Evaluation of telehealth in delivering diagnostic developmental assessments for children in South Western Sydney during the COVID-19 pandemic: Clinician and family perspectives.

Aims: Children with neuro-developmental disorders faced significant challenges in accessing services during the COVID-19 pandemic. Telehealth has been adopted by health services globally to facilitate access to clinical services. Our aims were to evaluate the utility of the telehealth modality for providing developmental assessment services and explore enablers and barriers to using telehealth, in a culturally diverse and socioeconomically disadvantaged population in Sydney.

Access to child developmental assessment services in culturally and linguistically diverse metropolitan Sydney: a retrospective cohort analysis.

Background: Despite the increasing prevalence of neurodevelopmental disorders (NDD), data regarding access to child development services have remained limited globally. Long wait times are a major barrier to developmental assessments, impacting on care and outcomes. The aim is to retrospectively analyse the demographic profile and prioritisation of patients seen at a child developmental assessment service (CDAS) in a vulnerable region of Sydney, and explore factors affecting wait times.

More than just body mass index: Using the Edmonton obesity staging system for pediatrics to define obesity severity in a multi-ethnic Australian pediatric clinical cohort.

Background: Despite advancements in the use of body mass index (BMI) to categorize obesity severity in pediatrics, its utility in guiding individual clinical decision making remains limited. The Edmonton Obesity Staging System for Pediatrics (EOSS-P) provides a way to categorize the medical and functional impacts of obesity according to the severity of impairment. The aim of this study was to describe the severity of obesity among a sample of multicultural Australian children using both BMI and EOSS-P tools.

Demographic Predictors of Family Functioning and Its Change Over the First 5 Years Postpartum: Findings From the Healthy Beginnings Trial.

There are very few longitudinal studies examining family functioning in early childhood. This was a prospective cohort study to identify maternal sociodemographic factors associated with family functioning over the first 5 years postpartum, using data from the Healthy Beginnings Trial. Family functioning was measured using the General Functioning Subscale of the McMaster Family Assessment Device.