Filters

Professor Maree Hackett

Profile

Maree is responsible for designing, leading, and delivering a distinctive and vibrant postgraduate, postdoctoral and future leader research experience at The George. Maree and her team provide management and oversight of ‘higher degree by research’ candidates, their supervisors, visiting fellows and work with the training team to co-ordinate postgraduate research training.

Maree also leads a program of research focusing on developing simple, cost-effective strategies to prevent depression and significantly improve the outcome for people with chronic disease.

Maree works one day per week as a Professor of Epidemiology in the Faculty of Health and Wellbeing at The University of Central Lancashire in the United Kingdom.

World-first study to assess role of fuel tanks in motorcycle injury

News

Sultana Shajahan

Profile

Dr Sultana Shajahan is a final-year PhD candidate at The George Institute for Global Health and the University of New South Wales, Sydney. After completing her medical degree in Bangladesh, she earned a Master of Public Health (Research) degree with High Distinction at Macquarie University, Sydney.

Her doctoral research focuses on high-level evidence synthesis and advanced analyses of large international datasets (including ADVANCE, PROGRESS, and SCAPIS) to investigate how a wide range of clinically important blood pressure measures are associated with cognitive decline and dementia. This work aims to generate new insights to guide the design of future cohort studies and clinical trials targeting dementia prevention, a growing global health challenge. For her PhD research, she was awarded the Young Investigator Award at the European Stroke Organisation Conference (ESOC) in 2023.

Beyond her PhD, Dr Shajahan undertook a three-month international research exchange program at Linköping University, Sweden, funded by The Swedish National School for Research in General Practice. She was also a Site Physician in the recently completed RECALL-Pilot trial, which tested an online intervention to reduce dementia risk through blood pressure management. Previously, she gained extensive experience at The George Institute for Global Health, contributing to projects in stroke, women’s health, sex differences, and multimorbidity. She brings expertise and interest in systematic reviews, meta-analyses, clinical trials, cohort studies, blood pressure measurement, dementia prevention, cognition and stroke.

What are non-communicable diseases (NCDs)

Podcast

The George Institute is a launch member of WHO’s new Global Clinical Trials Forum

News

Scaling peritoneal dialysis equitably across India

News / Media release

Women's health

Research Program

Using pregnancy to improve women’s lifelong health

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

Improve outcomes for women specific conditions globally

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

Centre for Sex and Gender Equity in Health and Medicine

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

Harnessing AI to improve women’s health

The George Institute's Women’s Health Program aims to improve the health of women and girls around the world by adopting a life course and equity approach. We are a global group of researchers, clinicians, policy and advocacy specialists, and communications specialists who are passionate about improving the lives and health of women and girls through conducting high-quality, innovative and cutting-edge research. AI and women’s health Artificial intelligence is changing our world with exciting potential to improve women’s health. Some examples include improved diagnosis, prediction of future disease, clinical decision support, health worker training and continuous supportive supervision, and rapid evidence synthesis. However, AI also brings challenges, with the risk of entrenching biases for groups underrepresented in large datasets used to train AI models, the risk of hallucinations, a changing regulatory environment, concerns around the energy required, and safety concerns for use

Protecting pregnant women from environmental change

The physiological and social demands of pregnancy are immense. A period of transformation that tests a woman's body and resilience in profound ways. Yet, this time of vulnerability also offers an unparalleled opportunity to understand and improve women's health across the life course. Environmental change including rising temperatures, air and water pollution, and extreme weather events is now emerging as a major stressor during this critical life stage, shaping both immediate pregnancy outcomes and long-term health trajectories for mothers and their children. Women and girls are disproportionately affected by environmental hazards. Biological factors such as hormonal and thermoregulatory changes interact with entrenched social and economic inequities --- limited access to healthcare, insecure housing, unpaid care responsibilities, and occupational exposures --- to heighten risk. For pregnant women in particular, exposure to extreme heat has been linked to complications such as preterm birth, l