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Our emerging thought leaders are passionate about driving change and taking on current challenges to improve health worldwide. As early and mid-career professionals, they offer new perspectives and innovative ideas to push boundaries and make advancements in health research, treatments and policy. Meet our emerging thought leaders and discover how they are making meaningful change. 2024 Cohort Alice WittResearch and Policy Fellow, The George Institute for Global HealthMore info about Alice WittResaercg and Policy Fellow, The George Institute for Global HealthAlice Witt is a Research and Policy Fellow based in the UK office. She works on the MESSAGE (Medical Science Sex and Gender Equity) project, a policy initiative to improve how biomedical, health and care research accounts for sex and gender. Through this work, she engages with stakeholders across the UK research sector to co-design key policy documents and support research funders to implement new sex and gender policies. The

By utilising a life-course approach to the prevention of non-communicable diseases, when women are screened during pregnancy. The physiological changes in a woman’s body during pregnancy to support fetal growth and wellbeing and prepare for labour and birth have been compared to a nine-month marathon that finishes with a sprint. For some women, this pregnancy “stress test” will result in medical complications of pregnancy, such as gestational diabetes (“GDM”, affecting approximately 1 in 7 pregnancies globally), high blood pressure disorders (affecting up to 1 in 10 pregnancies globally) and anaemia (10-40%). Existing mental and physical health conditions may also worsen. The course of a woman’s pregnancy also gives a window into a woman’s future health, as the effect of pregnancy complications on mother and child do not end with the pregnancy. For example, after hypertensive pregnancy there is at least doubled risk of cardiovascular disease (beginning within 5-10 years of

Globally efforts to improve women’s health largely focus on maternal health, overlooking women’s health needs beyond pregnancy and childbirth. The weight given to the maternal health outcome neglects the full range of women’s health. Diseases that affect women are substantially under-studied and under resourced. Gynaecological cancers and conditions like endometriosis, uterine fibroids, poly cystic syndrome, and cervical cancers might have been better understood if they also affected men. Since these are women-specific health issues that affect a woman’s quality of life across her lifespan, there has been little investment, particularly in low-and middle-income countries, to improve early diagnosis and treatment. For example, approximately 180 women globally with endometriosis remain undiagnosed and suffer from its symptoms like pain and infertility for almost seven years before getting diagnosed. Hence, more research and concerted action is needed to improve women’s health and to ensure tha

We conduct large scale work to influence global health policies and practice. For example, a large scale cohort study recruiting 40,000 people in 21 low and middle-income countries is informing development of better fracture care in resource-poor settings. In India, we have reviewed national injury surveillance systems and made recommendations to Government regarding their strengthening and expansion. We evaluated the pilot cashless scheme of health insurance for road crashes victims and made recommendations for effective coverage and performance benchmarking. The findings have contributed to expansion of the scheme across all National Highway’s in India , under the Motor Vehicle (Amendment) bill 2016.

The George Institute has a highly skilled team which works to conceptualise, develop, and deliver innovative and impactful clinical trials, characterised by the following features: Reducing trial ‘waste’ Ensuring that clinical trials are efficient is crucial to minimising research ‘waste’, which most commonly results from the costs associated with poorly conceived research questions, inappropriate study design, failure to adequately report on all areas being analysed, and inefficient operational conduct. Trial efficiency can be improved via two key mechanisms- by design and by conduct. Trial design involves the development and application of innovative statistical methods including adaptive and pragmatic designs. The first involves adapting some elements of the design as the trial progresses (rather than waiting for the trial to end). A pragmatic trial evaluates a health intervention in a setting as close as possible to real-world conditions. Adaptive designs help to gener

The health of women and girls, people with variations in sex characteristics (intersex people) and trans and gender-diverse people has been understudied in health and medical research. An almost exclusive focus on male cells, male animals and men in health and medical research has led to poorer health outcomes and evidence gaps for women, intersex people, and trans and gender-diverse people, and inefficient health spending. Women’s health research often focuses only on their sexual, reproductive, and maternal health rather than the leading causes of death and disability for women. Research on intersex and gender-diverse people is even less developed and availability of health data remains a challenge. For some health conditions, we also have very little information on men and boys, given the conditions occur predominantly in women. The Centre for Sex and Gender Equity in Health and Medicine is addressing these inequities through world-class research, advocacy for policy change, and capacity building