Professor Jeanine Young

Director

Jeanine is a nurse, midwife and neonatal nurse with over 25 years of experience in midwifery, paediatrics and child health. As Professor of Nursing, University of the Sunshine Coast she leads a research program that examines infant care practices and their relationships with maternal and infant health outcomes.

Jeanine is passionate about providing families with practical, safe, evidence-based infant care information and support to enable families to be empowered and make informed decisions that meet their unique family needs, values and circumstances. Her passion was ignited through her doctoral studies examining mother-baby shared sleeping practices and later fuelled by her own experiences of raising two children who breastfed and co-slept to natural term. 

Jeanine has lobbied during the last three decades to highlight the evidence to inform decision making about where babies should sleep - which includes both the benefits as well as the risks associated with shared sleeping. Jeanine was principal author for risk minimisation policy and guidelines adopted by the Australian College of Midwives, Queensland Health, and Red Nose, including co-lead for the 2022 Queensland Health Safer Infant Sleep Clinical Guideline. She has been recognised in Australia as pioneering infant sleep space alternatives suitable for the family bed particularly for families with identified vulnerabilities, including Country lead for the Pēpi-Pod® Program in collaboration with Change for our Children NZ. 

Professor Young AM was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia in 2020 for her significant service to tertiary education, to medical research and to nursing, particularly in the field of Sudden Unexpected Death in Infancy.