WCH Foundation supporting SAHMRI research

SAHMRI researchers are collaborating on three of the five projects that will share $4 million of Bloom Research Program funding, which was announced at the Women's & Children's Hospital Foundation's inaugural Impact event.

The event, hosted in SAHMRI's Auditorium, celebrated the WCH Foundation's contributions towards improving health outcomes for women, children and families over the past year.

Dr Jacqueline Gould, the Leader of SAHMRI's Supporting Neurodevelopment program, will lead a SAHMRI-based team to develop guidelines that will allow adoption of omega 3 fatty acid supplementation in very preterm infants in SA and beyond. This build's on the team's groundbreaking research that has previously shown that omega 3 DHA given to very preterm infants can improve their IQ.

Professor David Lynn is the Director of the Computational and Systems Biology Program at SAHMRI. His team and collaborators across Flinders University and the Women's and Children's Health Network (WCHN) will explore probiotic treatment in infants who have received antibiotics, in the hope that it will restore the good bacteria in their gut, improving their vaccine response, and better protecting them against potentially deadly disease.

SAHMRI Women and Kids theme researchers Professor Alice Rumbold, Karen Glover and Associate Professor Yvonne Clarke will collaborate on a project led by Catherine Leane, the Manger Strategic Partnerships in the Aboriginal Health Division at SA Health. The project will explore the integration of Aboriginal ways of knowing into the healthcare system, by co-designing and testing community-based yarning circles to improve sexual, reproductive and perinatal healthcare amongst Aboriginal women and families.

The Bloom Research Program is an initiative of the WCH Foundation that will see $10 million over five years invested into health and medical research to help create healthier South Australian mums, babies and children cared for within WCHN.