Health and economic impacts of NCDs on women in Mexico

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 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: 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

BackgroundOptimal crash protection requires the most appropriate restraint for a child’s size. For children <7 years, Australian law dictates the restraint type to be used. For children ≥7 years, parents can choose the restraint that best suits their child, for example using a seat belt alone, or a booster seat. However, there is confusion about when their children can safely use seat belts. This stems from the fact that optimal protection from a seat belt requires a good match between child size and geometry of both the seat belt and the vehicle seat. Yet there is a wide variation across different cars. This coupled with intrinsic variations in child size makes it difficult to provide advice using age or height. The result is that many children >7 years inappropriately use seat belts, increasing risk of injury in a crash.  Using a user-centred approach we have increased comprehension of child restraint by almost 30%. These findings indicate user involvement in developing communication too