George Institute researcher wins NHMRC scholarship to tackle a hormone at the heart of Australia's hypertension crisis
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Professor Bruce Neal
Profile
Professor Neal is a UK-trained physician who has 25 years’ experience in clinical, epidemiological, and public health research with a focus on heart disease, stroke and diabetes.
He has a longstanding interest in high blood pressure and diabetes and the potential for both clinical interventions and changes in the food supply to deliver health gains. His work has been characterised by its focus on collaboration, quantitation, translation and impact.
He holds professorial appointments at UNSW Sydney, Imperial College London, and an honorary appointment at the University of Sydney. He has published some 450 scientific papers and since 2016 has been identified by Thomson Reuters as one of ‘The World’s Most Influential Scientific Minds’ - an acknowledgement bestowed on just a few thousand researchers across all disciplines worldwide.
He has deep expertise in the conduct of large-scale clinical trials addressing cardiovascular disease but has also done a significant body of work addressing food policy issues related to sugars, fats, portion size and food labelling.
Neeti Sharma
Profile
Neeti Sharma is the Head, Human Resources at The George Institute for Global Health, bringing people-centric and psychology driven approach, to build an emotionally intelligent and inclusive culture.
Neeti holds a Master's degree in Psychology with specialisation in Organisational Behaviour and is MBTI Certified. With extensive experience across both corporate and non‑profit sectors, she brings a globally informed yet locally grounded perspective to the Human Resources function.
Designing and operationalising trials
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
What are clinical and community trials
What are clinical trials?
Clinical trials are research studies with humans, designed to test new treatments to find better ways to prevent, detect or treat disease1. Clinical trials are also sometimes referred to as interventional trials. The sorts of treatments being investigated include medicines or drugs, cells and other biological products, surgical procedures, radiologic procedures, devices, behavioural treatments, process-of-care changes, preventive care, and other items.2 Clinical trials rely on having members of the general public agree to take part.
What happens in a clinical trial?
In a clinical trial, participants meet with researchers who go through what the clinical trial will involve. All participants must be advised about the objectives of the research, what is expected of them, as well as any risks that may be experienced during and after the trial.
Trials must follow a carefully controlled protocol, which is a plan that describes what researchers will do in the stu
Innovative clinical trials
Researchers at The George Institute for Global Health, UK, led by Executive Director Professor Otavio Berwanger, are spearheading a programme of work to transform that way we deliver large-scale clinical trials.
This programme is borne out of a recognition of the limitations of the ‘traditional’ clinical trial model – and the health gains (social, environmental and economic) – to be had in investigating pragmatic, innovative and efficient approaches.
In both the so-called ‘traditional’ and innovative trial models, the gold standard of randomisation controls for both known and unknown confounding factors that could influence trials outcomes, and represents the optimal method to work out whether a healthcare intervention reduces the risk of patient-important outcomes and so inform clinical practice.
Where the two models differ is that the traditional approach requires participants be screened and recruited in a trial site by a team of investigators, and so demands both a
Potassium-enriched low‑sodium salt substitutes: from consensus to clinical and public health action in India
Event
Connecting climate, NCDs & women’s health at Women Deliver 2026
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Prasanthi Attwood
Profile
Prasanthi is an injury epidemiologist focusing on monitoring and evaluation of child road safety projects in 6 countries through the Botnar Foundation and working with longitudinal data to analyse gender differences and injuries amongst a large cohort of adolescents from Vietnam, Peru, Ethiopia and India.
Prasanthi obtained her medical degree from Cambridge University (UK), and then spent over a decade working within the field of injury prevention at Johns Hopkins (Baltimore, US). With a young family and move back to the UK, she wanted to be part of a dynamic and innovative team slightly closer to home and was therefore thrilled to have the opportunity to join the George Institute, UK, helping to further develop the injury research portfolio.
Session 1: Setting the Scene. The burden of childhood burns In Africa
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Climate justice at the heart of women’s health
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Session 2: Prevention Pathways - From home hazards to safe environments
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