Life Course Understanding of Adverse Childhood Experiences: Exploring Global and Australian Context

Seminar Overview

Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) refer to some of the most intense and frequently occurring sources of stress that children may encounter in early life. These experiences include incidents of physical, emotional, or sexual abuse and neglect, as well as familial adversities such as parental substance misuse, mental health problems, domestic violence, and parental separation or divorce. Although most ACEs research has focused on non-Indigenous populations, some studies among Indigenous populations have found that ACEs are reported at higher rates compared to non-Indigenous populations globally. The situation in Australia is similar, with nearly two in three Indigenous children exposed to at least one ACE. However, prevalence rates of ACEs vary significantly due to differences in how they are conceptualized and defined across studies, as well as the context of data collection, the population studied, the informant (e.g., parent or child), and the study design. Additionally, the life course understanding of ACEs, their long-term health outcomes, and mitigating factors among Indigenous populations remain less explored.

Professor Mamun leads life course research at the UQ Poche Centre, focusing on a range of health issues, particularly non-communicable diseases, their social determinants, and effective prevention strategies to address challenges among Indigenous populations. In line with this focus, his team has been conducting research to explore ACEs among Indigenous populations, both globally and in Australia, to generate scientific evidence that fills the current knowledge gap in this area. In this seminar, Professor Mamun will discuss the toxic effects of ACEs over the life course. Dr. Shahunja will share findings from the first-ever global systematic review on ACEs in Indigenous populations. PhD scholar Ashraful will present findings from his PhD work on factors preventing ACEs among Indigenous children and adolescents in Australia, based on the Longitudinal Study of Indigenous Children.
 

Speakers

Professor Mamun is an internationally recognised leader in the areas of life course epidemiology and intergenerational perspectives. An approach that situates the individual risk factors and their interaction within a context that determines health outcomes has been the underlying basis of his research. He is one of the Principal Investigator’s of the Mater-University of Queensland Study of Pregnancy (MUSP) cohort. Over the past 14 years, he has been leading the respiratory and cardiovascular epidemiology research in the MUSP that included 30 years follow-up of the MUSP offspring cohort (Gen 2) and the first follow-up of the children-of-the-offspring cohort (Gen 3). In recent years, he expanded his research in the low & middle income countries focusing on the rapid socio-economic development and the demographic and epidemiological transitions. Mamun has made significant contributions to understand the critical stages of life and early life determinants of health. From the life course perspective, some of his papers are influential while thinking about the early development of health and well-being. For instance, his research confirmed that parents, especially mothers, are the role model for offspring health and well-being development from early life to adolescence and then to young adulthood. His research shows that weight management and prevention of obesity should start as early as possible even before or during pregnancy. He is interested to contribute new knowledge about the extent that socioeconomic, family and environmental factors track from generation to generation and how this impacts on health and well-being of the future generations.

Dr. K. M. Shahunja is a physician and accomplished clinical researcher. He earned his MBBS degree from Bangladesh, a Postgraduate Diploma in Paediatrics and Child Health from the UK, and later pursued PhD from the UQ, Australia. His doctoral research focused on investigating the impact of familial and neighbourhood dynamics, as well as psychosocial environmental changes, on the trajectories of asthma symptoms in Australian children, following a life-course approach. Dr. Shahunja is affiliated with the Life Course Centre at UQ and is actively involved in a collaborative project with the World Health Organization. This project explores longitudinal studies and linked data sources across Australia to examine health and well-being over different life stages associated with healthy ageing. Since his post-doctoral period, he has been working in Indigenous health, developing life-course interventions to improve the health of First Nations peoples in Australia. He is currently working on an NHMRC-GACD Non-Communicable Disease Prevention project aimed at preventing NCDs among Indigenous children and youth in major cities of Australia. Before his tenure at UQ, Dr. Shahunja dedicated nearly a decade to research overseas. Through his extensive clinical research endeavours, Dr. Shahunja has contributed significantly to the body of knowledge in his field, as evidenced by more than 60 publications in peer-reviewed journals.

Md Ashraful Alam is a statistician and public health researcher. He completed his M.Sc in Statistics from Rajshahi University, Bangladesh and his MPH in Epidemiology from the University of South Asia, Bangladesh. Before joining UQ, he spent almost thirteen years working for an international research organisation (www.icddrb.org) in Dhaka, Bangladesh. His key research interests are maternal and child malnutrition, cognitive development, adverse childhood experiences and mental health. He has a good track record in the scientific community, including 38 published articles in peer-reviewed journals. In his PhD research, he aims to determine the effects of environmental exposures on pregnancy and delivery outcomes in Queensland with an RTP scholarship from the University of Queensland

Seminar recording