FOR many in Western Australia, and indeed for large numbers of people around the world, the Telethon Institute of Child Health Research is much more than an institute – it’s an ‘institution’.

When director Fiona Stanley and her colleagues started the institute 20 years ago, it put Perth on the global medical research map. In the institute’s recently released 2010 annual report, Professor Stanley said the multidisciplinary approach to tackling the biggest issues in child health was a model pioneered by the institute, and one that many now followed.