Achievement in Children’s Research Awards
The Channel 7 Children’s Research Foundation Achievement in Children’s Research Awards recognises the achievements and outcomes of the research and researchers the Foundation supports.
Held annually, these Awards focus on the areas of children’s research the Foundation is committed to – health, education and welfare – and are named in recognition of remarkable CRF visionaries:
Colin Matthews Award for outstanding achievement in children’s health research
Len Frankham Award for outstanding achievement in children’s education and wellbeing research
Dennis Earl Award for outstanding achievement in children’s welfare research
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2022 Awards
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.
Anna 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)
2021 Awards
Colin Matthews AO Award for outstanding achievement in children’s health research
Awarded to Professor Jennifer Couper for her excellent and on-going work in the field of juvenile diabetes
Professor Jenny Couper is a paediatric endocrinologist who heads the Discipline of Paediatrics, University of Adelaide, South Australia.
She led the Diabetes and Endocrinology Department, Women’s and Children’s Hospital, SA, providing service to the paediatric diabetes clinic (metropolitan and outreach) of approximately 750 patients and endocrinology clinic of approximately 1,000 patients for 20 years. She leads the ENDIA Australian consortium and is a steering member of the Australasian Diabetes Data Network and Australasian Immune Therapy in Diabetes Network. She is a member of the International Society of Pediatric and Adolescent Diabetes Advisory Council.
Her research focuses on two areas of childhood diabetes: the first, the causes in early life of childhood diabetes and how to prevent their impact, and the second, protecting children from cardiovascular disease in type 1 diabetes.
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Len Frankham Award for outstanding achievement in children’s education and wellbeing research
Awarded to Professor Tracey Wade for her work on eating disorders and supporting mental health support approaches in adolescents
Matthew Flinders Distinguished Professor Tracey Wade has worked as a clinician and researcher in eating disorders for over 30 years. In 2015 she was elected a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia. In 2016 she was made an Inaugural Honorary Fellow of the Australian Association for Cognitive and Behaviour Therapy. In 2017-18 she was the president of the Eating Disorder Research Society. In 2019 she was appointed Fellow of the APS and was a recipient of the Australia and New Zealand Academy of Eating Disorders Distinguished Achievement Award, and in 2020 she was the recipient of the Academy of Eating Disorders Outstanding Clinician Award.
Professor Wade is the director of the Órama Institute for Mental Health and Wellbeing, the Blackbird Initiative, and the Flinders University Services for Eating Disorders (FUSED). She has cowritten 3 books and has over 250 publications in peer reviewed journals.
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Dennis Earl Award outstanding achievement in children’s welfare research
Awarded to Professor Michael Sawyer for his work in community child health
Professor Michael Sawyer is an Emeritus Professor at the University of Adelaide.
Prior to retiring in 2019 he was Professor of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at the University of Adelaide and Head, Research and Evaluation Unit at the Women’s and Children’s Hospital in South Australia. During his academic career he also held appointments as Head, Department of Paediatrics and Associate Dean (Research) in the Faculty of Health Sciences at the University of Adelaide.
Michael is currently the Honorary Medical Advisor for Australian Rotary Health. In 2008, he was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia for services to the field of child and adolescent mental health as a researcher and educator.