Menzies School of Health Research has recently been recognised by Life Education Australia for their outstanding contribution to healthy development of children.

The award celebrated some of the research carried out by Menzies’ new Developmental Health and Education Evaluation Team within the Child Health Division.  Ms. Georgie Nutton, lead research fellow of the new team, said that “the research being conducted at the moment will bridge the nexus between health and education”. 

It is widely acknowledged that a good education for Indigenous children may be the single most effective health intervention for the next generation of Indigenous people. 

The foundations of good educational outcomes are set in early childhood, and preschool is a specific intervention that has been demonstrated in other settings to have dramatic, long-term effects on health and social-emotional wellbeing. However, high quality preschool is difficult to deliver in remote settings, and sometimes compromises have to be made, such as the current Mobile Preschool Program (MPP) in the Northern Territory.

This project is investigating the effectiveness of the MPP in improving children’s emergent literacy, social, emotional and health outcomes measured in their first year of formal schooling.

Assessment data for children in their first year of full time schooling suggest improved outcomes for those having experienced MPP in language and socio-emotional domains.

The MPP research project aims to assess the effectiveness of the Northern Territory MPP using assessment data for children’s emergent literacy, social and emotional competencies and health status, collected in their Transition year of school.

Effectiveness will be established by comparison with children not attending available preschool and those in communities with no preschool service. The study will identify and describe the key confounding factors influencing these outcomes in the comparison groups.

3,300 children are currently expected to enter Transition year in the Northern Territory this year, with 300 of these being in communities in which the Mobile Preschool Program will be operating. The Menzies’ team will use the routinely collected assessment data for all Transition year students in 2009 and 2010 from across the Northern Territory.

However, only limited data are available, and the trend towards achievement is not consistent across all areas of development. Moreover, the impact of confounding health, risk and protective factors is unknown.

This program is making a significant contribution to the conditions of early life of Indigenous children from pregnancy, through infancy and early childhood which is “the time of maximum brain development and acquisition of skills” Ms Nutton says.

The team are also looking at growing evidence linking the condition of early brain development and later life outcomes including cardiovascular disease risk, obesity related diabetes, and behavioural and mental health problems.

“These diseases are over represented in the Indigenous population and the principal causes of their average shorter life span” says Ms Nutton.

Working towards bridging the life expectancy gap, Ms Nutton considers that major break throughs will come from more effective service delivery and community understanding which supports healthier early child development.

This study addresses the current lack of minimum baseline information about the effectiveness of the MPP on early childhood health and learning outcomes in the context of remote Australian Indigenous children.

The study results will guide the next step in preschool provision in remote settings by clearly identifying for whom Mobile preschool works, in what ways it is effective and in what context this happens.

This study has potential to articulate the progress of the nexus between health and education disciplines beyond just the sharing of research methodologies.