Harriet Hiscock

Biography

Professor Hiscock is a consultant paediatrician and postdoctoral research fellow. She works part time in research and clinical practice and is co-director of the Unsettled Babies Clinic and Co-Group Leader of the Community Health Services Research group at the Murdoch Children's Research Institute. She seeks to determine the impact of common child health problems on child and family functioning and develop and trial new approaches to their management. She is also interested in improving child health outcomes through paediatric, secondary care-based research including e-health. She is driving this research through the Australian Paediatric Research Network – a research network of 400 paediatricians which she leads. She is assisted by a team of about 15 researchers. Professor Hiscock has translated her research into practice including the rollout of her Infant Sleep program to 1,200 Victorian maternal and child health nurses, for which she was awarded the 2010 Early Years Minister's Award for Partnerships with Families and Communities. The program has been translated into eight languages and informed content of the federal government-funded Raising Children Network Parenting site. She was funded by the Victorian government to extend this training program to 150 GPs in 2011/12 and by the Sleep Health Foundation to develop an online version of the training program in 2013. She has co-authored a report which led to inclusion of a child mental health measure in the Victorian School Entry Health Questionnaire that enables earlier detection and management of child mental health problems.

Research Interest

Pediatrics and Public Health