Australian studies investigating parental factors often lack meaningful inclusion of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families, limiting our understanding of current influences on positive developmental trajectories within communities. There is growing recognition of the need for culturally safe and responsive longitudinal research that is co-designed and co-led by the community for the community. An Indigenous-led birth cohort study of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families in Queensland, Australia, has therefore been developed to better understand health across generations.
The Strong Families Study is a co-designed prospective longitudinal birth cohort study that will follow 400 Indigenous families in Queensland from pregnancy until the child reaches 5 years of age. Eligible participants include pregnant individuals (
This study was approved by the Mater Misericordiae Ltd Human Research Ethics Committee (HREC/MML/105191) and ratified by the University of Queensland Human Research Ethics Committee (2025/HE001924). Endorsement letters were secured from partner services at each study site. Findings will be shared with partnering hospitals and funding bodies at conferences and through reports and peer-reviewed publications.
This study describes the prototype testing and clinical validation of the Fit-Frailty App, a fully guided, interactive mobile health (mHealth) app to assess frailty and sarcopenia. This multi-dimensional tool is freely available on the App Store and considers medical history, physical performance, cognition, nutrition, daily function and psychosocial domains. To guide management, a total frailty score and clinical summary of underlying "risk flags" are provided. Our objectives were to examine usability, feasibility, criterion and construct validity.
Cross-sectional
Outpatient geriatric medicine clinic
Community-dwelling older adults, age 65 years or older
The primary outcome of the clinical validation study was criterion validity. A research nurse administered the Fit-Frailty App during a routine clinic appointment. Clinicians simultaneously completed a paper-based frailty index (FI) tool with similar items from a comprehensive geriatric assessment (FI-CGA). Total scores for both assessments were computed using the cumulative deficits frailty index scoring method. Intraclass and Pearson correlation coefficients and 95% CIs were calculated to examine criterion validity. Secondary outcomes were construct validity, feasibility (eg, completion rates, safety occurrences, resources) and usability (eg, ratings on ease of use, time to complete the app).
In the clinical validation study (n=75, mean age 79.2, SD=7.0, 53% female), the mean total Fit-Frailty App score was 0.33 (SD=0.13) with 73% of our sample considered frail or severely frail. The app presented comparable results to FI-CGA (moderate to good validity; ICC=0.65, 95%CI=0.50–0.76) with a strong association between the measures (r=0.74, 95%CI=0.62–0.83). In our prototype and clinical cohorts, the app had a 100% completion rate with no safety occurrences and had high usability ratings.
The Fit-Frailty App is a feasible and valid tool that can be used in research and clinical settings to comprehensively assess frailty and sarcopenia by non-geriatricians and could assist with developing targeted interventions.
Systematic reviews (SRs) on the management of temporomandibular disorders (TMDs) have predominantly focused on evaluating the effectiveness of various treatments, identifying those that provide the greatest benefits. However, the economic evaluation of these treatments has not been systematically explored. This SR aims to address this gap by evaluating the economic outcomes of the most common treatment modalities for TMDs, including cost-effectiveness, cost-utility, cost-benefit, cost-minimisation and the burden of illness.
This SR will be conducted using the following electronic databases Business Source Complete, CINAHL, EconLit (ProQuest), Embase (Ovid), MEDLINE (PubMed), MEDLINE (Ovid) and Scopus to identify studies evaluating the economic outcomes of treatments for TMDs. The eligibility criteria are as follows: (1) studies examining the costs and/or impact of treatments for TMDs and (2) articles published between 2000 and 2025. The primary outcomes of interest are the economic findings outlined earlier. Data extraction will include the following: author(s), year of publication, country, study objectives, study design, eligibility criteria, TMD diagnosis and screening, study groups, randomisation, blinding, sample size, number of participants invited, enrolled and completed, duration of treatment, follow-up, study duration, settings, assessment instruments, study outcomes, statistical analyses, results, limitations, strengths and funding sources. The quality of studies will be evaluated using the Consolidated Health Economic Evaluation Reporting Standards 2022 checklist, with risk of bias assessed using the Cochrane Effective Practice and Organization of Care’s risk-of-bias tool; where applicable, the Outcome Reporting Bias in Trials will be used to detect reporting biases. A narrative synthesis and summary tables will outline study characteristics, economic outcomes and the overall quality of evidence. We will conduct qualitative secondary and sensitivity analyses.
This SR does not require an ethics approval. The results will be disseminated through international and national conferences and peer-reviewed journals.
CRD42024613553.