NHMRC Early Career Fellow
BSc (hons), PhD, MBiostat
Dr Foong is an NHMRC Early Career Fellow at the Telethon Kids Institute and Curtin University. She previously held a Research Fellow position from 2016-2017 at the Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids) in Toronto, Canada.
She has expertise in molecular biology, respiratory physiology and biostatistics and her research focuses on identifying environmental exposures, including air pollution and chemicals in plastic, that are risk factors for chronic lung diseases such as asthma. She also currently leads the Many Healthy Lungs project, conducted in partnership with Derbarl Yerrigan Health Service Aboriginal Corporation and Broome Regional Aboriginal Medical Services, which aims to improve Aboriginal lung health through lung function testing.
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Projects
In partnership with Derbarl Yerrigan Health Service and the Broome Regional Aboriginal Medical Service, we aim to improve Aboriginal lung health by determining for the first time the baseline lung function of Aboriginal Australians.
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Publications
April 2021
The EU Child Cohort Network’s core data: establishing a set of findable, accessible, interoperable and re-usable (FAIR) variables
The Horizon2020 LifeCycle Project is a cross-cohort collaboration which brings together data from multiple birth cohorts from across Europe and Australia to facilitate studies on the influence of early-life exposures on later health outcomes. A major product of this collaboration has been the establishment of a FAIR (findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable) data resource known as the EU Child Cohort Network. Here we focus on the EU Child Cohort Network's core variables.
Published research Early Childhood Development Diabetes and Obesity Children's Lung HealthMay 2021Variants associated with HHIP expression have sexdifferential effects on lung function
Lung function is highly heritable and differs between the sexes throughout life. However, little is known about sexdifferential genetic effects on lung function. We aimed to conduct the first genome-wide genotype-by-sex interaction study on lung function to identify genetic effects that differ between males and females.
Published research Early Childhood Development Children's Lung HealthJune 2021Does machine learning have a role in the prediction of asthma in children?
Asthma is the most common chronic lung disease in childhood. There has been a significant worldwide effort to develop tools/methods to identify children's risk for asthma as early as possible for preventative and early management strategies. Unfortunately, most childhood asthma prediction tools using conventional statistical models have modest accuracy, sensitivity, and positive predictive value.
Asthma Published research Children's Lung Health Subsite: Walyan BREATHAugust 2021Associations between respiratory and vascular function in early childhood
The link between respiratory and vascular health is well documented in adult populations. Impaired lung function is consistently associated with thicker arteries and higher incidence of cardiovascular disease. However, there are limited data on this relationship in young children and the studies that exist have focussed on populations at high risk of cardiorespiratory morbidity.
Published research Children's Lung Health Subsite: WalyanJune 2020Variants associated with HHIP expression have sex-differential effects on lung function
Lung function is highly heritable and differs between the sexes throughout life. However, little is known about sex-differential genetic effects on lung function. We aimed to conduct the first genome-wide genotype-by-sex interaction study on lung function to identify genetic effects that differ between males and females.
Published research Children's Lung HealthFebruary 2020Early life exposure to coal mine fire smoke emissions and altered lung function in young children
Infant exposure to coal mine fire emissions could be associated with long-term impairment of lung reactance
Published research Children's Lung HealthJanuary 2018The clinical utility of lung clearance index in early cystic fibrosis lung disease is not impacted by the number of multiple-breath washout trials
This study aimed to determine if relationships between LCI and clinical outcomes of CF lung disease differ when only two acceptable MBW trials are assessed.
Published research Children's Lung Health -
Awards/honours
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Education & Qualifications
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Active collaborations