Aussie child-health leader enjoys return to Bay roots

Hawke's Bay-raised Melissa Wake flew from Melbourne for this week's Paediatric Society of New Zealand conference in Napier. Photo / Warren Buckland

Melissa Wake took a trip down memory lane before her keynote presentation on the second day of the Paediatric Society of New Zealand's conference in Napier yesterday.

Professor Wake visited the Havelock North school where a special treat for boarders, in between twice-a-day chapel, was cycling to Hastings for Rush Munro's ice cream.

She spent the first seven years of her life in Waipukurau and, after the family moved to Levin, won a scholarship to Woodford House.

The school dux went on to Otago University Medical School and is now associate director at the Royal Children's Hospital's Centre for Community Child Health, a professor at the University of Melbourne, a consultant paediatrician and a team leader for the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children.

Her research focuses on child-health problems such as obesity, mental health, sleep, literacy, language and hearing.

"I work a little bit as a paediatrician still, but these days I mainly do large-scale community and population studies, looking at common issues that affect children's health and wellbeing," she said.

Professor Wake is leading Australia's Child Health CheckPoint until 2017. The one-off physical health assessment is offered to 11 to 12-year-olds as they pass through the "checkpoint" between being children and teenagers. Children and parents throughout Australia take part in activities assessing diet, activity, health and fitness.

She is also leading the creation of a repository of family biological samples.

"We are very interested in how health and wellbeing get transmitted across generations," she said.

Her presentation yesterday looked at making research "faster" so it could impact on health outcomes sooner. Many research programmes take five to seven years.

The paediatric society's president, David Newman, said he was pleased with the conference so far.

The paediatric society was "a passionate bunch" and its strength was its diversity.

"We have a range of professionals like pharmacists, psychologists, child psychiatrists, nurses and health managers, funders and planners. That is why we are taken seriously and not just representing vested interests of a bunch of wealthy doctors, which is what some people might say."