ADVOCATING FOR AUSTRALIAN CHILDREN LIVING WITH VISION IMPAIRMENT
Australian Childhood Vision Impairment Register
With
Dr Susan Silveira
Chief Investigator
Australian Childhood Vision Impairment Register, NextSense &
Program Director
Master of Disability Studies (Macquarie University), NextSense
AUSTRALIAN HEALTH JOURNAL SEGMENT
Filmed in Sydney | June 2025
The Australian Childhood Vision Impairment Register (ACVIR), the first of its kind in Australia, captures uniquely Australian data which is used to improve services for children with vision impairment. The data is also available to researchers who work in the area of eye disease and disorders of vision.
Currently in Australia, we don’t know how many Australian children have vision impairment.
This makes it hard to plan for the services these children need, or to argue for research into preventing conditions which cause vision impairment.
NextSense Institute, in partnership with key Australian service providers, corporate donors, government departments and health professionals, has undertaken a major research project to develop and maintain an Australia-wide record of children with vision impairment.
This project is called the Australian Childhood Vision Impairment Register.
Australian Health Journal spoke with Dr Susan Silveira, Chief Investigator of the Register.
The Register collects accurate information on children who have been diagnosed by an ophthalmologist (eye doctor) with vision impairment.. This information is used to establish the number of children with vision impairment, the causes and level of vision impairment and any additional disabilities and health conditions these children have.
The Parent or guardian of a child, aged 0-18 years, who has been diagnosed by an ophthalmologist with vision impairment, are invited to join the Australian Childhood Vision Impairment Register.
The Australian Childhood Vision Impairment Register (ACVIR) is sponsored by NextSense with support from Guide Dogs, Vision Australia, low vision service providers and families of children with vision loss.
Source: Written by AUDIENCED sourced from NextSense website
-
Landmark research projects tackle critical issues in emergency healthcare
For two decades, the demand for emergency department services in Australia has outpaced population growth and wait times have increased. In 2022-2023 more than 8.8 million emergency department presentations occurred nationwide.
While demand is a contributing factor, EDs are currently being impacted by various factors across the entire health system.
The Emergency Medicine Foundation (EMF) is a non-profit organisation funding innovative Australian research that improves the way people are cared for in a medical emergency. The aim of the research is to deliver better and more effective health services to save lives and money.
-
CASE STUDY: Creating awareness, workforce education & dissemination strategy in national screening
At the recent Screening Conference 2025 in Sydney, hosted by Public Health Association, Dr Rachael Dodd, Senior Research Fellow at The Daffodil Centre, spoke about the information and educational resources created to increase awareness in the healthcare workforce and community on the upcoming Australia’s National Lung Cancer Screening Program commencing in July 2025.
-
Australian Teletrial Program reaches significant milestones in trials and participants
Launched in 2022, the Australian Teletrial Program is an initiative designed to improve access to clinical trials for people living in regional and remote areas of Australia. It uses telemedicine and digital technologies to enable patients to participate in clinical trials without needing to travel long distances to major metropolitan centres, which can often be a barrier to participation for those in rural and isolated locations.
Recently Australian Health Journal met with Kaye Hewson, Director, Australian Teletrials Program, who spoke about the program’s recent achievements.
