Dedication to understanding early life origins and the social determinants of health and health equity for infants and children were recognised at this years Channel 7 Children’s Research Foundation Achievement in Children’s Research Awards.

Held to honor the achievements and outcomes of the research and researchers the CRF supports, these annual Awards are named after remarkable CRF visionaries who gave exceptional honorary service as Board members of the Foundation over many years.

The 2022 Achievement in Children’s Research were awarded to:

Colin Matthews AO Award for outstanding achievement in children’s health research

Awarded to Professor Sarah Robertson, for her research in understanding the early life origins of infant and child health through a focus on conception and early pregnancy.

Professor Sarah Robertson is a graduate of the University of Adelaide and was an NHMRC Principal Research Fellow until appointment to Director of the Robinson Research Institute in 2013. Sarah stepped down from this role in 2021 to take up an NHMRC Investigator Award as Professorial Research Fellow.

Sarah’s research goal is to advance understanding of the early life origins of infant and child health through a focus on conception and early pregnancy. Her work on the immunology of embryo implantation and placental development has provided new insights and discoveries that help explain the causes of preeclampsia and preterm birth, common pregnancy disorders that affect the lifetime health prospects of around one in five children. Her work is providing the foundation for new therapeutic interventions to reduce the incidence of these insidious conditions.

She is an elected Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science (2016) and the Australian Academy of Health and Medical Sciences (2015), a Fellow of the Society for Reproductive Biology (2011), and a Distinguished Fellow of the Society for the Study of Reproduction (US).

Sarah collaborates extensively with colleagues in Australia and around the world and has supervised 34 PhD students (29 completed) plus 40 Honours students to build research capacity in this important area.

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Dennis Earl Award for Outstanding Achievement in Children’s Welfare Research

Awarded to Associate Professor Anna Ziersch for her research focusing on the social determinants of health and health equity, with a particular emphasis on migrant and refugee children and young people.

Anna Ziersch is Associate Professor in the College of Medicine and Public Health at Flinders University in South Australia. Anna is a public health social scientist and her research focuses on the social determinants of health and health equity, with a particular emphasis on migrant and refugee health. This research has spanned an examination of employment, housing and neighbourhood, stigma and discrimination, immigration precarity, social inclusion, education, regional resettlement, family and domestic violence, HIV, disability, stillbirth, and access to primary, oral and maternal health care.

Within this research program, Anna has had a focus on research with children and young people. Her research in this area has included examining ways to make neighbourhoods and public spaces more health promoting for refugee children and young people, enhancing mental health for children and young people from migrant and refugee backgrounds with disability, supporting strong families and empowering communities to prevent and address the impacts of family and domestic violence on children from migrant and refugee backgrounds, and improving perinatal experiences for migrant and refugee women and their babies.

She has a strong commitment to research that makes a difference and works closely with a broad range of community, non-government and government organisations in all of this work.

She is a Co-Convenor of the Migration and Refugee Research Network (MARRNet)