Child Health Research Centre Winter Research projects
Developing a new model of brain age and sleep development in infants and children
Hours of engagement | 30-36 |
Location | South Brisbane: Centre for Children's Health Research |
Project description | This project is to continue to work towards defining normal sleep development in children and modelling brain age in infants. The project is collaborative between QBI early childhood education and care team (led by Sally Staton) and QIMR (led by Dr Kartik Iyer). The student would work on pre-collected deidentified data to understand patterns of sleep and then abnormalities in sleep seen in infants and children during the first 5 years of life. Depending on the student's specific interest this project can focus on analysing quantitative or qualitative aspects of the data and include working alongside biomedical engineers to understand the use of artificial intelligence techniques in clinical research. |
Expected outcomes and deliverables | The expected outcome would be contribution to a manuscript relating to this topic alongside the supervisors. There would also be the opportunity to present at the monthly sleep research meeting in QLD and consider a poster/oral presentation at a national conference.
|
Suitable for | The expected outcome would be contribution to a manuscript relating to this topic alongside the supervisors. There would also be the opportunity to present at the monthly sleep research meeting in QLD and consider a poster/oral presentation at a national conference.
|
Primary Supervisor | Dr Jasneek Chawla |
Instructions to applicants | The supervisor CAN be contacted by students prior to submission of an application. |
Individual patient crossover trials in paediatric critical care: A scoping review
Hours of engagement | 32-36 |
Location | South Brisbane: Centre for Children's Health Research |
Project description | This project will contribute to a living database of published paediatric critical care clinical trials, collated in collaboration with McMaster University, Canada. The project will involve a literature search and systematic screening to identify all independent patient crossover trials in paediatric critical care published between 1980 and 2020. Data extraction of the identified papers will be undertaken before adding to our existing database. A scoping review brief report will be created and disseminated amongst our partner organisations. |
Expected outcomes and deliverables | The student will participate in the complete process of conducting a scoping review, including identifying search terms, running literature search, title and abstract and full-text screening and data extraction of included studies. The student will also write a brief scoping review describing the trends of published independent patient crossover trials in paediatric critical care, including descriptive data analysis and visualisation. This brief report will be disseminated among our partner organisations and may be submitted for publication. The student will also present their findings at the ChIRP team meeting upon completion of the project. |
Suitable for | This project would be suitable for biomedical students or pre-medical provisional students, with interest in paediatrics, intensive care, or clinical trial methods. The project will involve some introductory level data analysis and visualisation using R. |
Primary Supervisor | Dr Trish Gilholm |
Instructions to applicants | The supervisor CAN be contacted by students prior to submission of an application. |
Investigating barriers to mental well-being following Traumatic Brain Injury in Children
Hours of engagement | 30 |
Location | South Brisbane: Centre for Children's Health Research |
Project description | Traumatic brain injury is common in childhood and can lead to long-term problems that impede returning to school and sport participation. Over the last decade, researchers and healthcare providers have increasingly realized the significant morbidity associated when mental well-being is affected. In a recent study of over 400 children with TBI and their families, 60% reported significant mental health impairments. Two thirds of these families reported significant difficulties accessing support for these difficulties, with some families moving closer to Brisbane in order to access this care. This has lead to a new pilot program using a virtual community of practice (SHARE) to help support community clinicians providing mental health treatment following traumatic brain injury throughout Queensland. This project aims to investigate the barriers and facilitators of receiving mental health support in the community and to help codesign the SHARE program. We hypothesize that barriers will include time, cost, local expertise, distance to care and stigma; the facilitators will be knowledge and motivation. The successful candidate will be part of a healthcare implementation team (neurologist, psychiatrist, psychologist, social worker, implementation scientist, and allied health professionals). This topical project has the potential to inform local and national governing bodies. |
Expected outcomes and deliverables | The successful applicant will gain skills in data collection using qualitative methodology including semi-structured interviews and focus groups, analysis of data, working with the team, families and community clinicians to problem solve barriers and enhance facilitators to increase the success of the overall project. The successful applicant will gain unique experience in methodologies that involve consumers in the planning of new models of delivery. The applicant is expected to be able to analyse data (with supervision and help) and assist in producing a working draft of a research paper. |
Suitable for | Any stream |
| Additional requirements | Project requires a Blue Card for working with children. |
Primary Supervisor | Professor Karen Barlow Primary contact: Prabha Ajjikuttira |
Instructions to applicants | The supervisor CAN be contacted by students prior to submission of an application. |