To round off 2024 and as an extra special lead-in to a stellar 2025 ahead, we have a holiday special - all about the EACD & IAACD 2025 Conference to be held in Heidelberg Germany! 🇩🇪

It's going to be a very unique conference this year as a combined EACD/IAACD event - so join with Dr Sebastian Schroeder and Dr Rainer Blank as they speak with our very own Dr Dayna Pool!

From a behind the scenes look, to what you can expect from the conference this year, the pre-conference sessions at the breathtaking UNESCO Monastery Maulbronn (FREE shuttles included in the conference registration!), be sure to join us for a brilliant conversation with some of Germany's very finest!

Also - are you curious about what a German Christmas looked like? Or what handy german phrases you should be working on before arriving, we've got you covered! 😉

You'll find the audiocast on all good podcast platforms and there's also the videocast on our YouTube channel, if you'd like to put a face to the voice!

youtube.com/@researchworkspodcast

researchworks.net

The ResearchWorks crew will be back again in early 2025 for Season 5 of the pod, with more long form interviews with incredible researchers from across the globe!

incredible!

The team at the ResearchWorks Podcast are celebrating 200 episodes! With over 4 seasons, invited collaborators with the EACD - European Academy of Childhood-onset Disabilities Conference and the AusACPDM - the Australasian Academy of Cerebral Palsy and Developmental Medicine and Transformative Practice Award Winners for 2024, it has been a stellar journey. 🚀

Join us for a brilliant wrap up for Season 4 - we have some special standalone episodes coming and in 2025, we'll be back on tour again, this time supporting the incredible 2025 EACD/IAACD conference in Heidelberg Germany - so we'll see you there! 🇩🇪✈️

2025 will also see a very very special announcement, taking ResearchWorks beyond the podcast platform and further supporting clinicians and researchers to be empowered and up skilled across the globe! We're very excited for the future! 

We'll talk with you all soon! 

An incredible episode with Director of Research - Professor Ben Jackson from The Kids Research Institute Australia - a masterful lesson in communication skills.

Our role as clinicians involves a whole lot of communication and there are evidence based approaches for how we communicate. This is so important because whilst communication skills are often referred to as 'soft skills', they are the key to understanding people. 

In this week's episode, expect to learn about the role of the Self Determination Theory in motivational regulation, how motivational interviewing can move us along the continuum from from have to, to want to, to love to, if SMART goals the only way to set goals. how to bring people along the journey through some key negotiation skills and why the word "yet" is so powerful.

Motor optimality score-revised (mos-r) and hammersmith infant neurological examination (hine) predict high likelihood of autism at 12 months corrected age in a developmentally vulnerable infant cohort.

Dr Carly Luke is a Physiotherapist and Postdoctoral Research Fellow with the Queensland Cerebral Palsy and Rehabilitation Research Centre, the University of Queensland. Her work across clinical and research settings is focused on delivering care to infants with an increased likelihood of cerebral palsy and other adverse neurodevelopmental and neurodiverse outcomes.

She has a strong interest in training and capacity building and has supported the implementation of the CP early detection guidelines across QLD and in low-resource countries as a HINE trainer.  Ms Luke has demonstrated leadership in advocating for change to the model of care and neonatal follow-up for 'high risk' infants in North QLD and continues to support pathways across the state. Her PhD and postdoctoral studies focus on implementing early screening programs for developmentally vulnerable infants across First Nations, regional rural and remote contexts.

Abstract

Objective: This study aims to evaluate the effect of a performance-focused swimming programme on motor function in previously untrained adolescents with cerebral palsy and high support needs (CPHSN) and to determine whether the motor decline typical of adolescents with CPHSN occurred in these swimmers.

Methods: A Multiple-Baseline, Single-Case Experimental Design (MB-SCED) study comprising five phases and a 30-month follow-up was conducted. Participants were two males and one female, all aged 15 years, untrained and with CPHSN. The intervention was a 46-month swimming training programme, focused exclusively on improving performance. Outcomes were swim performance (velocity); training load (rating of perceived exertion min/week; swim distance/week) and Gross Motor Function Measure-66-Item Set (GMFM-66). MB-SCED data were analysed using interrupted time-series simulation analysis. Motor function over 46 months was modelled (generalised additive model) using GMFM-66 scores and compared with a model of predicted motor decline.

Results: Improvements in GMFM-66 scores in response to training were significant (p<0.001), and two periods of training withdrawal each resulted in significant motor decline (p≤0.001). Participant motor function remained above baseline levels for the study duration, and, importantly, participants did not experience the motor decline typical of other adolescents with CPHSN. Weekly training volumes were also commensurate with WHO recommended physical activity levels.

Conclusions: Results suggest that adolescents with CPHSN who meet physical activity guidelines through participation in competitive swimming may prevent motor decline. However, this population is clinically complex, and in order to permit safe, effective participation in competitive sport, priority should be placed on the development of programmes delivered by skilled multiprofessional teams.

Effectiveness of postural interventions in cerebral palsy: umbrella systematic review.

Monica Toohey , Remy Blatch-Williams , Kristian Budini , Astrid Ferreira , Alexandra Griffin , Ashleigh Hines , Michelle Jackman , Karin Lind , Jill Massey , Maria Mc Namara , Jenna Mitchell , Catherine Morgan , Esther Norfolk , Madison CB. Paton , Daniel Polyblank , Sarah Reedman , Iona Novak


Discussion

The objective of this umbrella systematic review was to summarize and evaluate the evidence for postural management interventions in cerebral palsy published since Gough's 2009 paper. We have expanded the scope of the review from passive continuous postural management to include active postural control interventions. Many interventions show positive effects on postural outcomes including range of motion, spasticity, pain, hip migration, gross motor function, hand function, gait parameters,

Conclusion

In conclusion, our umbrella systematic review evaluated the evidence for postural control and postural management interventions in CP, since Gough's seminal 2009 paper. Despite numerous interventions showing positive effects on various postural outcomes, such as range of motion, spasticity, and gross motor function, the overall quality of evidence remains low to very low, limiting the certainty of conclusions and recommendations. The lack of certainty and population heterogeneity poses

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1751722224000805

Ewan is the director of Malaria Risk Stratification at the Kids Research Institute Australia. 

With over a decade of international research experience spanning the fields of astronomy, statistics, machine learning and epidemiology, Dr Ewan Cameron returned to Australia in February 2020 as an Associate Professor at Curtin University and Honorary Research Associate at The Kids Research Institute Australia. 

Within the Malaria Atlas Project, he leads a team responsible for the innovation of novel approaches to probabilistic disease mapping, with a focus on bespoke model development for sub-national risk stratification.

https://www.researchworks.net

Assessing functioning of children on the autism spectrum is necessary to determine the level of support they require to participate in everyday activities across contexts. 

The International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF) is a comprehensive biopsychosocial framework recommended for classifying health-related functioning in a holistic manner, across the components of body functions, activities and participation, and environmental factors. 

The ICF Core Sets (ICF-CSs) are sub-sets of relevant codes from the broader framework that provide a basis for developing condition-specific measures. This study combined the ICF-CSs for autism, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and cerebral palsy (CP) to validate the ICF-CSs for autism in an Australian sample of school-aged children. 

This cross-sectional study involved caregivers of school-aged children on the spectrum (n = 70) completing an online survey and being visited in their homes by an occupational therapist to complete the proxy-report measure based on the ICF-CSs for autism, ADHD and CP. Absolute and relative frequencies of ratings for each of the codes included in the measure were calculated and reported, along with the number of participants who required clarification to understand the terminology used. 

Findings indicate that the body functions and activities and participation represented in the ICF-CSs for autism were the most applicable for the sample. However, findings relating to environmental factors were less conclusive. Some codes not currently included in the ICF-CSs for autism may warrant further investigation, and the language used in measures based on the ICF-CSs should be revised to ensure clarity.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38400895/

The pod now has many (thousands!) of new listeners and we decided to bring forward our annual Q and A session with the hosts of the show.

A little more backstory of each host, a look back at why we do what we do, some incredible highlights you might have missed and why the pod is a firm proponent of evidence based practices.

We cover off many topics, including:

Is the podcast a full-time gig? 

What the difference between evidence-based and evidence-informed practice is,

Qualitative research and the rich benefits of it's implementation,

The often overlooked concept of maturation,

The view of pain and discomfort in therapy - the good and the bad, 

Hands-on vs hand-off approach and the top-down and bottom-up philosophies, 

Our scientific stance on manual facilitation techniques and why we have a section on the website that is dedicated to our conversation with the DMI (Dynamic Movement Intervention) founder(s).

It's about why research both matters and why ResearchWorks! 😉


We still plan on bringing you some incredible interviews with amazing researchers over the last 7 episodes of the year, culminating in our historic 200th episode milestone, so be sure to stayed tuned! 

LEAP-CP stands for Learning through Everyday Activities with Parents, an early detection and intervention program that adapts the international clinical practice guideline for early detection and intervention in CP for low and middle income countries. 

In this paper, LEAP-CP was tested in an RCT with Asha Bhavan Centre in India from 2019 to 2019 and has continued implementation since 2021. This study aimed to determine the acceptability, appropriateness, feasibility, penetration, retention and fidelity of LEAP CP at the Asha Bhavan Centre in India.

Golam Moula is the Research Project Coordinator, working in the field of rehabilitation for children with cerebral palsy at a national level Indian Organisation - Asha Bhavan Centre. 

He manages the LEAP CP, a randomised controlled trial of Early Intervention for infants with cerebral palsy in collaboration with the University of Queensland and is managing the ongoing implementation of the LEAP CP Program.