Investigators: Ashleigh Lin, Graham Hall, Rachel Foong, Rae-Chi Huang
Birth cohorts provide valuable information about a range of physical and mental health outcomes across the lifespan. In WA we have the very valuable Western Australian Pregnancy Cohort (Raine) Study, which is one of the largest successful prospective cohorts of pregnancy, childhood, adolescence and now early adulthood to be carried out anywhere in the world. The cohort was established between 1989 and 1991 to determine how events during pregnancy and childhood influence health in later life. 2900 pregnant women entered the study and 2868 live births were recruited into the Raine Study cohort. In this project, Raine Study data will be combined with data from other birth cohorts across Europe to help us to better understand early determinants of mental health.
The LifeCycle Project is a large project bringing together European, UK and Australian pregnancy and child cohort study researchers into a new network, the EU CHILD Cohort Network. This provides a unique opportunity to combine and compare cohorts from around the world. The ambitious project combines data on over 250,000 children and their parents from Europe and Australia to provide robust scientific evidence on the early life stresses which may affect health trajectories throughout life – primarily cardiovascular, respiratory and mental health. The WA Raine Study is part of the LifeCycle Project, and the Youth Mental Health team lead the Mental Health outcome in WA.
Interested students should contact: Ashleigh Lin - ashleigh.lin@telethonkids.org.au