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The primary purpose of the Resilient Families intervention is to help students and parents develop knowledge, skills, and support networks to promote adolescent health and wellbeing during the early years of secondary school. The main hypothesis is that students in the Resilient Families schools will show improvements in family relationships and reductions in depression, substance use and antisocial behaviour relative to the control school students.

The objective of this study is to determine whether bacteria in the colon of humans can release butyrate bound to starch. This will be investigated by feeding a modified test starch to volunteers and measuring butyrate levels in faeces, the effects on the bacteria and other bowel health indicators.

Spinal cord injury (SCI) is one of the most catastrophic disabilities to afflict man. The paralysis is permanent and the disability severe. There is emerging, compelling evidence that tetraplegia, the loss of function in both arms and legs, results in greater secondary disability due to disturbed sleep and breathing overnight. This study aims to comprehensively evaluate sleep health in tetraplegia by documenting sleep disturbances and determining the prevalence and nature of any sleep disordered breathing (SDB) in the Victorian population with tetraplegia. Over 18 months we propose to gain questionnaire responses from people with tetraplegia in Victoria regarding the frequency, nature and severity of any sleep disturbances they may experience. Additionally, we will perform full sleep studies at home on those with more severe injuries. The project will produce a comprehensive description of the tetraplegic population in Victoria, it will identify the nature and prevalence of sleep disturbances in this population, it will characterise sleep quality and will establish the prevalence of Obstructive Sleep Apnoea (OSA) and other forms of SDB in this group. It is known that OSA and sleep disturbances are significantly under diagnosed in people with SCI and this project is likely have an immediate, positive impact for the participants as problems are diagnosed and treatments offered. Any reduction in disability will have immediate benefits for the individuals involved and will reduce the cost to the community for these profoundly disabled people.

Adolescent enrolled in the Aboriginal Birth Cohort Study will have their serology to hepatitis B measured. Adolescents who received hepatitis B vaccines in infancy and have low immunity will be offered booster doses of the vaccine and have their immunity measured 2-4 weeks post vaccination.

The study aims to identify the benefits of an exercise program for colorectal cancer survivors and look at the benefits of commencing the program immediately following chemotherapy completion. It is hypothesised that the program will be safe and acceptable to the target population and that the exercise program will improve participants' rehabilitation.

Hepatitis B serology will be measured in children born to hepatitis B carrier mothers. Those with low immunity will be given a booster dose of hepatitis B vaccine and have their immunity measured post vaccination

The purpose of the programme is to investigate whether parents improve their psychological and social functioning after completion of a Group Interpersonal Psychotherapy Program. It is thought that participation will improve parent’s psychosocial functioning, social adjustment and general health and this will result in an increase in the amount/quality of positive parental behaviours they implement. Increased positive parenting behaviours will then produce a decrease in child behaviour problems.

Opioids are commonly used for acute and chronic pain management and as an adjunct to anaesthesia. Prescribed opioid-related deaths account for most of non-illicit drug poisoning deaths in America. Death from opioids is nearly always due to respiratory arrest. However, no study has assessed opioid effects on neural-chemical control of breathing during sleep, when respiratory drives are already naturally blunted and protective voluntary breathing is not possible. The present study may meet this gap in knowledge. In addition, this study may reveal whether the potential abnormalities in neural-chemical drive may progress to sleep-disordered breathing.

Hypotension occurs commonly following spinal anaesthesia. It is has been claimed that the standing posture prior to spinal anaesthesia may help prevent hypotension. The aim of this study is to compare two different postures prior to inducing spinal anaesthesia. One group of women will be lying down and the other group of women will be standing up prior to inducing spinal anaesthesia for caesarean section. We plan to measure any differences in the number of women requiring treatment for low blood pressure in the two groups.

We hypothesise that participants receiving a mechanically tensioned ACL graft have superior knee stability and hence function.