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A Primary Care Provider Intervention to Improve Early Child Neurodevelopment in Urban Aboriginal Children

Despite the high burden of developmental vulnerability in Aboriginal infants, there has been no systematic implementation of early child neurodevelopment programs starting in the first four weeks of life (neonatal period) implemented by primary health care providers.

The Care for Child Development (CCD) program developed by the WHO and UNICEF provides an evidence-based, theoretically sound model for improving early child development and maternal depression in low and middle-income countries. The CCD program has been implemented in 19 countries and 23 sites, with providers in various sectors implementing the approach after appropriate training. It combines responsive caregiving and the promotion of early learning to provide caregivers with recommendations from the first month of life up to 36 months on play, responsive stimulation, mother-child interaction, and maternal depression. The most recent effectiveness trial of the CCD program in a large, factorial, cluster-randomised trial published in The Lancet Global Health found ‘low intensity’ CCD delivered to infants aged 0-24 months resulted in substantial improvements at 12 and 24 months in cognitive child development compared to the control group.

We will undertake a 2-year community-based, randomised effectiveness trial of 514 mother-infant pairs with a team of national and international experts. We aim to address the low level of an Aboriginal child’s development attainment by improving primary health care’s capability to deliver world-leading child development services for Aboriginal babies and children. We will do this by determining whether the CCD intervention delivered through child health checks from the neonatal period will improve mothers’ abilities to play, communicate and respond to their child’s neurodevelopmental needs throughout the first 24 months of life postpartum.

Funding agency

National Health and Medical Research Council

Project duration

2023 - 2027

Researchers

Associate Professor Dan McAullay
Professor Karen Edmond, Kings College, London, UK
Professor Sandra Eades, University of Melbourne
Associate Professor Joanne McKenzie, Monash University

Associate Professor Natalie Strobel
Dr Mary Sharp, King Edward Memorial Hospital for Women
Professor Rhonda Marriott, Murdoch University
Associate Professor Helen Leonard, Telethon Kids Institute
Associate Professor Khurshid Alam, Murdoch University

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