Saluting our 2025 Telethon Trust Research Fellows

For almost 40 years, Telethon Trust Research Fellowships have been a springboard for Western Australian clinicians in the early stages of their research careers.

Many of these researchers have gone on to make significant contributions to child health research, advancing care for children and adolescents here and around the world.

In 2025, advanced medical trainees Siu Min Tay, Simon Moore and Sarah Black join that long and celebrated list of research fellows, using their fellowships to improve the health and wellbeing of young Western Australians across three different fronts.

Study to tackle nutrition in autism

Child Development Service paediatrician, Dr Siu Min Tay, knows that picky-eating preschoolers can be a source of frustration for many young families.

But she also recognises that for those with children on the autism spectrum, ensuring adequate nutritional intake can be especially challenging.

‘In these children, challenging eating behaviours would be more likely to endure long-term, with the potential to lead to serious health problems,’ she says.

That’s why she is using her fellowship to gain new insights into these behaviours.

‘We know that autistic children are more likely to develop malnutrition than their neurotypical peers with recent studies showing they experience higher rates of obesity and deficiency in important micronutrients.’

Because most of those studies focused on older children, Dr Tay will look at the much younger cohort.

‘Early-life habits often persist into adulthood, so a deeper understanding of eating behaviours in this vulnerable group of preschoolers is crucial to enhancing their dietary intake and supporting optimal growth and development,’ she says.

Dr Tay’s project will incorporate 2 studies. The first will identify patterns of malnutrition in autistic preschoolers by comparing heights, weights and micronutrient status of autistic and non-autistic preschoolers who attended the Child Development Service.

The other study will seek insights from individuals who provide care to preschoolers diagnosed with autism, including family members, early childhood educators and clinicians.

Dr Tay hopes her research will pave the way for developing evidence-based resources and novel approaches that will one day help families and caregivers improve the quality and variety of their preschoolers’ diets.

Assessing care with a home advantage

At Perth Children’s Hospital (PCH), Dr Simon Moore is using his fellowship to lead the consumer co-design of a new service that is giving WA children nearing the end of a hospital stay, the option of completing their recovery at home.

Dr Moore will also assess the feasibility and acceptability of the service which combines remote-monitoring technology and telehealth reviews, with daily home visits from paediatric nurses, to provide hospital-level care in the home.

The service is being piloted for 12 months and is believed to be the first of its kind offered by a paediatric healthcare service in Australia.

Dr Moore says that only children deemed medically stable are eligible for the service.

‘The children we are recruiting are those who in the current system would either remain in hospital solely for a period of monitoring – occupying a bed that could otherwise go to an acute patient – or be discharged with instructions to return to the emergency department if their condition worsens,’ he explained.

‘Neither scenario is ideal for patients or their families.

‘We also want to see if continuing care for children in their own homes virtually, is an acceptable option for families and healthcare staff and whether it is cost-effective compared with current practice.’

Children who use the service are equipped with wearable devices before they leave hospital, and their families are shown how to use them.

‘The devices enable us to intermittently track the child’s heart rate, temperature, and blood-oxygen saturation levels,’ Dr Moore says.

Additionally, scheduled telehealth reviews give families the opportunity to raise any concerns they may have about their child’s recovery.

‘While the child’s health and well-being remain our priority, this initiative has the potential to deliver a host of additional benefits, such as convenience for families, improved hospital bed availability for PCH and lower environmental impact,’ he says.

Approximately 1,000 families are expected to participate in the pilot which, if shown to be successful, could pave the way for further hospital-in-the-home initiatives, reshaping the delivery of child health care.

Fellow the leader of new diabetes clinic

Dr Sarah Black is using her fellowship to lead and evaluate a new clinic that has been established at PCH to support children and families following an early diagnosis of Type 1 diabetes (T1D).

The clinic’s launch follows recent advances on the T1D front including:

• the discovery of blood markers that can identify the condition before symptoms develop
• the emergence of new therapies that can delay disease progression.

T1D is an autoimmune disease in which the pancreas stops producing insulin – the hormone responsible for converting glucose to energy. Children with early-stage T1D will eventually develop a lifelong reliance on insulin injections, entering a stage described as ‘clinical diabetes’.

‘Until recently, people with T1D had no treatment options before reaching the clinical stage,’ Dr Black explains.

‘Now, there are therapies that can delay progression to the clinical stage by up to 2 years and – thanks to blood tests capable of identifying early-stage T1D – we have opportunities for these individuals to access emerging treatments as they become available in Australia.

‘These developments have heightened the need for enhanced support for these children and their families, whose challenges differ significantly from those at the clinical stage. Our new clinic has been designed to meet those needs.’

Dr Black notes that while these children will almost certainly progress to clinical diabetes, there is currently no way of predicting when or how rapidly this will occur.

‘We do know, however, that a T1D diagnosis at any stage is life-changing for families,’ she says.

‘That’s why we’ve have established a clinic that will support these children and their families as they adjust to an early diagnosis and help them prepare them for the challenges ahead.

‘The clinic’s multidisciplinary team will work with families to give them the skills and confidence to manage their child’s condition as it evolves,’ she adds.

‘Our goal is to prevent serious complications – including diabetic ketoacidosis, a potentially life-threatening condition caused by insufficient insulin – and to provide continuous support at every stage.’

T1D affects about 1,200 children in Western Australia, with approximately 160 new diagnoses each year.