About the Child Health Evidence Hub

The 'Child Health Evidence Hub' (i.e. interactive website) was created to make it easier for program planners and service providers to access and use evidence to inform the programs and services provided to families of children under 5 years of age in Australia. We heard from those working in the early years system that it can be hard decide what programs and services to offer and that access to evidence or information to support this can be ad hoc and rely on local networks. This led to the development of the hub to provide a one-stop-shop for access to information related to child health programs and services.

The hub was co-designed and tested with partners in the early years system in Australia.

About the Child Health Evidence Hub

The hub is a comprehensive child health resource library designed to support use of evidence into policy and practice to improve the health of children under 5 years of age in Australia.

Our goal is to bridge the gap between research and practice by providing accessible, evidence-informed resources including evidence summaries, programs and services, evaluation tools, case studies, program/service building tool, and costing and resourcing tool.

Different Approaches to Using Evidence in Policy and Practice

There are different approaches to using evidence to inform policy and practice.

'Off the shelf' whole program or service approach takes an existing program or service that has been evaluated and implementing the whole program package or with minor changes into another site or organisation. This is often current practice in Australia.

Common elements approach is more novel and uses individual strategies or parts of evaluated programs and services. Typically these are evidence-informed strategies found across programs that have been shown to be acceptable and effective. They are intended to be used more flexibly to design or adapt programs to suit the new context. There are examples of common elements approach in social services sector, such as Child and Family Services Victoria government.

The hub provides both options through the registry of programs and services, and the program and service building tool.

Our Partnership

The hub was developed in partnership with leading Australian research institutions and child health organizations to ensure the highest quality evidence-informed resources.

Development of the hub was led by Flinders University Caring Futures Institutes, thanks to funding from the Ian Potter Research Foundation and in-kind support from Health Translation SA, Preventive Health SA, Health and Wellbeing Queensland, NSW Health Ministry of Health Centre for Population Health and Sydney Local Health District.

The hub includes a collation of resources from several research projects including the TOPCHILD Collaboration, TOPCHILD-Policy, and the EPOCH-Translate Centre of Research Excellence, with funding support from National Health and Medical Research Council and The Hospital Research Foundation Group.

For more information about the TOPCHILD Collaboration visit https://www.topchildcollaboration.org/

For more information about TOPCHILD-Policy visit https://osf.io/uyzkq/

For more information about EPOCH-Translate Centre of Research Excellence visit https://earlychildhoodobesity.com/

Our Team

The TOPCHILD-Policy team includes researchers from Flinders University, Deakin University, The University of Sydney, University Medicine Rostock (Germany), and a Consumer Advisory Panel.

Project team

Brittany Johnson, Flinders University
Samantha Morgillo, Flinders University
Sarah Hunter, Flinders University
Rebecca Golley, Flinders University
Anna Lene Seidler, University Medicine Rostock
Kylie Hunter, The University of Sydney
Vicki Brown, Deakin University
Lua Perimal-Lewis, Flinders University
Lucy Lewis, Flinders University
Ivanka Prichard, Flinders University
Annette Briley, Flinders University
Jo Arciuli, Flinders University

TOPCHILD Consumer Advisory Panel (incl project partners)

Alex Harris, caregiver
Ali Packer, caregiver
Annapurna Nori, practitioner / boundary spanner
Carmel Williams, boundary spanner
Fiona Nave, Health and Wellbeing Queensland
Jacqueline Anderson, Preventive Health SA
Libby Poole, caregiver
Louise Wightman, practitioner
Nicole Hohaia, caregiver
Rebecca Perry, Health Translation SA
Renee Moreton, NSW Health Sydney Local Health District (past member)
Sarah Eley, caregiver
Sarah Taki, NSW Health Sydney Local Health District
Wendy Smith, practitioner

Suggested citation

Child Health Evidence Hub. Flinders University, Caring Futures Institute, Bedford Park 2025. Available from: www.childhealthevidencehub.com

To read more about the hub development visit https://osf.io/uyzkq/