Connect
BestSTART-SWS works closely with health professionals, the South West Sydney community, and researchers to ensure that meaningful paediatric research is supported in the district. If you are a young person, health professional, or researcher interested in getting involved in research in South West Sydney, please let us know as we will try to link you up with the resources you need. Below we present two case studies of clinicians who have worked together with the BestSTART-SWS team.
Growing Healthy Kids (GHK) Clinic
The GHK clinic is a new weight-management service operating in South West Sydney. This service was going to be rolled-out like other services have in the past, but Faye Southcombe, the service manager, was interested in taking the clinic a step further. Faye reached out to the BestSTART-SWS team who worked with her to design an evidence-based service delivery model that operated like a randomised control trial. This design is able to evaluate the effectiveness of the service as compared to an active waitlist, while ensuring service delivery is fair and agile. What is more, Faye’s interest in the topic allowed her to pursue a PhD using the data generated by the service she manages. In this way, getting in touch with BestSTART-SWS allowed the GHK clinic to come up with an innovative model of generating evidence to assess its effectiveness, ensuring the service can adapt and respond to the data into the future.
Gna Ka Lun (GKL) Adolescent In-Patient Mental Health Unit
The psychology team at the GKL unit had been trying to publish a paper that tested a new cognitive-behavioural treatment they had adapted to suit their service. They reached out to BestSTART-SWS for help. Together, we worked out that it would be best to design a new pilot study with an improved control group (comparison group). BestSTART-SWS worked with the psychology team to create the new pilot, and together we applied for a grant to fund the pilot randomised control trial. This grant application was successful, and the clinical team has used the funding to hire a research assistant that is able to support the team in the delivery of the trial. By working with BestSTART-SWS the psychology team at the GKL unit was able to fund their trial and generate evidence for the treatment they had adapted.
