September 2020 Newsletter

UCL Global Health

View this email in your browser

Website

Twitter

Instagram

Facebook

A Message from our Director

I am delighted to welcome our new and returning students to the academic year and our staff back from the summer break. The last six months have been difficult. Unfortunately, COVID-19 is re-emerging in the UK. The next few months will likely be challenging with several restrictions on the way we interact with each other, and further changes in government and university policy on COVID-19 should be expected.

In this very difficult context, I am really proud of the outputs of our students over the last few months, with several research and taught postgraduate students publishing global health papers. Congratulations on a great start to your careers.

Congratulations also goes to our prize winning iBSc Global Health students. The 2019/20 John Yudkin Prize was jointly awarded to Haseeb Akhtar and Hana Mahmood. Haseeb has won this prize for his work in setting up Realising Medics (RM) as well as being a part of the ReAble team. Hana has won this prize for her work on reproductive rights with the Maternal Aid Association (MAA) and Students for Global Health. In addition, Vera Lopez Fernandez has won the 2020 iBSc Gender Centre Dissertation Prize for her project on missing Indigenous women in Canada.

I am grateful to our teaching staff and the professional services team who have provided an excellent teaching experience to our students in the last academic year despite the challenging circumstance we all faced. Our excellent PTES survey results for the MSc programmes, including for the first year of the AIDE programme, provide evidence for this.

Our staff continue to win prestigious grants, fellowships and prizes. Swaib Lule was the winner of the 2019 JHH Young Investigator Award. Frank Kloprogge was awarded a Henry Dale Fellowship, Rebecca Irons won a Wellcome Research Fellowship in Humanities and Social Science and Valentina Cambiano got a UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship.

There are several interesting updates in this newsletter ranging from this year’s UCL Lancet Lecture from Dr Pate, to the excellent work led by Lu Gram to fight racism against Asians, and the gender reports and advocacy from Global Health 50:50. I want to highlight one particular item that I am very pleased about. Dr Binta Sultan has been working with the Find&Treat team to extend their outreach work to HIV, hepatitis B, C and sexually transmitted infection (STI) testing sessions in the hotels and hostels tackling unmet needs in this vulnerable population.

Finally, I am delighted to inform you that Nick Watts is moving from his role as Director of the Lancet Countdown project at IGH to join NHS England as director of Sustainability.

I hope you enjoy reading our autumn newsletter.

Professor Ibrahim Abubakar
Director, UCL Institute for Global Health

News & Activities

A very 2020 graduation

Unable to gather for their ceremony in person, graduates from our class of 2018-2019 were able to meet again for a virtual graduation.

80 MSc Global Health and Development students took part in the online ceremony on 4th July, and were joined by staff from the Institute for Global Health.

Our doctoral students have also been attending virtual vivas and passing them with flying colours. Congratulations, all!

Study at Global Health at UCL

UCL-Lancet Lecture

We were delighted that thousands of people were able to join this year's UCL-Lancet lecture on 13th July.

For the first time, this event was fully held online with speakers joining from different continents.

Dr Muhammad Pate, Global Director for Health, Nutrition and Population at the World Bank Group, delivered his talk "Global Health Preparedness in the Face of Emerging Epidemics", followed by responses and audience questions.

You can now watch Dr Pate's lecture, and the panel discussion and Q&A, on YouTube.

UCL-Lancet Lecture Series

Tackling racism towards east and southeast Asians

One of the many startling statistics that have emerged in recent months is that hate crimes towards people of East and Southeast Asian heritage in the UK have increased three-fold during the coronavirus crisis.

Lu Gram (pictured centre, below) and others have been moved to act swiftly, establishing End the Virus of Racism, the first UK organisation dedicated to addressing hostility and attacks faced by people from these ethnic groups.

Lu also spoke to The Guardian and Yahoo News UK about his experiences and efforts to raise awareness of the problem.

The UCL Institute of Healthcare Engineering is a one-stop-shop for biomedical/healthcare engineering and digital health research at UCL, with a strong focus on global collaboration.

Get the latest healthcare engineering news straight to your inbox, including job vacancies, funding and public engagement opportunities.

Sign up to their monthly newsletter here.

From 19th to 29th October, UCL will host a two-week virtual conference, "Beyond Boundaries: Realising the UN Sustainable Development Goals", exploring the role of universities in achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Find out more about the event on the UCL website, and follow @UCL_SDGs on twitter for the latest updates.

This Is Gender 2021

Global Health 50/50 are offering the chance to support This Is Gender, a global photography competition launched in response to the lack of representational diversity and critically reflective images of gender in global health and development.

The inaugural contest, featured in The Guardian, produced hundreds of stunning images from across the globe. The 2021 contest will invite photographers to explore gender in this moment of global upheaval.

Find out more about getting involved here or email i.bakelmun@ucl.ac.uk.

Finding the right words to End TB

Following the recent launch of its TB Strategy Toolkit, the E-DETECT TB team has released one-page Toolkit introductory sheets in all 24 official EU languages.

The TB Strategy Toolkit aims to assist national TB plan development or refinement by providing up-to-date guidance on core components of a TB Action Plan or Strategy by bringing together the latest EU/EEA-focused evidence and expert opinion.

The information sheets are intended to be accessible to policy makers as well as TB professionals and advocates in all European countries and can be downloaded via the E-DETECT TB website.

As the global response to the Coronavirus pandemic continues and evolves, our staff continue to be involved in a wide range of activities. Here are just a few of them:

Rochelle Burgess launched a new study in partnership with Wandsworth Community Empowerment Network and their Black Minds Matter collective, to understand how young people from Black, African, Caribbean, Asian and other minority backgrounds in South London are coping with COVID-19.

The study will also work with young people to design new public health messaging that takes into account successes and challenges, to help promote better wellbeing for their communities in coming weeks and months.

The COVID-19 Sex-Disaggregated Data Tracker is the world’s largest database of sex-disaggregated data on COVID-19.

It is produced by Global Health 50/50, housed within the UCL Centre for Gender and Global Health, alongside the African Population and Health Research Center and the International Center for Research on Women.

Together, they are investigating what roles sex and gender are playing in the outbreak, building the evidence base of what works to tackle gender disparities in health outcomes, and advocating for effective gender-responsive approaches to COVID-19.

Find out more about the dashboard and the Sex, Gender and COVID-19 Project here.

Overall, there is an enormous amount of effort and collaboration by UCL IGH staff at local, national and international levels and you can read more about their findings so far on our website or in the publications section below.

COVID-19 teamwork on London's
frontline:

helping the vulnerable to survive and thrive

Following the brief item in our last newsletter, we hear from Dr Binta Sultan, a clinician and UCL clinical research fellow, about her work with marginalised groups in London.

Team members (not including Binta, who took the photo!) in central London.

I’ve been working with the UCLH Find&Treat team to set up outreach point of care HIV, hepatitis B, C and sexually transmitted infection (STI) testing sessions in the hotels and hostels across London temporarily housing homeless people.

This is a peer-centred service with clinical support and collaborations with local clinical teams, peers and advocacy groups. These included the Hepatitis C Trust, Sophia’s Forum, Positive East and the Naz Project. We were supported by the NHS England Hep C elimination programme and the HIV Fast Track Cities Intitiative.

This is a highly marginalised and vulnerable population, with a significant proportion of people who are vulnerable migrants and have been victims of sexual assault and human trafficking. They have poor access to healthcare due to the hostile environment and reduction in service provision during the COVID-19 crisis. This work is ongoing and has expanded to include other inclusion health groups.

I am also the clinical lead for a large project that Find&Treat are undertaking. We are carrying out health assessments on people who have been temporarily housed in hotels through the ‘Everybody In’ programme. We are using a tool that we developed (COVID-19 Homeless Rapid Integrated Screening Protocol (CHRISP)).

The purpose of the assessments are to identify unmet health needs (including mental health, frailty, drug and alcohol support needs), COVID-19 vulnerability and to ensure these health needs feedback in to an individual’s housing plans.

This helps to ensure that people have the right support in place for tenancy sustainment and health improvement. It is also a significant data resource to advocate for service provision. We have undertaken 1200 assessments so far, one of the largest health needs assessments of people who experience homelessness (PWEH) in the UK.

The data has been used by Public Health England and local authority teams to inform service planning for PWEH. The data will be part of a research database which researchers can access to explore research questions about the needs of PWEH.

New guidance note on cash assistance in nutritional emergencies

The Global Nutrition Cluster (GNC) is led by UNICEF and exists to coordinate nutritional responses in humanitarian emergencies. Andy Seal has been involved with the GNC for a number of years, with UCL having observer status. He has supported various initiatives on providing technical support and capacity development and training.

The latest of these involved membership of a Working Group that supported the development of guidance on the use of cash and voucher transfers to tackle malnutrition.

Read more, and download the guidance note, on the Global Nutrition Cluster website.

Job Opportunities

Policy Engagement Manager

We are looking to appoint a policy expert with experience in translating academic research in to public policy to join Lancet Countdown: Tracking Progress on Health and Climate Change.

The successful candidate will be responsible for coordinating the Lancet Countdown's outreach to policymakers in key countries in the national and international public health community.

Applications close on 3rd October 2020. Please visit the UCL Jobs website for further details.

Research Assistant - MARCH-ZIM project

We are looking to appoint a Research Assistant in mental health and child marriage to join the MARCH-ZIM Project Team (Mapping Patterns of Risk and Resilience to Mental Health Consequences of Child Marriage in Zimbabwe) supported by The Academy of Medical Sciences.

This is a part-time post (60% FTE) available from October 2020, for 18 months in the first instance.

Applications close on 12th October 2020. Please visit the UCL Jobs website for further details.

Some more of our recent research

Africa Amid Growing Vaccine Nationalism

Physician and UCL Global Health and Development student, Evaborhene Aghogho Nelson, writes in BMJ Global Health about vaccine nationalism in Africa.

Nudging and corporate environmental responsibility: A natural field experiment

Labels displaying the importance of green consumption increase market shares of green products. The results of a natural field experiment in Italian supermarkets, co-authored by Francesco Salustri.

Planetary health justice: feminist approaches to building in rural Kenya

Geordan Shannon and co-authors write in Buildings & Cities.

Longitudinal Pharmacokinetic-Pharmacodynamic Biomarkers Correlate With Treatment Outcome in Drug-Sensitive Pulmonary Tuberculosis: A Population Pharmacokinetic-Pharmacodynamic Analysis

Frank Kloprogge et al's paper aims to explore relationships between baseline demographic covariates, plasma antibiotic exposure, sputum bacillary load, and clinical outcome data to help improve future tuberculosis treatment response predictions.

Racism, the public health crisis we can no longer ignore and COVID-19: the great unequaliser

Delan Devakumar et al in The Lancet and Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine.

Pandemic peak SARS-CoV-2 infection and seroconversion rates in London frontline health-care workers

Authors from the SAFER study, including Nina Vora and Richard Gilson, present findings including that 43.5% of their high-risk, front-line healthcare worker cohort had acquired SARS-CoV-2 (serology+/-PCR pos) by early May 2020.

‘I wanted to go, but they said wait’: Mothers’ bargaining power and strategies in care-seeking for ill newborns in Ethiopia

Kristine Husøy Onarheim et al write in PLOS One.

Drivers of demand for animal-source foods in low-income households in Nairobi

A recording of the Aurélia Lépine's talk as presented at ANH2020 in June.

Factores sociodemográficos y clínicos asociados a la satisfacción usuaria de cuidadores en un hospital pediátrico de alta complejidad

Yasna Palmeiro-Silva co-authors this piece in Revista Chilena de Salud Pública.

Social distancing to slow the US COVID-19 epidemic: Longitudinal pretest–posttest comparison group study

Data analysis co-led by Guy Harling and published in PLOS Medicine.

Determining the optimal strategy for reopening schools, the impact of test and trace interventions, and the risk of occurrence of a second COVID-19 epidemic wave in the UK: a modelling study

Jasmina Panovska-Griffiths et al in The Lancet Child & Adolescent Health.

Scoping Report on Hospital and Health Care Acquisition of COVID-19 and its Control

A report from Data Evaluation and Learning for Viral Epidemics (DELVE) (whose members include IGH's Anne Johnson, Nigel Field and Guy Harling), a multi-disciplinary group convened by the Royal Society, looks at current gaps and what further actions are needed to build comprehensive surveillance and infection control systems.

Refuge in a Moving World: Tracing refugee and migrant journeys across disciplines

Ilan Kelman contributes in this book, which draws together writers from multiple disciplines to discuss different ways of engaging with, and responding to, migration and displacement.

UCL Institute for Risk and Disaster Reduction YouTube channel

Watch a variety of videos including webinars and presentations by UCL IRDR experts.

Operationalising a One Health approach to reduce the infection and antimicrobial resistance (AMR) burden in under-5 year old urban slum dwellers: The Childhood Infections and Pollution (CHIP) Consortium

The CHIP Consortium, with members including IGH's Neha Batura, aims to reduce the infection and antimicrobial resistance burden amongst children under five in slums using One Health and technology-enabled citizen science approaches. The Consortium has undertaken work in urban slums in Jaipur, Jakarta and Antofagasta.

Trends in Frequency of Sexual Activity and Number of Sexual Partners Among Adults Aged 18 to 44 Years in the US, 2000-2018

Using survey results, authors including Cath Mercer find one in three US men aged 18-24 reported being sexually inactive in the past year; sexual inactivity also increased among men and women aged 25-34.

Understanding the Heterogeneity of Adverse COVID-19 Outcomes: The Role of Poor Quality of Air and Lockdown Decisions and Park Municipalities and Mortality during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Two papers co-authored by Francesco Salustri. The first analyses the role of the environment on coronavirus cases and deaths. The second looks at the contagion in Italian municipalities located in protected regional or national parks.

Systematic evaluation and external validation of 22 prognostic models among hospitalised adults with COVID-19: An observational cohort study

In a cohort of 411 consecutive admissions with COVID-19, Rishi Gupta et al find that oxygen saturation on air and age are the best univariable predictors of clinical deterioration and mortality, respectively.

After COVID-19, a future for the world's children?

WHO–UNICEF–Lancet Commissioners, including UCL Global Health researchers, urge policy makers to put children at the centre of COVID-19 recovery efforts. The authors highlight the pandemic's secondary effects on children and the need to create more equal societies.

Tocilizumab in patients with severe COVID-19: a retrospective cohort study

Alessandro Cozzi-Lepri and partners from University of Modena conducted a study in patients hospitalized with severe COVID-19 disease, showing that “…Treatment with tocilizumab, whether administered intravenously or subcutaneously, might reduce the risk of invasive mechanical ventilation or death in patients with severe COVID-19 pneumonia.

The role of participation and community mobilisation in preventing violence against women and girls: a programme review and critique

Nicole Minckas, Geordan Shannon and Jenevieve Mannell write in Global Health Action.

The future of migration, human populations, and global health in the Anthropocene

Ibrahim Abubakar comments in The Lancet on new global population forecasts.

“Everything is from God but it is always better to get to the hospital on time”: A qualitative study with community members to identify factors that influence facility delivery in Gombe State, Nigeria

Zelee Hill and co-authors from IDEAS write in Global Health Action.

Country-level factors associated with the early spread of COVID-19 cases at 5, 10 and 15 days since the onset

UCL MSc Health Economics and Decision Science students Kasim Allel and Walter Morris, together with co-author Thamara Tapia-Muñoz of CUNY, writing in Global Public Health.

Risk perception, safer sex practices and PrEP enthusiasm: barriers and facilitators to oral HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis in Black African and Black Caribbean women in the UK

Maryam Shahmanesh co-authors a paper by former UCL visiting undergraduate student Sarah Nakasone, published in BMJ Sexually Transmitted Infections. The findings were picked up by NAM, the most important HIV resource in the UK for patients and providers.

Research grant funding opportunities

We won’t usually be detailing funding calls in this newsletter, but readers based at UCL may be interested in signing up to the UCL Global Research Funding Newsletter. It’s sent out monthly and compiled by the Research Coordination Office in the UCL Office of the Vice-Provost (Health).

Subscribe

Past issues

Forward

This email was sent to <<Email Address>>
why did I get this? unsubscribe from this list update subscription preferences
UCL Global Health · Institute for Global Health/Grand Challenge of Global Health · 30 Guilford Street · London, WC1N 1EH · United Kingdom