2011: New RCH building opens
The new state of the art RCH building opens at 50 Flemington Road, Parkville.
2012: Transgender service established
The Gender Service is currently the first and largest multidisciplinary service of its kind in Australia for gender diverse and transgender children and adolescents. Associate Professor Michelle Telfer is Director of the service has been instrumental in its development and expansion. She leads a multidisciplinary team that includes paediatricians, psychiatrists, psychologists, endocrinologists, a Clinical Nurse Consultant, a gynaecologist and a speech pathologist.
In 2012, Michelle advocated for legal change and improved access to medical and mental health care for transgender and gender diverse children and adolescents in Australia. Her advocacy work led to a change in Australian family law to allow transgender children to receive hormonal treatment under age 18 years. Telfer developed the first Australian Standards for the Care and Treatment of Transgender and Gender Diverse Children and Adolescents, which were published in 2018.
2015: National Child Health Poll commences
The Royal Children’s Hospital National Child Health Poll is a quarterly, national survey of 2,000 Australian households shedding new light on the big issues in contemporary child and adolescent health – as told by the Australian public.
The poll’s structure and focus combines the rigour of academic discovery with the timeliness and reach of online quantitative research, to deliver significant new knowledge about the health, wellbeing and lives of children and young people in contemporary Australia.
Uniquely, the poll consistently puts the voice of Australian families and communities at the heart of the conversation about child and adolescent health. It aims to inform national discourse, health priorities and policy formulation, and stimulate further research into the new and emerging health issues facing Australian children and teenagers, and their communities, today.
The poll is funded through The Royal Children’s Hospital Foundation. The project protocol has been approved by The Royal Children’s Hospital Human Research Ethics Committee.
2016: Betty Cosgrove endowment to support Children’s Bioethics Centre
Betty Cosgrove generously left her entire estate, creating a philanthropic endowment to support the Children’s Bioethics Centre.
2018: Conjoined twins Nima and Dawa separated
Conjoined twins from Bhutan, Nima and Dawa Palden, are successfully separated by a multidisciplinary team of more than 20 after a 6 hour surgery.
2019: CAR T-cell immunotherapy becomes available to RCH patients
Revolutionary cancer-killing CAR T-cell immunotherapy becomes accessible to RCH patients for the first time for free in the country.
CAR T-cell therapy is a new frontier in cancer treatment that allows the body’s own immune system to fight cancer.
It involves removing a patient’s T cells (a type of immune system cell), re-engineering them in a lab and reinserting them back into the body to attack and kill the cancer cells.
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