of now and for generations to come,” Professor Silva said.
“By utilising our existing infrastructure, which includes access to an established cohort, participant data and biological samples, researchers can conduct cost-efficient studies that discover new treatments, reduce service delivery costs, and tailor rapid care for children and families to create better and more equitable health and wellbeing outcomes.”