Publications

The FASD Research Australia Centre of Research Excellence (CRE) was funded by the National Health and Medical Research Council to generate and translate evidence to address prevention, diagnosis, and management of FASD in Australia. Published in 2022, this paper describes the approach to policy and practice impact taken by this CRE, including stakeholder engagement processes and the key principles that underlie the approach. The publication provides examples of policy and practice influence in FASD prevention, diagnosis and management that have been achieved over the past five years and discusses challenges that are routinely faced in the translation of work.

This review paper gives a comprehensive overview of FASD research globally. This paper includes a review of: international prevalence of FASD; the mechanisms and pathophysiology of prenatal alcohol exposure; diagnosis, screening and prevention; management; quality of life; and outlook.

Early diagnosis of children with FASD assists in implementing critical early support. The challenge lies in having a diagnostic process that enables valid and reliable assessment of domains of functioning in young children, with the added complexity that many children will also have co-occurring exposure to childhood adversity that is likely to impact these domains. This study examines diagnostic assessment of FASD in young children using the Australian Guide to the Diagnosis of FASD. Ninety-four children (aged 3 to 7 years) with confirmed or suspected prenatal alcohol exposure were referred to two specialist FASD clinics for assessment in Queensland, Australia.

Individuals with FASD are over-represented within the justice system and have significant employment challenges. The primary aim of this scoping review was to ascertain available employment resources for FASD individuals particularly those involved in the justice system. Secondary aims were to determine available evidence-based interventions for the justice workforce and employment providers.

FASD is a high prevalence but underdiagnosed group of disorders affecting between 17 and 36% of individuals in criminal justice settings. Little research has been completed on how to best support individuals with these conditions in criminal justice settings. This article proposes a renewed focus on applying and adapting the Risk-Need-Responsivity (RNR) approach to individuals with FASD in criminal justice settings. This will assist in better determining the needs and interventions likely to effect change and reduce recidivism for this prominent criminal justice-based population. The RNR approach has been used with multiple corrections populations to determine the need and most appropriate interventions, as well as how to best allocate scarce resources. As the prevalence of FASD becomes better understood and recognized, evidence-based approaches to addressing this specific sub-population are necessary to effect change and reduce recidivism and ongoing involvement in the criminal justice system.

This study explored whether the effectiveness of practice change intervention on provision of antenatal care addsing alcohol consumpmption differed between subgroups of pregnant women and types and location of maternity services. These exploratory results suggest that the intervention may have had similar effects between different subgroups of women and types and location of services, with the exception of women who were non-Aboriginal and women who had not consumed alcohol, for whom the intervention was potentially more effective.