This week Dr Yong Shi Zhang presented at the International Society of Obstetrics and Gynaecology conference held in Seoul, South Korea to an international audience. She told them about our Bendigo Family Study and the results from her research evaluating the impact of sleep in pregnancy on the mental health of new parents.

Her key findings were that new mothers who reported disordered sleep in pregnancy had significantly higher mental health symptoms after birth. In contrast there was no significant differences observe din new fathers.

Recruitment for this and all studies within the Bendigo Family Study remain ongoing.

Professor Julie Quinlivan
Bendigo Family Study

The Bendigo Family Study congratulate young investigator Dr Adele Lourensz  who presented her research at PSANZ 2025 in Brisbane. Dr Lourensz how  regional and rural pregnant women and their partners access reliable healthcare information and antenatal care at a time when regional and rural obstetric services are being consolidated.  As part of the Bendigo Family Study we sought to explore how a cohort of regional and rural parents secured information and care.

The key findings were:
* Both new mothers and fathers ranked their GP as the most substantial provider of healthcare information during the pregnancy (mothers 29.9%, fathers 26.7%).
* Mothers ranked obstetricians as the second and midwives as the third main source of information.
* However, new fathers ranked midwives as the second and obstetricians as the third key source of information.
* Family, friends and the internet were ranked well below healthcare professionals for impact.

The results reinforce the critical role of rural and regional general practitioners in pregnancy care. Maintaining an adequate GP workforce is essential for regional and rural maternity care.

regards
Professor Julie Quinlivan
​Bendigo Family Study

The Bendigo Family Study is pleased to report that another of our young investigators, Dr Yong Shi Zhang, successfully presented her research at PSANZ 2025 that evaluated whether mode of delivery impacted on parenting confidence in rural parents. Maternal psychopathology and self-esteem during childbirth may impact on parenting self-efficacy but there are significant cultural overlays in outcomes. It has been proposed that caesarean section birth may adversely impact upon maternal parenting and breastfeeding confidence.

The impact of delivery mode in regional and rural communities within Australia and the impact on partners is unknown.  This study aimed to assess parenting confidence of mothers who delivered by CS and their partners in relation to parenting and breastfeeding confidence.

In this case control (mothers matched for age and parity) subsidy the key findings were that:
* Breastfeeding confidence was similar between the two groups (Vaginal delivery 50.2 sd 14 vs CS 48.5 sd 15; p=0.61).
* Interestingly, new mothers reported higher parenting confidence following CS (vaginal 21.2 sd 5 vs CS 22.2 sd 5; p<0.001) but no difference was observed in parenting confidence between new fathers by delivery mode (vaginal 21.2 sd 5 vs CS 21.1 sd 6; p=0.85).

Our results are reassuring and do not support a finding that Caesarean Section mode of birth adversely impacts on breastfeeding or parenting confidence in our regional and rural parents.

regards
Professor Julie Quinlivan
Bendigo Family Study
 

We congratulate one of our young investigators Dr Jemma Billinghurst who presented her research that investigated whether our new rural parents are vulnerable to cyberchondria. Cyberchondria is a condition where individuals experience distress about a health-related condition that causes repeated or excessive online searches for health-related information. Cyberchondria is common in people with high levels of “health anxiety” aggravated by poor access to healthcare information.   

Cyberchondria is associated with adverse consequences including impacts on work and social capacity and may predispose individuals to be falsely reassured or conversely excessively prompted to seek medical attention. Regional and rural families may be prone to cyberchondria due to difficulty of access from care providers.  

We explored cyberchondria scores in a sample of new regional and rural parents who were enrolled in our Bendigo Family Study.

The key findings were:
* Cyberchondria scores were significantly higher in new mothers compared to new fathers (27.3 (8.2) vs 23.5 (7.1); p=0.04).
* This gender difference was due to significant differences in the "excessive subscale" domain (9.8(2.8) vs 7.0(2.6); p<0.0001). The other subscale domains were not significantly different between new mothers and fathers (all p>0.05). 

Excessive subscale refers to an excessive need to seek information out on the internet.

New mothers in regional and rural locations may be vulnerable to cyberchondria, in particular excessive searching for health-related information.
 
We plan further studies to explore how we can ensure optimal delivery of reliable information to new rural parents to prevent harmful excessive searching for information on the internet.

regards

​Professor Julie Quinlivan
​Bendigo Family Study

The Bendigo Family Study congratulates Tomas Petersen, one of the research students helping on this trial, who presented at the 2025 Perinatal Society of Australia and New Zealand Annual Scientific meeting in Brisbane. The study explored the attitudes of new parents and grandparents towards genetic testing.  Previous Australian studies have indicated that new mothers are reluctant to consider genetic cancer testing with concerns expressed over possible future discrimination. However, these studies were over a decade old and genetic cancer testing advocacy and protections against discrimination are now being implemented in Australian law. Further, new genetic tests for individualised healthcare around diet and exercise are being developed that might enhance overall health. 

The study explored the attitudes of new parents and grandparents to hypothetical questions around genetic testing for specific cancer risks, and individualised diet and exercise genetic tests that could be significant for future health.

The key findings were that 
* 76% of new parents and grandparents would have a genetic test if it provided them with a 25% risk of a specific cancer.
* 84% of responders stated that they would have a genetic blood test that helped identify a preferred exercise pattern or dietary pattern for individualised health.
* Only 24% of our new parents and grandparents felt that a positive genetic test might result in discrimination.

There were no differences in attitudes between mothers and fathers or between parents and grandparents (all p>0.05).
​
These findings differ from our study conducted only a decade ago where rates of acceptance were lower and indicate an increasingly positive attitude in new parents and grandparents towards individualised genetic test for cancer and lifestyle management. 

The abstract and poster presentation can be viewed in detail at researchgate.

regards
​Professor Julie Quinlivan
​Bendigo Family Study

Welcome from the Bendigo Family Study. This week we commence recruitment.  

The Bendigo Family Study is Australia's largest tri-generational study of rural healthcare. Our team, lead by Clinical Professor Julie Quinlivan and associate investigators Dr Rodney Petersen, Dr Nicola Yuen, Dr Aimee Waegele, Dr Adela Lourensz, Dr Emma Adams and Dr Yong Shi Zhang will be exploring how we can improve healthcare outcomes for rural Australians. 

Rural health services face unique challenges relating to distance and availability of healthcare personnel that are not faced by metropolitan health services. A detailed snapshot of the rural experience of new families can help identify issues and lead to service improvements.

This snapshot study will focus on several key themes:

1.     Access to information
How do rural families access information about healthcare concerns and the availability of services. Are they able to access reliable information from healthcare professionals or do they rely on the internet or friends and family? How does anxiety or distance play a role in access? We will be replicating an innovative international study to explore how the internet is changing the healthcare landscape.

2.     Prepared for care
Do rural women presenting for maternity care arrive in a timely manner with all relevant investigations completed so care can be optimally advanced? Commonwealth and State governments regularly review the recommended antenatal investigations for normal pregnancy. Observational experience suggests that many pregnant women presenting for hospital care have not had the recommended investigations, and in other cases, have had investigations not recommended for care. Presenting to hospital with optimal investigation is a key measure of the quality of healthcare. We will use pregnancy as the model to evaluate how prepared rural Australians are for hospital care.

3.   Prepared for discharge
The length of stay in hospital is falling as efficiencies in care ensure streamlined checks for safe discharge. However, rural families may be discharged to remote locations where a lack of access to local services may impact on patient's confidence to access care. We will be evaluating preparedness for hospital discharge using new parents and babies as the model. New families share concerns of all patients leaving hospital, and also have additional concerns relating to the role of being parent to a newborn. Common unique concerns centre around access to postnatal midwifery, child health, breastfeeding, postpartum physical and mental health services. We will be exploring how to improve preparedness for  discharge.  

4. Managing chronic disease in the community in diverse multigenerational families.
Many studies look at a patient with a chronic disease in isolation, when management of chronic disease is affected by wider family and community circumstances. We will explore chronic disease management in rural Australia by taking a tri-generational approach and integrate newborn, parenting and grandparent outcomes to see how well we are supporting our rural families.

5. Other subsidiary studies
Our study will also explore attitudes to topical areas in medicine and focus on the emerging areas of genetic testing, the move to a society that seeks answers through the internet, and living with chronic disease.

Our team will commence recruiting this week and we plan to formally launch our study in June 2024. If you would like to be involved then please don't hesitate to reach out to one of our team.

Regards
Professor Julie Quinlivan
Chief investigator Bendigo Family Study

Great news as our study T-shirts were delivered from the printers.

Next to be printed will be all our questionnaires for new mums, partners and grandparents, along with their consent forms. We will also be printing our advertising posters.

We are also finalising our data set for entering study data.

We hope to start with a few pilot recruits in the next month before a formal launch and our main recruitment drive commences.

Best wishes
Professor Julie Quinlivan
Chief investigator

Great news!

The Bendigo Family Study has received ethics approval from the Victorian Government Bendigo Health Service ethics committee. We are now arranging to print our team T shirts and our consent forms, posters and questionnaires ready to launch and start recruiting.   

Our offical ethics approval code is Bendigo Family Study
103372 HREC/103372/BH-2024-417877(v3)

The Bendigo Family study is unique as it will address trigenerational family health from new borns, parents and grandparents to create a snap shot of family life in rural Australia. We are covering many areas of health and social wellbeing, including pregnancy care, mental health, parenting, enhancing hospital care and managing chronic diseases in rural Australia. We hope our results will achieve service improvements for rural Australians.

Bendigo is a great place to centre this study. Bendigo is the fourth-largest inland city in Australia and the fourth-most populous city in Victoria according to Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bendigo). It has an important history in agricultural sheep industry and the gold rush era of Australia and is a long standing important region for the traditional owners of the area who are the Dja Dja Wurrung (Djaara) people.. It is one of Australia's great inland historic cities.

Please become involved in this study. Enrole as a participant or consider helping to advocate and advertise the study to your community.

Look out for our study launch next Month!

Professor Julie Quinlivan
​Bendigo Family Study lead investigator