New five-country study reveals wide variation in salt content across processed fish and meat products, offering opportunities to reduce salt

Media release

A new study of processed meats and fish products in five countries showed great variations in salt content, potentially signalling opportunities for countries and their consumers, manufacturers and policy makers to reduce excessive salt, meet World Health Organization (WHO) targets and improve people’s health.

HeartPill

George Institute researchers among recipients of Heart Foundation grants

Two George Institute researchers have been named as recipients of the Heart Foundation’s latest round of grants.

Dr Amanda Wang has been awarded a 2021 Vanguard Grant of $150,000 over two years for a pilot study on the benefits of a type of glucose lowering medication in patients with acute kidney injury. Acute kidney injury (AKI) is common in hospital care and rates are increasing. It is also common in patients with diabetes, especially in diabetic kidney disease where almost a third of patients have AKI. Dapagliflozin – from a class of newer glucose lowering agents called SGLT2 inhibitors – is known to have cardiovascular and renal benefits in patients with chronic kidney disease but its effects in AKI are not known.

Dr Wang, a senior research fellow at The George Institute and specialist nephrologist at Concord Hospital, will conduct a pilot study to look at the effect of dapagliflozin on cardiovascular outcomes in patients with type 2 diabetes who have recovered from AKI. It is hoped that this pilot study will pave the way to establishing a large scale randomised controlled trial.

Dr Sonali Gnanenthiran has been awarded a 2021 Postdoctoral Fellowship of $150,000 over two years to evaluate new uses for old medicines or new combinations of medicines in patients with cardiovascular disease. New medicines typically cost hundreds of millions of dollars and take over a decade to develop. Repurposing already approved medicines has the potential to rapidly provide safe, effective and affordable therapies.

Dr Gnanenthiran, a research fellow at The George Institute and practising cardiologist, will conduct a series of studies to assess the benefits of this approach in treating and preventing cardiovascular events. This project encompasses several studies ranging from basic science to clinical trials including: (i) assessing an anti-inflammatory drug as a new blood thinner in elderly people; (ii) leading an international collaboration to assess a blood pressure lowering medicine to improve outcomes in patients with COVID-19, and (iii) developing new polypills to treat heart disease.

Repurposing commonly used drugs has potential to help both clinicians by rapidly translating research into best practice and policy, and people at high risk by supporting priority research in these groups.

Further reading

Event

#GeorgeTalks on ‘Transforming Food Systems: Effective policies to build a sustainable future’

GeorgeTalks_20Oct21

To mark this year’s World Food Day, The George Institute for Global Health invites you to a #GeorgeTalks webinar on ‘Transforming Food Systems: Effective policies to build a sustainable future’ on Wednesday 20 October at 6:00pm (AEDT) / 12:30pm (IST) / 8:00am (BST).

#WorldFoodDay 2021 will be marked as countries around the world deal with the widespread impacts of the global Covid-19 pandemic, accelerating climate crisis and worsening inequalities. It's time to look into the future we need to build together.

Join us to hear from three leading experts at the forefront of food systems thinking, who will swap thoughts and ideas on strategic policies and practices that can increase equity and resilience in Australia, India, the UK and beyond.

The webinar concludes with a Q&A session during which the audience can engage with the speakers.

Register Here

Speakers

  • Professor Corinna Hawkes

    Professor Corinna Hawkes is Director of the Centre for Food Policy at City, University of London, UK, a Centre dedicated to shaping an effective food system through education, research and policy engagement.  She has worked for 20 years with UN agencies, governments, universities and NGOs at the city, national and international level to support the design of more effective policies to improve diets and prevent malnutrition, obesity and non-communicable diseases throughout the food system. She has worked at the World Health Organization, the International Food Policy Research Institute, the University of Sao Paulo and World Cancer Research Fund International, where she established the NOURISHING Framework which tracks policies to promote healthy eating worldwide.  Corinna is also Vice Chair of London’s Child Obesity Taskforce and a Distinguished Fellow at the George Institute for Global Health. She blogs at www.thebetterfoodjourney.com.

    Corinna Hawkes

  • Associate Professor Alana Mann

    Alana Mann is Associate Professor in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences and Food Research Lead in the Sydney Environment Institute at the University of Sydney. In her work she foregrounds the role of communication in food systems transformations. She applies an interdisciplinary approach in her international research on the food sovereignty movement and digital food activism, and leads the FoodLab Sydney (ARC Linkage) food business incubator project in partnership with the City of Sydney. Her latest book Food in a Changing Climate (2021) presents a political agenda focused on the critical intersection of food security, global warming and public health.

    Alana

  • Dr Purnima Menon

    Purnima Menon is a senior research fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute, and is based in New Delhi, India. She is the theme leader for South Asia Nutrition Programs in IFPRI’s Poverty, Health, and Nutrition Division. In her work in India, Dr. Menon directs POSHAN (Partnerships and Opportunities to Strengthen and Harmonize Actions for Nutrition in India), an initiative to support more use of evidence for nutrition in India. She conducts implementation research on scaling up maternal and child nutrition interventions, including on evaluating large-scale behavior change communications programs in nutrition and health. Dr. Menon has research experience in India, Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Haiti, Viet Nam and Nepal, has published extensively, and invests deeply in research translation in her engagements with policy communities.

     

    PurnimaMenon

Further reading

TGI India Health Accelerator

Winners of The George Institute and UNICEF India Innovation Challenge

TGI India Health Accelerator in partnership with UNICEF India announced an Innovation challenge in July - August 2021 to identify “disruptive solutions for psycho-social support to health workers”. The aim of this challenge was to leverage India’s vibrant start up ecosystem to source potential solutions to support healthcare workers that can be accelerated and scaled within health care delivery systems in India and other Low and Middle Income Countries (LMIC’s).

We invited applications for “Innovations for psycho-social support for health workers” and received over 50 extremely promising applications out of which 12 innovations were shortlisted and presented their pitches to an expert jury panel. The jury panel selected the most promising top 3 innovations as the winners of the Innovation challenge. The winners were announced on 22nd September during an expert panel on “Perspectives on Innovations for psychosocial support to health workers”.

During the awards ceremony the experts shared about the role of innovative solutions for psycho-social support to health workers in supporting healthcare delivery systems to rebuild and towards building resilience.

Winners of The Innovation Challenge

happyebing app-nSmiles

Reward: INR 1 Lakh and  One-year Health Innovation Fellowship at TGI India Health Accelerator 

happybeing app-nSmiles operates through prioritising the growing need to support physicians and health care workers (HCWs), as they are drained by not caring for themselves. Promoting selfcare for HCWs they are emphasizing on the need to learn to “First, do ourselves no harm.” Happybeing app is a digital solution to establish a need to self-care ensuring an overall wellbeing by self-diagnosis, techniques to enable self-care and graded support. The app provides mindfulness and wellbeing exercises to overcome fear, stress, anxiety, & strengthen the body’s natural ability to heal. They are now proposing an opportunity to serve frontline workers & be a resource guide for them to lean on during these unprecedented times. 

Innovators - Teju, Dr VC Chandra mohan, Dr Ashwath Narayan, Dr Rajalakshmi, BS Vijaya Krishna, K Pramod, Arjun, Kavya Prathyusha, Himanshu

ePsyclinic and IWill

Reward: INR 50,000 and One-year Health Innovation Fellowship at TGI India Health Accelerator

ePsyclinic and IWill created a complete tech-based solution focused Counseling & Therapy platform for psycho-social support to the flp & address the challenges that healthcare workers face. ePsyClinic offers 24*7 services on call & chat by qualified psychologists on modules specifically designed to lessen the COVID 19 created mental health burden and fall out. Over 1000 psychologists, counselors, psychiatric social workers, and special educators speaking about 15 languages are in the larger ePsyclinic network. More than 2,00,000 healthcare workers have used their counselling services, with 12 government partnerships, including Haryana, Maharashtra, Karnataka, and Rajasthan.

Innovators - Shipra Dawar, Ashish Dwivedi, Shailendra Tripathi, Nayamat Bawa, Dr Priyaranjan Avinash, Meenakshi Sivaramakrishnan

Ubuntu

  • Judges Special Recognition was awarded to Ubuntu

Reward: INR 25,000 and One-year Health Innovation Fellowship at TGI India Health Accelerator

Ubuntu is based on an implemented, proven multi-layered model of reparative reconstruction and local-level community capacity building for frontlines that is both trauma-informed and IASC guidelines check listed. Covid-19 has brought about a deluge of traumatic stress leading to a colossal demand for psycho-social support (PSS) for frontline workers on an urgent basis. The current level of traumatic stress could cascade into complex and chronic mental health impact unless preventative and restorative initiatives are taken to sustain productivity and quality of life of the frontline. 

Innovators - Chetna Duggal, Eugenia Mpande, Sukanya Ray, Lynn Walker, Susan Wyatt

STAY TUNED FOR UPCOMING MORE CHALLENGES UNDER THE GEORGE INSTITUTE INDIA HEALTH ACCELERATOR PROGRAMME!

Leads

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