Food policy
Every year, more than 11 million people die from diet-related diseases, and billions more face food insecurity, malnutrition, or hunger.
Turning the tide on drowning
Where there’s water there’s risk
Drowning is one of the world’s biggest health challenges claiming around 300,000 lives each year. Over two-thirds of deaths occur in Southeast Asia and the Western Pacific region. As the climate changes, extreme weather events are on the rise and drowning accounts for three-quarters of all deaths in flood disasters.
Turning the tide on the drowning epidemic requires urgent action. But the right action requires accurate data – our comprehensive survey across vulnerable communities in coastal wetland regions of India has revealed that the burden is three times higher than previous estimates, and its hitting the young hardest.
“If we trained 17 years ago, then I could have saved my own child.By: MangalaMother who lost her child through drowning
Read Mangala's story
The drowning trap: children and vulnerable communities
Drowning is sometimes referred to as a silent epidemic - unseen, unheard and unaccounte
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About us
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Consumer and Community Involvement Program
The CCI Program was established to ensure meaningful and fit-for-purpose involvement of those most impacted by health research, as guided by the NHMRC statement on Consumer and Community Involvement:
“The active involvement of consumers and community members in health and medical research benefits the quality and direction of research. Consumer and community involvement is about research being carried out with or by consumers and community members rather than to, about or for them.
The CCI Program recognises the valuable insights and expertise of those with lived experience and that members of the community can contribute to all areas of research. The Program supports the integration of consumer and community members in all levels of health and medical research.
Role of Consumer and Community Involvement program
The CCI Program is a centralised support service for consumers and researchers. It provides the following services for the George Institute:
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Reducing hypertension: The role of low sodium salt substitutes for population health
Event
Meaningful progress or empty promises? An analysis of how gender features in NCD action plans
Event
Comprehensive analysis supports routine use of metabolic drug for people with all levels of kidney function
News / Media release
Inika Sharma
Profile
Inika Sharma is a research assistant working at the Meta Research and Evidence Synthesis Unit. Inika has a background in Psychology, having received her MSc in Developmental Psychology and Psychopathology from King’s College London. Prior to that, she completed her undergraduate in Psychology (BA Hons) from the UC Berkeley. She has varied previous research experience, primarily in the fields of mental health and child development. Her research interests include effective and accessible interventions for mental illness that can be feasibly administered in LMIC (Low- and Middle-Income Country) settings. She has previously worked as a researcher at IIM Bangalore.
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Dr Elisa Pineda
Profile
Dr Elisa Pineda is an expert in food systems, public health nutrition, and spatial epidemiology. She currently holds an Imperial College Research Fellowship at the George Institute for Global Health, where she leads interdisciplinary research at the intersection of nutrition, health policy, and climate change. Her work focuses on transforming food environments to promote healthy and sustainable diets, reduce diet-related non-communicable diseases (NCDs), and mitigate environmental impact.
She is Principal Investigator of the SASS (Salt Substitutes to Address Sodium-Related Disease in the UK) project, which investigates the potential of potassium-enriched salt to prevent hypertension and cardiovascular disease. She also leads research on food environment interventions and their effects on dietary behaviour and planetary health.
Dr Pineda is Chair of the Food Environment Group at Imperial College London and an affiliated research fellow at the Centre for Health Economics and Policy Innovation (CHEPI). She also holds an honorary fellowship at the School of Public Health, where she contributes to academic collaborations on sustainable diets and nutrition policy.
She has a PhD in Epidemiology and Public Health Nutrition from University College London (UCL), an MSc in Nutritional Science from the Food and Development Research Centre (CIAD) in Mexico, and a BSc in Chemical-Biology with a specialisation in Food Technology from the University of Sonora, Mexico.
Dr Pineda has held international roles in both research and policy. She served as a consultant to the World Health Organization, contributing to the Global Database on the Implementation of Nutrition Action (GINA) and providing technical support for global nutrition policy analysis. She has also contributed to obesity forecasting in Europe with the UK Health Forum, and led research on food environments and obesity in low- and middle-income countries, as well as on dietary patterns and breast cancer risk.
She has taught extensively at the undergraduate and postgraduate levels. At Imperial College London, she has delivered courses in the School of Public Health and the Imperial College Business School, and previously taught public health nutrition, community nutrition, and sustainable food systems in Mexico and the UK, including at University College London and the Global Centre for Healthy Food Environments (Sprink).
Dr Pineda is an active member of international networks, including the UK NCD Working Group and INFORMAS (the International Network for Food and Obesity/NCDs Research, Monitoring and Action Support), contributing to global advocacy and evidence-based policymaking to improve nutrition environments.
She is currently accepting PhD students interested in food systems, food environments, sustainable diets, and the prevention of non-communicable diseases.
Recent media features include an interview covering health taxes in the European Union and a conversation on BBC World Service's What in the World programme exploring why some sugary drinks are getting more expensive.
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Professor Simon Finfer AO
Profile
Professorial Fellow in the Critical Care Division at The George Institute for Global Health, Adjunct Professor, University of New South Wales and Professor of Critical Care, School of Public Health, Imperial College London.
Simon leads the Sepsis Research Program at The George Institute which is focussed on the design and conduct of robust high-quality RCTs that will reduce death and disability due to sepsis in Australia and around the world.
Simon has obtained over $50M in research funding and authored or co-authored over 250 peer-reviewed papers with 20% of those in the highest-ranking medical journals. He served as a guest editor for the New England Journal of Medicine from 2012 to 2014 and is currently an editor of the Oxford Textbook of Critical Care and the Critical Care Section Editor of the Oxford Textbook of Medicine.
Simon was a founding member and is a past-Chair of the Australian and New Zealand Intensive Care Society (ANZICS) Clinical Trials Group, past chair of the International Sepsis Forum, and past Vice President of the Global Sepsis Alliance. He is the Director of the Australian Sepsis Network and Asia Pacific Sepsis Alliance.
A Fellow of the Australian Academy of Health and Medical Sciences, Simon was appointed an Officer (AO) in the Order of Australia in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List 2020 for “distinguished service to intensive care medicine, to medical research and education, and to global health institutes”