Research
March 31, 2023
Sikiliza Mama study centers patients’ needs to inform perinatal mental health services
Categories: HIV, Mental Health, Research
Sikiliza Mama study team members from left to right: Ben Ochieng, Joan Mutahi, Helen Moraa, Winnie Atieno, Anna Larsen
The Sikiliza Mama (Kiswahili for “Listen to Mama”) study, funded by a UW Behavioral Research Center for HIV (BIRCH) Community Centered Pilot AIDS Research Center (C-PARC) award, recently initiated qualitative data collection. The team is using a human-centered design approach to conduct in-depth interviews among perinatal women with likely depression and/or anxiety to evaluate acceptability of existing formal and informal mental health services. The findings can help inform patient-centered perinatal mood and anxiety disorders (PMAD) services for women at risk for HIV and women living with HIV and result in better maternal and infant outcomes. (more…)
March 9, 2023
Researchers attend the 2023 Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections in Seattle
Categories: Conferences, HIV and Co-Infections, Research
This year, the annual Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI) was held in Global WACh’s hometown of Seattle, WA from February 19-22, 2023. CROI is the premier annual scientific conference for the epidemiology and biology of human retroviruses and associated diseases. For the past 30 years, CROI has been a global convening of leading scientists, clinicians, public health experts, among others, where discoveries have been presented that have helped to accelerate progress in HIV/AIDS research.
We’ve compiled a list of 12 accepted poster abstracts with contributions by Global WACh researchers and collaborators. Click on the titles to read the poster. (more…)
March 3, 2023
Researchers convene in Nairobi, Kenya on future childhood development research
Categories: Awards, Children, HIV and Co-Infections, Research
A two-day convening in January in Nairobi, Kenya brought together over 30 investigators from a variety of Kenyatta National Hospital, University of Nairobi, and University of Washington studies that include components of assessing childhood neurodevelopment and mental health. This meeting provided a forum to understand how to leverage the recently awarded Impact of Microbiome, Immune Activation and Drug on Neurodevelopment (MIND) Program for ongoing and future childhood development research. Over the course of the meeting, attendees discussed and prioritized the activities for a new MIND Center of Excellence (CoE) that builds off the program. To briefly summarize, the activities include: (more…)
March 2, 2023
New study focuses on immune function to improve treatment of severely malnourished children worldwide
Categories: Awards, Children, Nutrition, Research
Severe acute malnutrition (SAM) remains a global public health emergency, especially among young children in limited resource settings who are not consuming enough energy, fat, protein, and other nutrients to maintain healthy bodily functions. This places children at high risk of life-threatening infectious diseases, such as diarrhea and pneumonia. Severely malnourished children are often treated at inpatient and outpatient hospital clinics or feeding centers, using protocols promoted by the World Health Organization (WHO). Treatment currently focuses on initial recovery as defined by anthropometric standards without adequately addressing the health of children after discharge from treatment programs. (more…)
February 10, 2023
New CHAIN Network research integrate machine learning to strengthen efforts to identify high-risk children during paediatric hospitalizations
Categories: Gut Health and Child Survival, Publication, Research
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.”
January 9, 2023
Dr. Claire Gwayi-Chore presents DeWorm3 findings on optimal delivery of community-wide mass drug administration for intestinal parasitic worm infections
Categories: Conferences, Gut Health and Child Survival, Research
Dr. Claire Gwayi-Chore presents at the 2022 Society for Implementation Research Collaboration Conference.
The DeWorm3 Study recently published findings regarding the cost, acceptability, and optimal delivery of community-wide mass drug administration (cMDA) for or parasitic intestinal worms (soil-transmitted helminths (STH)), in Benin, India, and Malawi. As part of the efforts to disseminate these findings, Dr. Claire Gwayi-Chore, Project Lead of several neglected tropical diseases studies at Global WACh, presented at the Society for Implementation Research Collaboration (SIRC) Conference in San Diego, CA in September 2022. Dr. Gwayi-Chore’s presentation highlighted the objective of the DeWorm3 implementation science (IS) research, to generate evidence of sustainable and scalable deworming models for possible STH transmission interruption.
December 30, 2022
Researchers present latest scientific findings at ASTMH 2022
Categories: Conferences, Gut Health and Child Survival, Research
Global WACh researchers from left to right: Stephanie Tornberg-Belanger, Patricia Pavlinac, Marie-Claire Gwayi-Chore, Esther Choo, Shawon Riffat Ara, Adino Tsegaye, Judd Walson, Kirk Tickell, Hannah Atlas, Mame Mareme Diakhate (Credit: Stephanie Tornberg-Belanger)
Global WACh faculty, staff, and students attended the annual American Society of Tropical Medicine & Hygiene (ASTMH) held in Seattle, WA from October 30 to November 3, 2022. ASTMH is the premier international forum for the exchange of scientific advances in tropical medicine, hygiene, and global health.
Our researchers contributed to 11 poster abstracts and two oral presentations and facilitated a symposium featuring the latest scientific findings from their research. These findings could inform strategies to implement mass drug administration for soil-transmitted helminths to combat childhood malnutrition to improve management of diarrhea among children and improve childhood survival of preventable diseases. See a roundup of the abstracts below. (more…)
December 23, 2022
Esther Choo presents new methods for improving food system strategies in Nepal
Categories: Conferences, Nutrition, Research
Esther at the ITHS/WE-REACH Innovation & Translational Science Expo in September 2022.
Esther Choo, a PhD Candidate in the Global Health Implementation Science Program and Global WACh Pre-doctoral Research Associate recently presented her work related to improving food system strategies in Nepal and on the Strengthening Economic Evaluation for Multisectoral Strategies in Nutrition (SEEMS-Nutrition) project at two scientific conferences. SEEMS-Nutrition seeks to measure costs and benefits of multi-sectoral nutrition interventions in multiple low-to-middle income countries. In Nepal, SEEMS-Nutrition is partnered with Helen Keller International on the Suaahara (meaning “good nutrition” in Nepali) II project to improve the nutrition of women and young children in underserved rural districts. (more…)
August 18, 2022
DeWorm3 generates evidence about the cost, acceptability, and optimal delivery of community-wide mass drug administration
Categories: Children, Gut Health and Child Survival, Publication, Research
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
Categories: Conferences, Nutrition, Publication, Research
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…)
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