This spring, Active Healthy Kids Slovenia’s co-Leader Dr. Shawnda Morrison, Faculty of Sport, University of Ljubljana, was excited to welcome an award-winning foreign exchange researcher who stayed on-site for a two-week research stay. The research trip aimed to strengthen the development of international child fitness monitoring and surveillance, in addition to progressing key outputs ahead of the Global Matrix 5.0 kick-off, scheduled to take place later this year.

Dr Brooklyn Fraser is an Active Healthy Kids Australia team member, and lead of the upcoming Global Matrix 5.0 Fitness Indicator-focused paper. She is a Heart Foundation Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Menzies Institute for Medical Research, at the University of Tasmania, Australia, and her research is focused on the health and fitness of Australian children. Brooklyn has a strong interest in determining how the long-term cardiovascular health benefits of maintaining or improving high fitness can protect people as they age. She was awarded a Collaboration and Exchange Award from the National Heart Foundation of Australia to visit the SLOfit research team at the University of Ljubljana (Slovenia), the PROFITH research group at the University of Granada (Spain), and present her most recent research at the ISBNPA Conference, taking place in Cadiz (Spain), at the end of May.

This European-wide research visit has been providing Dr. Fraser with a unique opportunity to develop strong cross-hemisphere collaboration, and useful knowledge exchange that will enhance her understanding of how Slovenia’s established child fitness surveillance strategies and risk prediction tools may be developed, and then implemented, in an Australian context. Congratulations Brooklyn!