Exciting GenV achievements and progress
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GenView edition #10 | July 2024
Acceleration has taken over from Establishment! In our Establishment phase, the GenV team was in all 58 maternity hospitals across Victoria, aiming to offer participation to every newborn and their parents. Now, we're accelerating GenV’s value by focusing on data linkage, governance, our Intervention Hub and developing the platform and services needed by future users. With GenV now a tangible entity, we’re also starting to develop ten-year programs of impact with collaborators.
GenV’s door is always open to families with a child born between October 2021 and October 2023 in Victoria. We have recently welcomed another 6,500 families who were previously undecided or missed due to COVID-19 restrictions or short hospital stays. We thank everyone, including maternal and child health nurses and family services, who helped expand our reach. Over 122,000 Victorians have now joined GenV.
We are thrilled that GenV’s Deputy Scientific Director, Professor Sharon Goldfeld, received a King’s Birthday Honour last month, being appointed a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) for her significant service to paediatric medicine, public health research, and her commitment to equitable outcomes for children.
Among our milestones, we are nearing 100,000 saliva samples from GenV participants. Our matched breastmilk and baby stool samples constitute the largest collection in Australia, providing insights into how the human gut microbiome influences health. Dr. Yeukai Mangwiro won the best poster award at the ISBER conference, presenting on this collection. We are also collaborating with BioGrid to link our consented participants with pregnancy samples from our eight pathology partners, enriching GenV’s biosample collections for groundbreaking research.
This edition—our tenth!—highlights recent grants and our submission to a Victorian Government inquiry, showing how GenV can address today’s pressing issues.
We look forward to sharing future updates and continuing our mission to advance population health research for the benefit of all Australians.
Thank you for your continued support.
Professor Melissa Wake and Ms Natasha Zaritski, GenV Directors
With the GenV Leadership Team
Peer-reviewed grants recognising the value of GenV
GenV is building key components and advancing research, thanks to recent peer-reviewed grants.
The National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) awarded GenV’s Scientific Director, Prof Melissa Wake, a $2.9m Investigator grant to develop population solutions for childhood problems. Additionally, GenV collaborator A/Prof Valerie Sung received a $1.4m NHMRC Investigator grant for her work on childhood hearing loss.
These competitive grants support our scientific leaders to drive GenV forward.
GenV's submission to Inquiry into Women's Pain
The Victorian Government’s Inquiry into Women’s Pain aims to better understand and inform patient care. Including over 48,000 consented women and 25,000 young girls from all communities and walks of life, GenV can uniquely provide a comprehensive perspective on women’s pain over the lifecourse. GenV’s submission fully supports the Inquiry’s aims and we look forward to its outcomes.
GenV on the road
The team has been raising awareness of GenV nationally and internationally, engaging with prospective collaborators, researchers and policymakers about its unique value.
In Canberra, GenV’s Deputy Scientific Director, Professor Sharon Goldfeld AM, discussed GenV's potential for evaluation with Assistant Minister for Competition, Charities, and Treasury, the Hon Dr. Andrew Leigh MP, at an Australian Centre for Evaluation seminar.
We have recently presented at the Australian Institute of Family Studies and the Developmental Origins of Health and Disease (DOHaD) conferences and the Paula Rantakallio Symposium on Birth Cohorts and Longitudinal Studies at the University of Oulu in Finland.
Australian Centre for Evaluation seminar (L-R): The Asssistant Minister for Competion, Charities and Treasury the Hon Dr Andrew Leigh MP, Dr Jenny Donavan, Prof Sharon Goldfeld AM
Looking ahead: Children as partners in research
In collaboration with the University of Warwick and the Centre for Community Child Health, GenV’s newly-published paper reviews the involvement of children and young people in health research. It highlights common approaches such as focus groups, interviews and novel arts-based methods like photovoice and drawing. Finally, it calls for deeper evaluation of methods involving children and young people.
With GenV’s establishment phase complete, now is the perfect time for a PhD at GenV. Explore discovery, effectiveness, or policy questions through trials, natural experiments, and causal epidemiology. GenV also supports PhD opportunities in -omics bioassays, data science, AI, ecological and linkage data, measurement technology, and implementation science.
Know a talented student? Share the projects on our website. Have other ideas? GenV welcomes project development with high-potential students, paired with tailored supervisors.
Are you considering a new child, parent or family study? Have you thought about collaborating with GenV?
GenV is Australia’s largest longitudinal cohort of children and parents. Find out more here.
Missed an edition? Find all previous GenView newsletters here.
GenV is led by the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute (MCRI), supported by The Royal Children’s Hospital and The University of Melbourne, and funded by the Paul Ramsay Foundation, the Victorian Government, The Royal Children’s Hospital Foundation, the National Health and Medical Research Council and the Medical Research Future Fund.
