About Us

Research Overview

This program aims to advance the health and wellbeing of children and young people through primary care and its integration with other health, social, workforce, and education systems that support children and young people’s wellbeing. Our multidisciplinary team works across the areas of health risk behaviour (including a specific focus on sexual and reproductive health), mental health, adverse childhood experiences, physical wellbeing, preventive health and early intervention.

Our research focuses on:

Re-orientating primary care toward a youth friendly, preventive care model;
Building systems that better respond to vulnerable children;
Exploring perspectives of young people’s sexual and reproductive health and relationships;
Using technology to detect and address health and wellbeing concerns and to improve care access; and
Settings (education, workplaces) for promoting health and wellbeing as well as access to care.

Program Objectives

We develop and test interventions that:

Improve the access of children, young people and their families to quality primary care and self-directed care where appropriate;
Enable patient-centred and integrated care across primary, secondary and tertiary care systems and integrate health with education and welfare needs;
Enable detection of health risks and appropriate therapeutic responses;
Explore the experiences of children, young people and families with health risks and discover what they require from a responsive health care system;
Work collaboratively with education, social sectors, government and non-government organisations including professional and community groups, children, young people and families; and
Promote knowledge exchange through teaching and providing research evidence that informs policy and practice.