Alanna Sincovich

@AlannaSincovich

Alanna forms part of the leadership group of the Child Health, Development, and Education Team and is a PhD Candidate in the School of Public Health at the University of Adelaide. At the Telethon Kids Institute, Alanna’s research focuses on factors influencing children’s early health and development outcomes, as well as evaluation of programs and supports for families and young children across Australia. Internationally, Alanna consults for the World Bank, predominantly across the Asia-Pacific, providing support for the implementation of child health, development, and education programs and working with various measures of child development for monitoring and evaluation purposes.

Alanna’s PhD research seeks to improve strategies for population level measurement and monitoring of children's early development in low and middle income countries. Specifically, her project is focused on the early Human Capability Index , a holistic measure designed to capture early child development across diverse cultures and contexts. Alanna has coordinated adaptation of instrumentation to local context, supervision of fieldwork, and analysis and reporting on data into scientific outputs and policy briefs, leading to significantly greater investments in early child health and development in these countries.

Alanna has published on topics including child development, early education, parental engagement and the home environment, stunting and health behaviours, as well as psychometric assessment of child development measurement tools. She sits on the Public Health Association of Australia South Australia Branch Executive Committee, and the Brain and Behaviour Research Focus Area Leadership Committee at the Telethon Kids Institute. Ultimately, Alanna’s work aims to inform policy and services to promote development in the early years, particularly in low resource settings.