Vic CHILD Hearing Research

13/04/2025

The 13th of April 1989 was when the first Auslan (Australian Sign Language) dictionary was published. On Australia’s Auslan Day, we celebrate the rich history, culture, community and language of the Australian Deaf community. Auslan Day highlights the importance of sign languages and the Deaf community in Australia. Happy Auslan Day from our team! Murdoch Children's Research Institute - MCRI The Royal Children's Hospital, Melbourne

28/03/2025

We would love your help in voting for our ANCHOR research: https://event.fourwaves.com/vbhcc2025/abstracts/cbef2171-5206-40a7-8d77-c5a00a81afd6

Vote here to nominate our ANCHOR work for the People’s Choice Award:
https://lnkd.in/gJDCZnRB before 1st May 2025

Our poster may not be the most spectacular but we would love our hard work in being inclusive of families and the Deaf community’s voices to be recognised! Thanks for your support! Please share widely!

21/03/2025

Families’ and stakeholders’ voices are critically important in shaping research. At the 2025 Australasian Newborn Hearing Screening Conference in Canberra, we held two workshops for our ANCHOR program to develop the first child deafness Core Outcomes Set for Australia. The work aims to unite service providers and researchers in collecting the same/similar information to measure how deaf and hard of hearing children progress, so that we can better use data in large numbers to inform their progress and identify support/service gaps.

19 parents/carers of children who are deaf and hard of hearing came together in a safe space to discuss and rank the outcomes that they perceived were most important to their children.

We then ran another workshop for the ~150 delegates at the conference together with families, to rank the outcomes in order of importance to them.

These families’ and stakeholders’ voices are helping us shape the next e-Delphi ANCHOR Outcomes Matter survey, and ultimately the final national child deafness Core Outcomes Set.

We are so grateful for everyone’s inputs and we look forward to sharing the findings from our two workshops and the next round of e-Delphi. More information: https://www.mcri.edu.au/research/projects/anchor

About our Australian Childhood Deafness Research Community Advisory Group (AusChildDeafness-CAG): https://www.mcri.edu.au/research/projects/australian-deafness-community-advisory-group

Special thanks to all the families who travelled to Canberra to be part of this, and to Emily Shepard,
Jermy Pang, Kayla Elliott & Libby Smith for making this happen, and to the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) and Australian Government Department of Health and Aged Care for the funding.

Murdoch Children's Research Institute - MCRI
The Royal Children's Hospital, Melbourne

03/03/2025

Today is World Hearing Day.

At Murdoch Children’s Research Institute (MCRI), our Australian National Child Hearing Health Outcomes Registry (ANCHOR) program aims to ensure that every child who is deaf or hard of hearing has the best start in life to reach their full potential.

The ANCHOR program is developing a national Core Outcomes Set, a framework of outcomes that child hearing health services across Australia should systematically collect.

If you are a parent or carer of a child who is deaf or hard of hearing, a young person who is deaf or hard of hearing, or a professional working with children who are deaf or hard of hearing, and you live in Australia, please consider contributing to this survey 👉 https://bit.ly/3XnP3Mh

Your insights are essential for improving services. The survey closes on 5th March, so don’t miss this chance to make your voice heard!



Vic CHILD Hearing Research

27/02/2025

If you are a parent or carer of a child who is deaf or hard of hearing, a young person who is deaf or hard of hearing, or a professional working with children who are deaf or hard of hearing, and you live in Australia, please consider contributing to this survey!

https://redcap.mcri.edu.au/surveys/?s=DP73DD99HLP93F3C

This survey gives you the chance to shape Australia’s Core Outcome Set for child deafness. You will have your say in what you think services and researchers should collect about children who are deaf and hard of hearing to measure how they are progressing. This information will help improve service delivery.

If you are a clinician or service provider, you will likely collect this information as part of your work in the future. If you are a researcher, you will likely design your studies to collect this information.

Survey closing date extended to 5th March, don't miss the opportunity to have your say!

Murdoch Children's Research Institute - MCRI The Royal Children's Hospital, Melbourne

The Murdoch Children’s Research Institute (MCRI) is calling for input to help inform Australia’s service delivery and policy for deaf and hard of hearing children aged up to 26 and their families.

19/02/2025

What matters to deaf and hard of hearing children and their families?

If you are a parent or carer of a child or young person who is deaf or hard of hearing in Australia, or a professional who works with or conducts research for deaf and hard of hearing children in Australia, we want to include your voice.

We want to know what information you think is most important for services and researchers to collect about deaf and hard of hearing children, to measure how they progress to inform service delivery and policy. You can help us rank this information, in order of importance, by filling in this survey (link in comments below, open til 3rd March 2025)

Watch the video below to learn more about our survey. https://youtu.be/-0L0wVxdIXk

Please share!
Murdoch Children's Research Institute - MCRI The Royal Children's Hospital, Melbourne

10/09/2024

Last month, our VicCHILD team had the opportunity to present the work of ANCHOR https://www.mcri.edu.au/research/projects/anchor Murdoch Children's Research Institute - MCRI The Royal Children's Hospital, Melbourne as the next phase of VicCHILD becoming a national program. We had the privilege of being on Awabakal and Worimi country, and hosted by Professor Kelvin Kong, the first Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander surgeon in Australia and the 2023 NAIDOC Person of the Year.

10/09/2024

Associate Professor Valerie Sung was honoured to travel to China with Professor Greh Leigh AO NextSense Institute to showcase the Australian newborn hearing screening programs and pathways beyond screening to ensure the best outcomes for deaf and hard of hearing children. She discussed transforming the Vic CHILD Hearing Research into ANCHOR, our national NHMRC funded work https://www.mcri.edu.au/research/projects/anchor at Murdoch Children's Research Institute - MCRI The Royal Children's Hospital, Melbourne . ANCHOR’s vision is to connect and use data to drive research to reduce inequity and ensure all deaf and hard of hearing children have the best opportunities to reach their full potentials.

Thank you to the National Foundation for Australia-China Relations (NFACR) 澳中基金会 and CEO Gary Cowan as well as Australian Ambassador to the People’s Republic of China, His Excellency Mr Scott Dewar and Counsellor for Public Affairs Ms Carolyn Atkinson, for hosting the delegation.

04/08/2024

What an amazing achievement! Did you know Meg is hard of hearing? To excel in one of the world’s fastest events where every split sub-second counts is an AMAZING achievement for someone who needs to train herself just to hear the sound of the starting gun, let alone react to the sound. Incredible!!!! She is an inspiration to all our deaf and hard of children Australian Olympic Team Murdoch Children's Research Institute - MCRI The Royal Children's Hospital, Melbourne

Meg Harris wins her first individual Olympic medal with a silver in the 50m freestyle 🥈

Meg clocked a massive PB to become the 3rd fastest Australian in history 👏

| | Swimming Australia | Australian Dolphins Swim Team

09/06/2024

Our Hearing Research Team from Centre for Community Child Health / Murdoch Children's Research Institute (MCRI) / The Royal Children's Hospital / University of Melbourne presented 10 oral and 2 poster presentations around work we have done from our Victorian Childhood Hearing Longitudinal Databank ( ), Victorian Infant Hearing Screening Program ( ), CMV Targeted Screening Program ( ) & the Australian National Child Hearing Health Registry ( ) at the beautiful conference in Cernobbio, Italy.

Emma Webb presented her PhD on parental perspectives of targeted CMV screening: parents found taking a saliva sample from their baby easy to do, & should be done at the time when a baby is referred during newborn hearing screening. PhD is supported by Deafness Foundation

Melinda Barker presented on findings from , the largest study in the world, that COVID19 infection in pregnancy is not associated with congenital hearing loss at birth.

Libby Smith presented on findings from our 12 year study supported by The Royal Children's Hospital Foundation Melbourne, with data from over 1200 deaf and hard of hearing children in Victoria, Australia:
- 2 year old children with early identified hearing loss still have below average spoken language abilities, but children with earlier access to early intervention programs had better spoken language abilities - supporting the 1-3-6 guideline for detection, diagnosis & early intervention
- Children with mild and unilateral hearing loss struggle as much as children with more severe degrees of hearing loss in their language abilities and quality of life, & also have just as many challenges with their social-emotional well-being in school - highlighting the need to support all deaf and hard of children early on, regardless of degree or type of hearing loss

Parents of deaf and hard of hearing children think genomic (genetic) testing should be offered to families at the time of a hearing loss diagnosis, many prefer ‘trio’ testing (parents & children tested at the same time) & most prefer face-to-face delivery of information.

We highlighted what parents of deaf and hard of children think are the most important issues to address in research, work by paediatric trainee Dr Zara, supported by Deaf Children Australia:
1) Getting the diagnostic pathways & conversations right
2) What is ‘normal’ development & how families can decide what is best for their child
3) Navigating transitions as their child needs change
4) Supporting schools, who support our child learn & grow
5) The family impact & influence

We also presented our work on that aims to
1) Map Australia’s child hearing health services & databases,
2) Bring child hearing health datasets together in Victoria and Queensland, &
3) Develop a national core outcomes set that matters to families, clinicians, service providers & policy makers.

More information about our research initiatives: https://lnkd.in/eHp83NEY

08/05/2024

VicCHILD team members, A/Prof Valerie Sung and Dr Zeffie Poulakis (co founder of the Victorian Infant Hearing Screening Program) were part of the delegate of Australian hearing health leaders, researchers, clinicians, and support staff from the Universal Newborn Hearing Screening (UNHS) Expert Working Group that recently visited China.

The group spent a week visiting hospitals, clinical centres, universities and research institutes in Chengdu, Shanghai, and Beijing. The itinerary included a series of clinical workshops, research seminars, and educational roundtables; and evening receptions with attendees were welcomed by Australian Consul-General in Chengdu, Deputy Consul-General in Shanghai, and the Australian Ambassador to the People’s Republic of China in Beijing.

Murdoch Children's Research Institute - MCRIThe Royal Children's Hospital, Melbourne

08/05/2024

In April, A/Prof Valerie Sung and Dr Zeffie Poulakis from the Centre for Community Child Health The Royal Children's Hospital, Melbourne and Murdoch Children's Research Institute - MCRI were part of a delegation of Australian hearing health leaders, researchers, clinicians, and support staff from the Universal Newborn Hearing Screening (UNHS) Expert Working Group visiting China. Valerie and Zeffie were able to share their passion in ensuring pathways beyond hearing screening are robust to give deaf and hard of hearing children the best start to life so they can reach their best developmental potentials.

The group spent a week visiting hospitals, clinical centres, universities and research institutes in Chengdu, Shanghai, and Beijing. The itinerary included a series of clinical workshops, research seminars, and educational roundtables; and evening receptions with attendees were welcomed by Australian Consul-General in Chengdu, Deputy Consul-General in Shanghai, and the Australian Ambassador to the People’s Republic of China in Beijing.

The UNHS Expert Working Group is a joint initiative of the Australian Hearing Hub at Macquarie University and the Australasian Newborn Hearing Screening Committee.

The visit to China was made possible by a grant from the National Foundation for Australia-China Relations (NFACR) 澳中基金会 to promote communication and cooperation between the two countries on newborn hearing screening.

We provide evidence-based assessments and intervention for children, teenagers and adults with reading and spelling difficulties, and professional development for teachers and clinicians supporting people with poor reading and spelling.