Daisy Shepherd

Murdoch Children's Research Institute | MCRI · Clinical Epidemiology & Biostatistics (CEBU)

Importance Monogenic causes of childhood hearing loss are well established, as are polygenic risk contributions to age-related hearing loss. However, an untested possibility is that polygenic risk scores (PRS) also contribute to childhood hearing loss of all severities, alongside environmental and/or monogenic causes. Objective To examine the asso...

Aim Complex care programmes for children with medically complex cerebral palsy (CP) exist; however, evidence for their impact is limited. This study (i) explored the impact of The Royal Children's Hospital Complex Care Hub (CCH) on hospital service utilisation rates over a 3‐year period for children with medically complex CP compared with those eli...

Background: Rapid population-level identification of language disorders could help target needed care to very young children (while reducing unnecessary services) to improve communication and quality of life outcomes. Two previous machine learning studies drew on the Early Language in Victoria Study (ELVS) and Longitudinal Study of Australian Child...

Background Identifying language disorders earlier can help children receive the support needed to improve developmental outcomes and quality of life. Despite the prevalence and impacts of persistent language disorder, there are surprisingly no robust predictor tools available. This makes it difficult for researchers to recruit young children into e...

Observational studies have a critical role in disability research, providing the opportunity to address a range of research questions. Over the past decades, there have been substantial shifts and developments in statistical methods for observational studies, most notably for causal inference. In this review, we provide an overview of modern design...

Background With continuous outcomes, the average causal effect is typically defined using a contrast of expected potential outcomes. However, in the presence of skewed outcome data, the expectation (population mean) may no longer be meaningful. In practice the typical approach is to continue defining the estimand this way or transform the outcome t...

Background Deaf and hard-of hearing (DHH) children often experience emotional/behavioral difficulties. The impact of unilateral/mild hearing loss (HL) on children's emotion and behavior are unclear. We aimed to describe emotional/behavioral, health related quality-of-life (HRQoL) and parent psychological distress outcomes of school-age children wit...

Objective: Early identification of language disorders ensures children in need receive support to improve development and quality of life outcomes. A previous study identified six survey items that predicted 11-year language outcome with 75% sensitivity and 81% specificity using data from the Early Language in Victoria Study (ELVS). This study aims...

Introduction We aimed to describe the language and health-related quality of life (HRQoL) outcomes of children early-identified with unilateral or mild bilateral permanent hearing loss. This was a cross-sectional community-based study of children with mild bilateral or unilateral permanent hearing loss (including unilateral auditory neuropathy spec...

Objective: To evaluate the association between hCG and adverse pregnancy outcomes. Data sources: Medline, Embase, PubMed and Cochrane were searched in November 2021 using medical subject headings (MeSH) and relevant keywords. Study eligibility criteria: Published full text studies of pregnant women with serum hCG testing between 8-28 week gest...

Through a cross-sectional community study of 2044 children aged 2 years, we (1) examine the impact of hearing loss on early spoken expressive vocabulary outcomes and (2) investigate how early intervention-related factors impact expressive vocabulary outcomes in children with hearing loss predominantly identified through universal newborn hearing sc...

Background: Children with medically complex cerebral palsy have severe functional limitations and multiple medical comorbidities requiring frequent hospital appointments and admissions and input from many clinical specialties over the course of each year. Complex care programs, which coordinate care for children with medical complexity, are growing...

Deaf and hard of hearing (DHH) children in Victoria, Australia, were exposed to strict public health restrictions, including sustained lockdowns, during the COVID-19 pandemic. DHH children have higher health and socio-emotional needs than their hearing peers. We aimed to (1) describe the socio-emotional experiences of DHH children and their parents...

Background: Early identification of language disorders enables provision of support to those most in need of intervention. A previous study identified 6 preschool indicators that predict 11-year language outcome with 75% sensitivity and 81% specificity using data from the Early Language in Victoria Study (ELVS). These predictors related to sentence...

Background: Identifying language disorders earlier can help children receive the support needed to improve developmental outcomes and quality of life. Despite the prevalence and impacts of persistent language disorder, there are surprisingly no robust predictor tools available. This makes it difficult for researchers to recruit young children into...

Background Language is foundational for neurodevelopment and quality of life, but an estimated 10% of children have a language disorder at age 5. Many children shift between classifications of typical and low language if assessed at multiple times in the early years, making it difficult to identify which children will have persisting difficulties a...

Aim To provide an updated description of the rates, trends, and predictors of mortality of individuals with cerebral palsy (CP), born in the Australian state of Victoria between 1970 and 2012. Method Data were extracted for 4807 individuals (2091 females; 2716 males). The probability of survival to 30th June 2017 was calculated using the Kaplan–Me...

Background: Language provides a foundation for quality of life and development, but language disorders, affecting 10% of children, are generally only diagnosed late in childhood. Aim: This study aims to identify a parsimonious set of preschool indicators that predict language outcomes, using data from the Early Language in Victoria Study (n=839). M...

Background: Language is foundational for neurodevelopment and quality of life but an estimated 10% of children have a language disorder at age 5. Many children shift between classifications of typical and low language if assessed at multiple times in the early years, making it difficult to identify which children will have persisting difficulties a...

Objective To examine etiology, comorbidities, and health service use in a cohort of children with permanent hearing loss. Receiving an etiological diagnosis can inform reproductive planning, rehabilitation outcomes, predict additional disabilities, and direct intervention or management decisions. Design Retrospective audit of 518 deaf/hard-of-hear...

Background: Language is foundational for neurodevelopment and quality of life but an estimated 10% of children have a language disorder at age 5. Many children shift between classifications of typical and low language if assessed at multiple times in the early years, making it difficult to identify which children will have persisting difficulties a...

With continuous outcomes, the average causal effect is typically defined using a contrast of mean potential outcomes. However, for skewed outcome data the mean may no longer be a meaningful summary statistic and the definition of the causal effect should be considered more closely. In practice the typical approach is to either "ignore or transform"...

GJB2-associated hearing loss (GJB2-HL) is the most common genetic cause of hearing loss in children. However, little is known about the clinical characteristics and early language outcomes in population-oriented samples including children with different degrees of hearing loss. Insight into these characteristics are relevant for the counselling of...

Objective: In Australia, the National Disability Strategy provides a framework to guide actions and investment to achieve equity in social inclusion and economic participation for people with disability. We investigated the social outcomes of school leavers with cerebral palsy (CP) in Victoria, Australia and explored the determinants of desirable o...

Purpose Inconsistent and inadequate pain assessment practices in cerebral palsy (CP) have resulted from a lack of standardisation of pain assessment, limited use of appropriate tools and failure to integrate disability and biopsychosocial models. To assist with improving consistency, this study aimed to establish consensus from key stakeholders reg...

Aims: To investigate whether second trimester screening (T2MSS) biomarkers are associated with cerebral palsy (CP) and identify CP characteristics associated with abnormal biomarker levels. Method: In this retrospective case-control data linkage study, we linked mothers of 129 singleton CP cases from a population register to their 2TMSS records...

Aim To investigate whether combined first‐trimester screening (cFTS) biomarkers are associated with cerebral palsy (CP) and to identify CP characteristics associated with abnormal biomarker levels. Method In this retrospective case–control data linkage study, we matched mothers of 435 singletons with CP from a population register to their cFTS rec...

Despite over 50 years of research, a comprehensive understanding of how intramuscular triglyceride (IMTG) is stored in skeletal muscle and its contribution as a fuel during exercise is lacking. Immunohistochemical techniques provide information on IMTG content and lipid droplet (LD) morphology on a fibre type and subcellular-specific basis, and the...

Prader–Willi syndrome (PWS) is a rare disorder caused by the loss of expression of genes on the paternal copy of chromosome 15q11-13. The main molecular subtypes of PWS are the deletion of 15q11-13 and non-deletion, and differences in neurobehavioral phenotype are recognized between the subtypes. This study aimed to investigate growth trajectories...

The present study was conducted to meet the needs of a group of schools in a low-income community which have sought to enhance student engagement and achievement through digital learning, but whose continued success is hampered by an ongoing Summer Learning Effect (SLE). This study contributes to understandings about how to design a summer blogging...

The test for model-to-data fitness is a fundamental principle within the statistical sciences. The purpose of such a test is to assess whether the selected best-fitting model adequately describes the behaviour in the data. Despite their broad application across many areas of statistics, goodness of fit tests for phylogenetic models have received mu...