Issue Addressed: The ASQ-TRAK, a strengths-based approach to developmental screening, has high acceptability and utility across varied Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander contexts. While substantive knowledge translation has seen many services utilise ASQ-TRAK, we now need to move beyond distribution and support evidence-based scale-up to ensure access. Through a co-design approach, we aimed to (1) understand community partners' perspectives of barriers and enablers to ASQ-TRAK implementation and (2) develop an ASQ-TRAK implementation support model to inform scale-up.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFFostering the growth, development, health, and wellbeing of children is a global priority. The early childhood period presents a critical window to influence lifelong trajectories, however urgent multisectoral action is needed to ensure that families are adequately supported to nurture their children's growth and development. With a shared vision to give every child the best start in life, thus helping them reach their full developmental potential, we have formed the International Healthy Eating Active Living Matters (HEALing Matters) Alliance.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFReducing the rate of over-representation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children in out-of-home care (OOHC) is a key Closing the Gap target committed to by all Australian governments. Current strategies are failing. The "gap" is widening, with the rate of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children in OOHC at 30 June 2020 being 11 times that of non-Indigenous children.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIntroduction: The perinatal period is a time when provision of responsive care offers a life course opportunity for positive change to improve health outcomes for mothers, infants and families. Australian perinatal systems carry the legacy of settler-colonialism, manifesting in racist events and interactions that First Nations parents encounter daily.
Objective: The dominance of a western risk lens, and conscious and unconscious bias in the child protection workforce, sustains disproportionately high numbers of First Nations infants being removed from their parents' care.
Aust N Z J Obstet Gynaecol
April 2021
There is a clear impetus for researchers to facilitate cross-sector and interdisciplinary collaboration to achieve collective action for maternal obesity prevention. Building early- and mid-career researchers' capacity to sustainably develop collective action into the future is key. Therefore, the national Health in Preconception, Pregnancy, and Postpartum Early- and Mid-career Researcher Collective (HiPPP EMR-C) was formed.
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