Behavioural Sciences Unit
This page is a research page on Kids Research. For more information, please see our page on the University of NSW (UNSW) website.
See UNSW page
The Behavioural Sciences Unit is a research arm of the Kids Cancer Centre (KCC) and a part of the University of NSW, School of Women’s and Children’s Health. We undertake psychosocial and nutritional research as related to paediatric illness, with a focus on childhood cancer. We evaluate many of the challenges families face from the time their child is diagnosed through to survivorship or bereavement.
Objectives
Our vision is to create, and be a part of, a fully integrated clinical and research space, fostering a whole-of-life approach to childhood illness, recognising the child as a patient, a family member, a future adult and a member of society.
Our goal is to enable each new generation of families affected by serious or chronic illness to have a better experience than the last.
Impact
- We conduct trials for novel online interventions developed to improve the quality of life for young cancer survivors and their parents.
- We work with one of the largest cohorts of childhood cancer survivors in the Southern Hemisphere to assess interventions to reduce the burden of illness on young people.
- We created an Australian-first eHealth program to improve fruit and vegetable intake of cancer young survivors.
- We developed a world-first decision aid for improving decision making for parents of children requiring nutrition support in hospital.
- We were one of the first researchers worldwide to examine sibling wellbeing from their own perspective and compare siblings’ psychosocial outcomes across chronic illnesses.