Thanks to your generosity, SCHF is proud to support four new Kids Research Clinician Researcher Fellows.
Following a rigorous application process, Dr Bernadette Prentice, Dr Laurel Mimmo, Dr Cathryn Crowle and Dr Himanshu Popat were announced as the successful recipients of the Kids Research Clinician Researcher Fellowships. The newly established scheme was made possible by the generosity of SCHF donors and is designed to drive research and innovation across The Sydney Children's Hospitals Network (SCHN) and build clinician-researcher career pathways.
The fellowships were awarded in four categories: medical, nursing, allied health and merit-based, and were selected on each individual's proven leadership and dedication to paediatric research in their clinical roles.
As fellows, the clinician researchers will use their funded and protected research time to accelerate research activity across SCHN and help revolutionise how care is delivered to children and young people.
Meet the recipients:
Bernadette’s Fellowship project will be in CF. When children with CF develop diabetes, they become more unwell and develop more severe lung disease. Her PhD identified that infants with CF can have signs of early diabetes and this Fellowship will look at the long-term impact of these signs. Bernadette’s goal is to be able to predict which children will go on to develop diabetes, so that we can ultimately prevent this from occurring.
Laurel’s Fellowship project will work with children and young people with lived experience of intellectual disability to co-design and implement a tool to meaningfully capture experiences of being in hospital with and for children with intellectual disability. This information will then be used by hospitals and healthcare staff to improve hospital experiences for children with intellectual disability, which will ultimately have benefits for all children in hospital.
Cathryn’s Fellowship project will pilot the feasibility of universal cerebral palsy screening in infancy. It will use a novel, parent-friendly mobile phone app to investigate how effectively novice scorers can identify infants at risk of cerebral palsy, using the General Movements Assessment. Early identification of at-risk infants significantly improves access to evidence-based interventions, and to life-changing support for infants and their families.
Himanshu’s Fellowship project seeks to perform a pilot randomised trial to assess effectiveness of delayed cord clamping in babies with congenital heart disease, where cord clamping guidance is absent. This initial research will lay the foundation for a larger multicentre definitive trial of delayed cord clamping in newborns with congenital heart disease. This will help address an urgent unmet need to improve outcomes of newborns with congenital heart disease.
Thank you to our incredible Movement of Many for making this fellowship scheme possible.
To make a donation to help change the future for sick kids, visit schf.org.au/donate.
You can also find out find out more about Kids Research here.
Movement of Many, fighting 
for the health and 
wellbeing of all children in an ever changing world. 
