Global WACh

Publication


April 22, 2024

Enterics for Global Health Consortium publishes a protocol supplement describing the study rationale and methods

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Sixteen articles authored by the Enterics for Global Health (EFGH) Shigella surveillance study Consortium were recently published in the March 2024 issue of Open Forum Infectious Diseases.

The Enterics for Global Health (EFGH) Shigella surveillance study is a multi-country diarrhea surveillance study that aims to generate key data to optimize the design and implementation of pivotal Shigella vaccine trials. The protocol supplement describes the study rationale and current Shigella vaccine landscape, Consortium governance structure, epidemiologic and laboratory methods, and country site descriptions (Bangladesh, The Gambia, Kenya, Malawi, Mali, Pakistan, and Peru).

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January 30, 2024

DW3 Spotlight on World NTD Day

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Malawi census collection. Credit: Wheller, 2016.

On World Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTD) Day, we celebrate the accomplishments of the DeWorm3 study in the fight against NTDs and call on the global health community to renew our commitment to creating a healthier, more equitable world for all.

DeWorm3 is a large clinical trial that aims to determine the feasibility of interrupting the transmission of parasitic worms, known as Soil Transmitted Helminths (STH), through community-wide mass drug administration (cMDA) that provides deworming medication to individuals of all ages in selected communities in Benin, Malawi, and India. STH are associated with nutritional deficiencies, cognitive impairment, and developmental problems amongst people who are heavily infected. The World Health Organization estimates that 1.5 billion individuals are infected with STH, representing 24% of the world’s population. The project began in 2016 with results expected in Spring of 2024. (more…)


December 21, 2023

SEEMS-Nutrition project publishes a how-to guide for measuring costs and benefits of multisectoral nutrition strategies

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Since 2019, researchers and partners of the Strengthening Economic Evaluation for Multisectoral Strategies for Nutrition (SEEMS-Nutrition) project have aimed to fill an information gap on costs, cost-effectiveness, and benefits of scaling up food system strategies in resource-constrained areas combating malnutrition. They developed a common approach to conduct costing studies that is integrated with program impact evaluations for multisector nutrition programs.
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August 18, 2023

DeWorm3 study publishes new papers, contributing to research on interrupting parasitic worms through community-wide mass drug administration

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DeWorm3 study collaborators meeting with community members.

The DeWorm3 research team continues to contribute to their body of research on the feasibility of interrupting soil-transmitted helminth (STH) transmission through community-wide mass drug administration (cMDA) in Benin, Malawi and India. Three new publications to highlight include the “Soil-transmitted helminth surveillance in Benin: A mixed-methods analysis of factors influencing non-participation in longitudinal surveillance activities”, the “Overestimation of school-based deworming coverage resulting from school-based reporting” in PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases and “Policy stakeholder perspectives on barriers and facilitators to launching a community-wide mass drug administration program for soil-transmitted helminths” in the BMC Global Health Research and Policy.
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March 22, 2023

New review of WHO HIV testing guidelines informs effective strategies to increase uptake of testing services

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A new systematic review and meta-analysis published in PLOS Medicine informed World Health Organization (WHO) 2019 HIV testing guidelines and assessed the research question, “Which demand creation strategies are effective for enhancing uptake of HIV testing services?” focused on populations globally. HIV testing services (HTS) are the first step in reaching the UNAIDS 95-95-95 goals for HIV management and control. Evaluating the effectiveness of different demand creation interventions to increase uptake of HTS is useful to prioritize limited programmatic resources.
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February 10, 2023

New CHAIN Network research integrate machine learning to strengthen efforts to identify high-risk children during paediatric hospitalizations

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New research from the Childhood Acute Illness and Nutrition Network (CHAIN) Network published in the Lancet’s discover series, eClinicalMedicine, applied machine learning algorithms to data collected on hospitalized children from six countries in sub Saharan Africa and Asia. The data showed that children with severe wasting, nutritional oedema, signs of sepsis, or evidence of renal insufficiency experienced extremely high rates of mortality. The authors concluded that developing novel interventions to treat these common comorbidities is a potentially important alternative to continued investment in incremental changes to the current WHO syndromic management approach. Click here to read the publication titled,  “Characterising paediatric mortality during and after acute illness in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia: a secondary analysis of the CHAIN cohort using a machine learning approach.”


August 18, 2022

DeWorm3 generates evidence about the cost, acceptability, and optimal delivery of community-wide mass drug administration

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A community sensitization meeting in Benin. Photo courtesy of DeWorm3.

The DeWorm3 Study is an ongoing series of community cluster randomized controlled trials that use a community-wide drug administration (cMDA) approach to determine whether deworming both children and adults can disrupt the transmission of soil-transmitted helminth (STH), or parasitic intestinal worms, across multiple geographies including India, Malawi, and Benin. Achieving high coverage in DeWorm3 is therefore essential to improve the impact of cMDA and limit transmission of STH infections that can result in disabling chronic conditions, delayed growth and cognitive development, severe social stigma, and lost economic productivity.

The DeWorm3 research team recently published three new publications in BMJ Open and BMC Health Services regarding cMDA implementation with findings on the optimal implementation packages for delivering high coverage cMDA for STH, the costs of cMDA vs school-based deworming (SBD), and the implementation climate for cMDA for STH. (more…)


August 10, 2022

SEEMS-Nutrition project advances work on evaluating benefits of nutrition-sensitive interventions for maternal-child health

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Following a two-year funding extension starting in November 2021, the Strengthening Economic Evaluation for Multi-sectoral Strategies for Nutrition (SEEMS-Nutrition) project has continued progress to collect cost data alongside six on-going interventions, and to generate new evidence on costs and cost-effectiveness of multi-sectoral nutrition projects in five country settings.  This past year, the team published two new manuscripts and delivered an oral presentation at the 7th Annual Agriculture, Nutrition & Health Academy Week (ANH2022) on June 29th. (more…)


June 29, 2022

New publication in the Lancet Microbe on CRISPR detection of tuberculosis in adults and children with HIV.

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Mycobacterium tuberculosis (TB) remains a major factor in global morbidity and mortality, especially for adults and children with HIV. Coinfection of HIV and tuberculosis is uniquely dangerous, as the depression of normal immune response to infection in persons with HIV can lead to both severe illness and the underdiagnosis of TB when using sputum-based assays. Collecting sputum from young children presents further issues. A new molecular diagnostics study by UW Global WACh in collaboration with Tulane University and other partners including Baylor College of Medicine, Baylor Children’s Foundation-Eswatini, University of Nairobi and Kenyatta National Hospital in Kenya, to study the effectiveness of CRISPR-based assay detection of M. tuberculosis cell-free DNA (Mtb-cfDNA) in seropositive adults and children was published in The Lancet Microbe May 2022 edition.  (more…)


May 25, 2022

New publication on childhood mortality during and after acute illness in Africa and South Asia in the Lancet Global Health

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The April 2022 publication of the Lancet Global Health featured a new publication by CHAIN Network researchers at UW’s Global WACh Research Center and our international partners – “Childhood mortality during and after acute illness in Africa and South Asia” a prospective cohort study”. The study aimed to investigate the rates of and associations behind deaths in hospitalized children across nine hospitals in six countries in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. The study included 3,101 children and their caregivers, and revealed that out of the 350 deaths recorded, 48% were within six months of discharge from the hospital.  (more…)



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