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Children with rare diseases experience challenges at home and school and frequently require multi-disciplinary healthcare. We aimed to determine health service utilization by Australian children with rare diseases and barriers to accessing healthcare.
ParticiPAte CP is a participation-focused therapy intervention that is effective to increase perceived performance of physical activity participation goals in children with cerebral palsy. We aimed to characterise the contents of ParticiPAte CP using validated behaviour change frameworks.
CDKL5 Deficiency Disorder (CDD) is a rare genetic disorder with symptoms of epilepsy, developmental impairments, and other comorbidities. Currently, there are no outcome measures for CDD with comprehensive evidence of validation. This study aimed to evaluate the psychometric properties of the Quality of Life Inventory-Disability (QI-Disability) in CDD. Quality of Life Inventory-Disability was administered to 152 parent caregivers registered with the International CDKL5 Disorder Database (ICDD).
To present a case study of the considerations of mandatory fortification with folic acid in Australia and New Zealand.
People with intellectual disability experience a high risk of being neglected and family members are often identified as the perpetrators. Analysing the media provides insight into public narratives about social problems. A search of Australian newspapers published between 2016 and 2021 identified 27 articles that predominately reported on a single case of familial neglect of an individual with intellectual disability.
Influenza vaccination of children with medical comorbidities is critical due their increased risks for severe influenza disease. In Australia, hospitals are an avenue for influenza vaccine delivery to children with comorbidities but are not always effectively utilised. Qualitative enquiry sought to ascertainment the barriers and enablers for influenza vaccination recommendation, delivery, and recording of these children at Australian hospitals.
With increasing demands for health, disability and education services, innovative approaches can help distribute limited resources according to need. Despite an increased focus on support needs within the clinical pathway and policy landscape, the body of research knowledge on this topic is at a relatively early stage. However, there appears to be a sense of unmet support needs and dissatisfaction with the provision of required support following an autism diagnosis amongst caregivers of young people on the spectrum.
Existing clinical tools that measure non-seizure outcomes lack the range and granularity needed to capture skills in developmental and epileptic encephalopathy (DEE)-affected individuals who also fall in the severe to profound range of intellectual disability. This effectively excludes those with severe impairments from clinical trials, impeding the ability of sponsors to evaluate disease-modifying therapies.
Developmental Coordination Disorder (DCD) is a neurodevelopmental condition impacting motor skill acquisition and competence. While previous studies have identified adverse psychosocial outcomes in DCD, they are limited by small or population-screened, community-based samples.
Developmental and epileptic encephalopathies (DEE) are rare, often monogenic neurodevelopmental conditions. Most affected individuals have refractory seizures. All have multiple severe impairments which can be as life-limiting as or more limiting than the seizures themselves. Mechanism- and gene-targeted therapies for these individually rare, genetic conditions hold hope for treatment, amelioration of disease expression, and even cure.