As our Founding Director Fiona Stanley puts it, The Kids Research Institute Australia was formed on a "wing and a prayer" and while we officially opened our doors in June 1990, the unpredictable road to its inception began long before.
It all started back in the late 1970s. Fiona was working with a small epidemiological research team at UWA, establishing the maternal and child health population data sets, including the birth defect and cerebral palsy registers which would eventually provide such a great basis for the new institute.
Not too far away at Princess Margaret Hospital, a small group of scientists including Pat Holt, Ursula Kees, Wayne Thomas and Geoff Stewart were working in immunology in the Telethon funded Clinical Immunology Research Unit.
"So Telethon really started funding this Institute from 1970, even though we didn't know we were going to have an Institute at that time, by funding not only the immunology work at PMH but also some of our work at UWA," Fiona says.
Then, in 1984 Lou Landau came to WA as Professor of Paediatrics at UWA and he and Fiona began to talk.
"We started to dream up the idea of having an institute that would house basic scientists, clinical scientists and population scientists all under the same roof," she says.
"If we really wanted to understand why so many kids and young people, not just in Western Australia but around the world, had increasing rates of problems including asthma, obesity, suicides, developmental disorders and diabetes, we had to understand the genes and cells, the whole child in its family and the environmental and societal factors that were influencing these rates. We had to get all these groups together."
But Fiona admits it was a battle to convince government, stakeholders and fellow scientists that the idea was a good one. She says even Professor Gustav Nossal, one of Australia's most famous scientists and former Australian of the Year, was sceptical.
"Gus came to visit us in 2001 when he was Australian of the Year and he told all the staff that when I first came to him in 1986 with this idea to create a multi-disciplinary institute, he did not appreciate why," Fiona says. "But now with the human genome coming on board, he said, that we were exquisitely poised like no-one else because of our population data sets and cohort studies, to really make the most of that information."
Getting the Institute off the ground was no easy feat but keeping it funded was even more of a challenge.
"I think what really made this Institute get over that incredible hurdle, those first 10 years, was the incredible support of this community individually and through Telethon," Fiona says.
"We just would not be here if it wasn't for the support of this community, who said 'we want to have an Institute like this that's going to make a difference to the lives and the deaths of children and young people.'"
And it was Telethon that gave us the platform to communicate our message to the community.
"It just gave us such a profile," Fiona says. "Every year we would appear on Telethon and I would have to explain what we were about and why it was so important. We got a message out to people about what it takes to have a healthy child in today's challenging world."
But Fiona says the most important ingredient for the Institute's success has been the calibre of the research and administrative staff.
"This was a major factor in recruiting people to come to work in Perth," Fiona says. "We had top people in all areas of the Institute's strengths - asthma and allergy, infectious diseases, cancer, birth defects and developmental disorders and mental health problems. All these were of major concern to the community and hence our research was highly valued by parents and community groups who have become some of our most enthusiastic supporters."
"All the accolades that I have received as Director reflect the wonderful people who have worked tirelessly alongside me to make this Institute what it is today."
After retiring as director at the end of 2011, and passing on the baton to Professor Jonathan Carapetis, Fiona became the Institute's Patron.
Today, 25 years after the doors first opened, Fiona is prouder than ever of what the Institute has achieved.
"I'm so excited about the next 25 years of this wonderful organisation, for what it's going to do not just for west Australian children but for children everywhere," she says.