Impact Improving the health of our community and beyond. Integrated Kids Connect Program addressing inequities in service access in the early years The Integrated Kids Connect Program brings together three SPHERE Clinical Academic Groups (Early Life Determinants of Health, Kids UnLimited and Neuroscience, Mental Health and Addiction) and two Strategic Platforms (Knowledge Translation and Innovation), to transform the current child and family service system through an integrated and inclusive approach to addressing neurodevelopmental challenges in childhood. Every nine minutes, a child is born who is at risk of having a neurodevelopmental disorder (NDD) such as speech delay and autism.
Notably, one in five Australian children embarks on their educational journey without foundational developmental skills, a figure that rises to one in three among priority populations including socioeconomically disadvantaged and culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) communities. This gives rise to a cascade of negative health outcomes, constituting approximately onethird of paediatric presentations and influencing detrimental life trajectories. Unfortunately, these challenges tend to escape identification until the onset of formal education or later, primarily due to suboptimal parental adherence (20-30%) to the recommended routine health and developmental checks outlined in the Personal Health Record, commonly known as the Blue Book. Compounding matters is what researchers
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