Associate Director, Clinical Services
Associate Professor Gehan Roberts is a
developmental-behavioural paediatrician and holds appointments with The Royal
Children’s Hospital, Centre for Community Child Health, the Murdoch Childrens
Research Institute, and the University of Melbourne.
Gehan completed his clinical fellowship in child
development at the Boston Children's Hospital. He has a Masters in Public
Health from Harvard University and a PhD in the field of child development from
the University of Melbourne. Gehan coordinates the Victorian Training Program
in Community Child Health, is an Associate Director (Clinical Services) at the
Centre for Community Child Health, and is engaged in research, clinical
supervision and teaching at both an undergraduate and post-graduate level.
In 2016, Gehan was elected President of Neurodevelopmental
and Behavioural Paediatric Society of Australasia, the peak body for
Australasian doctors who care for children with developmental disorders
Experience
In 2015 Gehan was appointed an Associate Director at The Royal Children’s Hospital, Centre for Community Child Health, with responsibility for the clinical service and fellowship training. He is involved in teaching medical practitioners, allied health workers, teachers and families, and also in curriculum development and program evaluation.
His fellowship training at Children’s Hospital Boston and current clinical practice facilitate involvement in a wide variety of clinical experiences within the field of developmental and behavioural paediatrics, including individual consultation for referred patients, follow-up of patients for ongoing behavioural and psychopharmacological care and leading multidisciplinary teams in comprehensive evaluation of children aged infancy to school age, referred with developmental and behavioural concerns. In addition, he maintains an active involvement in general paediatrics, including both acute care and follow-up.
His clinical interests are in the fields of developmental evaluation, behavioural consultation, learning disabilities, psychopharmacology and general paediatrics. He is currently involved in research in the fields of developmental-behavioural paediatrics in the secondary care sector and also long-term outcomes of very premature infants.
He has completed a PhD at the University of Melbourne, assessing profiles of readiness of strengths and vulnerabilities in very preterm children prior to entering school. In addition, Associate Professor Roberts has an interest in bringing more evidence- based medicine into the standard of care for children with behavioural and developmental difficulties. An evolving interest is in the area of early intervention for children with learning difficulties, especially in the area of working memory deficits.
He is passionate about medical education and supervises paediatric advanced trainees as well as at Honours-, Masters- and Doctoral-level students. His Masters in Public Health from the Harvard School of Public Health, focusing on Clinical Effectiveness, Biostatistics and Epidemiology, has given him a broad and global perspective on child health and development and specific skills in teaching evidence-based practice, critical appraisal of research and designing and conducting studies. In 2009 he was appointed the coordinator of the Victorian Training Program in Community Child Health, the largest training program of its type in Australia. He is involved in teaching medical practitioners, allied health workers, teachers and families and also in curriculum development and program evaluation.
Awards
- 2014: Murdoch Childrens Research Institute Career Development Award, 3 years
- 2010: Health Professional Research Fellowship, National Health and Medical Research Council, 4 years
- 2010: Cottrell Fellowship, Royal Australasian College of Physicians, 1 year
- 2006: Public Health Postgraduate Scholarship from the National Health and Medical Research Council of the Australian Government, 3 year