Mrs Melissa Moyano1,2, Dr Melinda Barker1,3,4, Dr Zeffie Poulakis1,3,4, Mr William Siero2,3
1Victorian Infant Hearing Screening Program, Centre for Community Child Health, Royal Children’s Hospital Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia, 2Generation Victoria (GenV), Murdoch Children’s Research Institute, Melbourne, Australia, 3Department of Paediatrics, University of Melbourne , Melbourne, Australia, 4Prevention Innovation, Population Health, Murdoch Children’s Research Institute , Melbourne, Australia
The idea was big, how might we translate the opportunity for every Victorian baby born over 2-years to join Australia’s largest child and parent longitudinal study? If only there was an established program reaching 97% of babies born each year. Luckily for Generation Victoria (GenV), the Victorian Infant Hearing Screening Program (VIHSP) does just that, by screening the hearing of newborns in all maternity hospitals across Victoria. That’s why in 2015, a pilot between VIHSP and GenV commenced.
VIHSP has a long association with child health research, sitting within the Centre for Community Child Health at the Royal Children’s Hospital. From the pilot, VIHSP and GenV worked together to establish guidelines that allowed ethically approved sharing of limited patient information. The collaboration extended, allowing GenV to model and develop important frameworks for staffing structure, stakeholder engagement and protocols on the successful VIHSP program.
Fast forward to 2021 and following a Vanguard cohort, GenV commenced state-wide recruitment in October 2021. This was possible through the collaborative work between VIHSP & GenV.
GenV, aims to establish a better approach to child health, development and wellbeing. GenV asks parents of newborns to take part in GenV, by safely and securely sharing information about themselves and their baby. GenV will provide researchers, services and policy makers with a research platform to predict, prevent and treat at greater speed and precision.
Currently GenV has recruited over 66,000 participants including 26,000 babies operating in 58 maternity hospitals with 132 field team members. There are 372 multiple births, 14,000 regional participants and 5,200 participants whose primary spoken language is not English capturing over 65 different languages including Auslan. There has been 55,000 saliva samples and 98,000 primary serum samples collected for future research. All this, working with VIHSP, to find solutions making this our healthiest generation ever.
Biography:
Melissa Moyano has been with the Victorian Infant Hearing Screening Program for 9 years as an Area Manager, managing a number of birthing hospitals in metropolitan Melbourne. She is also a Senior Area Manager for GenV, overseeing recruitment teams across 12 hospitals in Eastern Victoria. She has been with GenV since early 2021.