The MESSAGE (Medical Science Sex and Gender Equity) project is a policy initiative bringing together the UK research sector to improve integration of sex and gender in biomedical, health and care research.The project responds to our preliminary research which showed that in 2021, not a single UK research funder had a policy in place requiring researchers to consider the sex and/or gender of research participants, and to sex- and/or gender-disaggregate data when analysing and reporting findings. This is in contrast to the US, Canada and Europe, who have longstanding sex and gender policies for research, and has led to a dearth of evidence on critical sex and gender differences across all areas of medicine, leading to worse health outcomes and greater health inequity.Over a series of four Policy Labs held in 2023-24, the MESSAGE project has led co-design of a sex and gender policy framework for UK research funders. Stakeholders involved in the framework’s co-design include:Research funders, both government (N

BackgroundCOVID-19 caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus is a highly transmissible disease that has affected millions worldwide. The majority of COVID-19 survivors have recovered, but many have reported lingering health issues or symptoms that suddenly appear even after months of the initial infection. The World Health Organization (WHO) recently provided a case definition for this post-COVID condition termed "Long COVID" or "post-acute COVID syndrome". Long COVID has been labelled as 'the next public health disaster' due to its significant health, economic, and societal burden. The debilitating symptoms of Long COVID are wide-ranging, multisystemic, and pre-dominantly fluctuating or relapsing. Despite a rapidly increasing population of recovered COVID-19 survivors, there is a lack of data on the extent of cardiovascular, respiratory, and psychiatric complications in recently infected individuals or whether these risks can be reduced. Exploring the therapeutic options available is necessary to prevent Long

Background Knee replacement improves the quality of life for those suffering from disabling knee osteoarthritis. Physiotherapy is an important component of the rehabilitation phase following surgery for restoring function and improving quality of life. However, poor adherence to physical therapy due to various socio-environmental and patient-related factors delays recovery. A lack of mechanism for the continuum of care following discharge to home leads to sub-optimal outcomes, chronic knee pain and patient dissatisfaction in some proportions of individuals. Evidence suggests that home-based physical rehabilitation with a monitoring mechanism is as good as and cost-effective compared to clinic-based rehabilitation. In India, unsupervised home-based rehabilitation is the usual care, leading to a considerable amount of out-of-pocket expenditure to seek physiotherapist support at home. Hence, keeping the local requirements and literacy level in mind, a customised and context-specific rehabilitation monitori

Background Older people with kidney disease often receive treatment called haemodialysis, which requires the patient to be connected to a machine that filters and cleans the blood. This connection is made by creating a vascular access with the patients’ bloodstream, typically an arteriovenous fistula (fistula) or central venous dialysis catheter (catheter). Fistulas are created during a surgical procedure in the forearm by joining a vein and artery under the skin and often take many months to ‘mature’ before they can be used. Catheters are inserted into a vein in the neck or chest via a simple non-surgical procedure and can be used immediately once inserted.  There are potential issues with both of these vascular access types:  Fistulas can make the forearm appear bumpy, and although they are associated with a lower risk of infection, additional procedures (including additional surgical procedures) to maintain the fistula may be required. Such additional procedures increase the amo

Background Snakebite is a public health problem in many low- and middle-income countries in leading to estimated 138,000 deaths and leaving four lakh people with permanent disabilities. Most of the snakebite burden is from South Asia. The WHO strategy on snakebite (2019) suggests ‘safe and effective treatment of snakebite’, as one of the key pillars to reduce snakebite burden globally.   In 2020, our research group conducted an overview of systematic reviews and identified the need for more clinical trials to inform clinical practice around snakebite management. The overview also found that the use of varied outcomes and their non-standardised measurement and reporting is an important gap which limits the ability of researchers, healthcare providers, decision makers, and patients to undertake meaningful comparisons and understand benefits or harms of different treatments. The current project aims to fill this gap by developing a ‘core outcome set’ (COS), for research on snakebite managem

Background Fijians experience alarming trend in deaths from heart disease before the age of 70. According to the World Health Organization data from 2017, Fiji ranked 39 out of 183 countries in the world in fatalities from heart disease. Fiji conducted the WHO STEPS survey for surveillance of major NCD risk factors in 2002 and 2011 and found significant increases in risk factors contributing to CVD: high blood pressure, high fasting blood glucose and obesity. Pacific Forum Leaders declaring the situation a “human, social and economic crisis”. The WHO PEN program is a set of low-cost tools to prevent the risk of chronic disease (e.g. lifestyle counselling, monitoring and control of blood pressure and blood glucose, and treatment). Aims In 2012, the Western Pacific WHO commenced implementation of PEN protocols 1 and 2 for prevention of CVD and diabetes. The overall aim is to provide evidence on 1) implementation fidelity, (2) processes of adoption of the PEN program by healthcare pr

Background: Professor Otavio Berwanger and collaborators from ICTU-Global (Imperial College London’s Academic Research Organisation) are co-founding members of the Cognitum Consortium. Other world class Academic Research Organisations (AROs) complete the founding membership: Hospital Israelita Albert Einstein (Brazil), the University of Cape Town (South Africa), the Centre for Chronic Disease Control (India), and RemediumOne (Sri Lanka). Aim: The Consortium aims to build better healthcare outcomes for our communities globally by bringing together global leaders in scientific and clinical excellence to design and deliver clinical trials and studies, while fostering and nurturing international partnerships. Approach: The Consortium approach is guided by the following values: Expertise: to lead by academic and scientific excellence, augmented by industry-level best practices and efficiency Truly Global: to bring together partners with subject matter expertise to complement each othe