Cohort profile: Understanding the influence of early life environments and health and social service system contacts over time and across generations through the Western Australian Aboriginal Child Health Survey (WAACHS) Linked Data Study.

Purpose: Despite the volume of accumulating knowledge from prospective Aboriginal cohort studies, longitudinal data describing developmental trajectories in health and well-being is limited. The linkage of child and carer cohorts from a historical cross-sectional survey with longitudinal health-service and social-service administrative data has created a unique and powerful data resource that underpins the Western Australian Aboriginal Child Health Survey (WAACHS) linked data study. This study aims to provide evidence-based information to Aboriginal communities across Western Australia, governments and non-government agencies on the heterogeneous life trajectories of Aboriginal children and families.

Quantifying the human impact of Melbourne's 111-day hard lockdown experiment on the adult population.

Lockdown was used worldwide to mitigate the spread of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 and was the cornerstone non-pharmaceutical intervention of zero-COVID strategies. Many previous impact evaluations of lockdowns are unreliable because lockdowns co-occurred with severe coronavirus disease related health and financial insecurities. This was not the case in Melbourne's 111-day lockdown, which left other Australian jurisdictions unaffected.

Economic preferences and obesity: Evidence from a clinical lab-in-field study.

Many studies which describe the relationship between obesity and economic preference rely on healthy, clinically-irrelevant populations. Instead, we study economic decision-making of a clinically-relevant population of 299 people with obesity who participated in a 6-months Randomized Controlled Trial in two Sydney-based hospitals to prevent diabetes onset. To elicit preferences, we use incentive-compatible experimental tasks that participants completed during their medical screening examination.

Emulating a target trial of intensive nurse home visiting in the policy-relevant population using linked administrative data.

Background: Populations willing to participate in randomized trials may not correspond well to policy-relevant target populations. Evidence of effectiveness that is complementary to randomized trials may be obtained by combining the 'target trial' causal inference framework with whole-of-population linked administrative data.

Methods: We demonstrate this approach in an evaluation of the South Australian Family Home Visiting Program, a nurse home visiting programme targeting socially disadvantaged families.

Unintended consequences of welfare reform: Evidence from birthweight of Aboriginal children in Australia.

In 2007, Australia introduced its most radical welfare reform in recent history, targeting Aboriginal communities with the aim of protecting children from harm. The 'income management' policy forced Aboriginal welfare recipients to spend at least half of their government transfers on essentials (e.g.

Effect of lockdown on mental health in Australia: evidence from a natural experiment analysing a longitudinal probability sample survey.

Background: Many studies have examined population mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic but have been unable to isolate the direct effect of lockdowns. The aim of this study was to examine changes in the mental health of Australians aged 15 years and older during the COVID-19 pandemic using a quasi-experimental design to disentangle the lockdown effect.

Methods: We analysed data from ten annual waves (2011-20) of the longitudinal Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) Survey to identify changes in the mental health of respondents from the pre-COVID-19 period (2011-19) to the COVID-19 period (2020).

Lives saved during economic downturns: Evidence from Australia.

Worldwide, countries have been restricting work and social activities to counter the emerging public health crisis due to the coronavirus pandemic. These measures have caused dramatic increases in unemployment. Some commentators argue that the "draconian measures" will do more harm than good due to the economic contraction, despite a large literature that finds mortality rates decline during recessions.

Puumala and Tula Virus Differ in Replication Kinetics and Innate Immune Stimulation in Human Endothelial Cells and Macrophages.

Old world hantaviruses cause hemorrhagic fever with renal syndrome (HFRS) upon zoonotic transmission to humans. In Europe, the Puumala virus (PUUV) is the main causative agent of HFRS. Tula virus (TULV) is also widely distributed in Europe, but there is little knowledge about the pathogenicity of TULV for humans, as reported cases are rare.

Efficacy Testing of H56 cDNA Tattoo Immunization against Tuberculosis in a Mouse Model.

Tuberculosis (TB), caused by (), remains a global threat. The only approved vaccine against TB, bacillus Calmette-Guérin (BCG), provides insufficient protection and, being a live vaccine, can cause disseminated disease in immunocompromised individuals. Previously, we found that intradermal cDNA tattoo immunization with cDNA of tetanus toxoid fragment C domain 1 fused to cDNA of the fusion protein H56, comprising the antigens Ag85B, ESAT-6, and Rv2660c, induced antigen-specific CD8 T cell responses .

Introducing a GP copayment in Australia: Who would carry the cost burden?

Recent policy changes designed to contain unsustainable health expenditure growth imply that many more Australians may soon be charged a copayment to consult a GP. We explore the distributional consequences associated with a range of hypothetical GP copayment scenarios using nationally-representative Australian survey data. For each scenario, we estimate the cost burden that individuals and households across the income distribution would need to absorb to maintain their current GP service utilisation.

Origins of adulthood personality: The role of adverse childhood experiences.

We test whether adverse childhood experiences - exposure to parental maltreatment and its indirect effect on health - are associated with age 30 personality traits. We use rich longitudinal data from a large, representative cohort of young US Americans and exploit differences across siblings to control for the confounding influences of shared environmental and genetic factors. We find that maltreatment experiences are significantly and robustly associated with neuroticism, conscientiousness, and openness to experience, but not with agreeableness and extraversion.

Exploring the intergenerational persistence of mental health: evidence from three generations.

This paper uses data from the 1970 British Cohort Study to quantify the intergenerational persistence of mental health, and the long-run economic costs associated with poor parental mental health. We find a strong and significant intergenerational correlation that is robust to different covariate sets, sample restrictions, model specifications and potential endogeneity. Importantly, the intergenerational persistence is economically relevant, with maternal mental health associated with lasting effects on the child's educational attainment, future household income and the probability of having criminal convictions.

Getting stuck in the blues: persistence of mental health problems in Australia.

Do episodes of mental health (MH) problems cause future MH problems, and if yes, how strong are these dynamics? We quantify the degree of persistence in MH problems using nationally representative, longitudinal data from Australia and system generalized method of moments (GMM), and correlated random effects approaches are applied to separate true from spurious state dependence. Our results suggest only a moderate degree of persistence in MH problems when assuming that persistence is constant across the MH distribution once individual-specific heterogeneity is accounted for. However, individuals who fell once below a threshold that indicates an episode of depression are up to five times more likely to experience such a low score again a year later, indicating a strong element of state dependence in depression.

Australian doctors' satisfaction with their work: results from the MABEL longitudinal survey of doctors.

Objective: To compare the level and determinants of job satisfaction between four groups of Australian doctors: general practitioners, specialists, specialists-in-training, and hospital non-specialists.

Design, Participants And Setting: National cross-sectional questionnaire survey as part of the baseline cohort of a longitudinal survey of Australian doctors in clinical practice (Medicine in Australia - Balancing Employment and Life [MABEL]), undertaken between June and November 2008, including 5193 Australian doctors (2223 GPs, 2011 specialists, 351 hospital non-specialists, and 608 specialists-in-training).

Main Outcome Measures: Job satisfaction scores for each group of doctors; the association between job satisfaction and doctor, job and geographical characteristics.

The effects of an incentive program on quality of care in diabetes management.

An incentive program for general practitioners to encourage systematic and igh-quality care in chronic disease management was introduced in Australia in 1999. There is little empirical evidence and ambiguous theoretical guidance on which effects to expect. This paper evaluates the impact of the incentive program on quality of care in diabetes, as measured by the probability of ordering an HbA1c test.

Systemic activation of the immune system induces aberrant BAFF and APRIL expression in B cells in patients with systemic lupus erythematosus.

Objective: Elevated levels of BAFF and APRIL are characteristic of patients with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE). The reasons for enhanced cytokine production are not well understood. This study was undertaken to identify the cells responsible for the overproduction of these cytokines.