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A new partnership between QUT and the Queensland Children’s Medical Research Institute will lead to important advances in child health.
The partnership has been launched through QCMRI and QUT Collaborative Seeding Grants and provides $25,000 to projects based on their innovation, novelty and significance for child and adolescent health.
Successful research projects include:
- 3D human skin reconstruction to treat burns – Dr Leila Cuttle will lead a team of experts from QCMRI and QUT to use high tech facilities to test burn wound healing therapies related to childhood burns
- Predicting whooping cough outbreaks – Dr Wenbiao Hu will co-ordinate a team to try to detect areas at risk using social and environmental factors and create an early warning system
- Environmental pollutants on babies during pregnancy – Dr Leisa-Maree Toms will head a team examining chemicals that transfer through the placenta and their influence on the developing foetus
- Ending blinding trachoma in children – QUT’s Dr Willa Huston joins QCMRI Senior Research Fellow Stephen Lambert and other leading researchers to control and document childhood chronic eye infections to best position Australia to reach its 2020 elimination target.
Queensland Children’s Medical Research Institute’s Interim Director, Professor Claire Wainwright said the newly-funded research showed a shared commitment to improving children’s health.
“Partnering clinical researchers, scientists and cutting edge technologies creates new and exciting opportunities to improve health outcomes for children and adolescents,” she said.
“With many of the successful researchers soon to be co-located in a brand new world-class research facility which is linked to the Lady Cilento Children’s Hospital, it is an exciting time for child health research in Queensland.”
QUT’s Faculty of Health Executive Dean Professor Ross Young said the intent of the scheme was to foster new collaborations and novel research.
“A stronger focus on child and adolescent health will result in healthier lives through adulthood,” he said.
“We have strengths in a range of areas including developmental psychology, nutrition, mental health, child abuse prevention and childhood respiratory illness.
“We believe QUT will make a vital contribution to the partnerships.”
The Lady Cilento Children’s Hospital will open in late 2014.
(Source: Queensland University of Technology)
