Grant delivers next generation for history-making Raine Study

Funding from Channel 7 Telethon Trust will enable the Raine Study to begin the next phase of its world-first research program.

Grant funding of $122.892.70 has been awarded to the study’s Scientific Director, Associate Professor Rebecca Glauert, from The University of Western Australia’s School of Population and Global Health. 

“The benefits will be felt not only in Australia but around the world.”

Associate Professor Rebecca Glauert, UWA School of Population and Global Health.

The Raine Study has tracked almost 3,000 young adults and their parents since they were 18 weeks in-utero between 1989 and 1991.

Associate Professor Glauert said the funding would allow the study to begin recruiting the next generation of participants, making it the first three-generation pregnancy cohort in the world and provide unparalleled opportunities for researchers.

“It’s not just the collection of new data,” Associate Professor Glauert said. 

“The addition of a third generation of participants to the Raine Study will mean that existing data can be applied in new ways to enable intergenerational research that simply has not been possible before now. 

“The benefits will be felt not only in Australia but around the world.”

In 1989, the Raine Study invited 2,900 pregnant women from Perth’s King Edward Memorial Hospital to take part in a study of ultrasound during pregnancy, with the goal of helping scientists investigate the origins of a child’s future health from before they were born. 

Image: James Aitken will be the third generation of the Aitken family to join the Raine Study.

The parents (Generation 1) and their babies (Generation 2) have taken part in 17 different follow-up studies, contributing to ground-breaking research on physical health, mental health, lifestyle, and genetics. The babies are now 33 years old and are having their own children (Generation 3).

The funding will enable the Raine Study to recruit all current and future children born to the original Raine Study babies, with the potential to improve understanding of the intergenerational determinants to health and wellbeing.

The new grant will help researchers work to answer questions from whether a parents’ fertility will impact their children’s future health and fertility, or if mental health problems transmit between generations, to the long-term impact of COVID-19 and climate change on their children’s health.