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Honours/Masters projects

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The impact of government policies on maternity and newborn outcomes

The impact of government policies on maternity and newborn outcomes

Project description: The impacts of policy – federal, state, local – on the life chances of individuals and communities can be profound but hard to pin down.

GenV is a whole-of-Victoria cohort of nearly 50,000 children and their parents recruited Oct 2021-Oct 2023. Its unique features could shed light on policy cause and effect – notably, the cohort’s very large size and diversity (with all Victorian population groups represented) and inclusion of all localities and services (with areas varying in when and what policy is implemented). Additionally, many natural experiments arose from its establishment during the COVID-19 pandemic, with its seismic policy changes during preconception, pregnancy and early childhood and parenthood life stages.

This Honours student will create a temporal and spatial map of major policy changes across Victoria from 2018 to 2023, and use causal and area-variation analytic techniques to study their likely impacts for new parents and babies at GenV recruitment.

Supervisors: Prof Melissa Wake, Naomi Schwarz, Prof Sharon Goldfeld