We need new strategies to help young children flourish, to prevent illness and to manage the complex, connected problems of the 21st century. ‘One question at a time’ research approaches are not delivering answers at the pace and breadth that are needed.

We can speed up solutions to complex problems by creating powerful interventional early life research cohorts that, when combined with population data assets, can rapidly generate discovery, prevention, and interventions at scale. Neither can adequately achieve this alone. 

Prof Wake will discuss Australia’s experience in establishing the new Generation Victoria (GenV) cohort and it’s plans as an Open Science resource – collecting data once, using many times – to amplify preventive opportunities for all Australians, young and old. 

Paediatrician Melissa Wake is Scientific Director of the GenV initiative, led from the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute, and holds professorial positions at the Universities of Auckland and Melbourne. Her “population paediatrics” research spans common childhood conditions and antecedents of diseases of ageing. She is passionate about enabling more children to take part in more, faster and more impactful research. As well as GenV and community-based randomised trials, Prof Wake leads the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children’s biophysical repository, the Child Health CheckPoint.