The Tassie Kids Study: building a whole of population evidence base to inform health and education policies and services in the early years

The Tasmanian Government provides comprehensive universal early childhood health and education services to support children’s health and wellbeing and disrupt the intergenerational cycle of disadvantage. The Tassie Kids Project is charting the impact of three universal early childhood services (i.e. Child Health and Parenting Service, Launching into Learning, Child and Family Centres) on children’s health and education outcomes across the whole population as well as identifying the social determinants of poor access and use of services and poor child health and education outcomes. The study was co-designed by academic researchers and government partners from the Departments of Education, Health and Human Services, and Premier and Cabinet. The study features government/researcher partnerships, state and commonwealth administrative data sets that have been linked for the first time and data gathered from parents and service providers using ethnographic research methods. Using Tassie Kids as a case study, this symposium explores the process of building a whole of population evidence base to inform health and education policies and services in the early years