October 17, 2017

Pioneering study to examine environmental factors in childhood health and development

Research will investigate urban features that promote more equitable childhood development and wellbeing

How does the environment in which children grow up – for example the number of parks or fast food outlets in their neighbourhood – affect their health and development, from birth through to adolescence and young adulthood?

Dr Xiaoqi Feng from the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Wollongong (UOW) will examine this issue after being awarded a four-year, $431,000 National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) Career Development Fellowship to further her research into the effects of environmental factors on children’s health and development.

Dr Feng, Co-Director of the Population Wellbeing and Environment Research Lab (PowerLab) and a Senior Lecturer in Epidemiology in the School of Health and Society, was awarded the Fellowship in the latest round of NHMRC funding, announced by Federal Minister for Health, the Hon Greg Hunt MP, on 11 October.

This is the first NHMRC Career Development Fellowship to be awarded to an academic in the Faculty of Social Sciences at UOW since its genesis in 2013.

“This work will help us to design healthier communities that could give all children a fairer start in life, and will raise awareness of the effects of urban environment among the public,” Dr Feng said.

“Previous research, including my own, has shown that socioeconomic inequities in health manifest spatially and are already present in people in their 20s in Australia. This has convinced me that we need to sharpen the focus of our investigations on children and adolescents.

“Theory and evidence suggests rapid physical, cognitive and social development makes children more sensitive to the impacts of environmental exposures than adults.

“Paradoxically, children’s environmental health is actually an under-researched area, and what research there is ignores spatiotemporal clustering of environmental characteristics that may be especially harmful – or supportive – if experienced at different points in childhood.

“I want to change this status quo. My vision is to support efforts to improve the health of children and to narrow child health inequities by co-producing new evidence with policy makers and practitioners that will help advocate for spatially targeted prevention initiatives and public policies in Australia.”