Public Health

The inVIVO Planetary Health network, which has its origins in a 2012 WUN Research Development Fund grant, pursues positive change that reflect the link between people and place. In a November 2020 publication in The Lancet, researchers from inVIVO appealed for health professionals to pledge their dedication ‘to the service of humanity, and to the protection of natural systems on which human health depends.’ We asked experts around the Worldwide Universities Network for their perspectives on the pledge and its effort to expand the interpretation of ‘first do no harm’ to reflect human connections to the planet. Click through for more.

The International Symposium on Digital Health is an annual event that connects international experts and professionals from the healthcare and engineering sectors in the promotion of interdisciplinary research in digital health. Click through to learn more about this upcoming free virtual symposium.

A study done by the Institute of Future Cities at CUHK reveals that hot nights pose greater threat to public health than hot days and better urban planning and building design are needed to mitigate the impact.

Stressors and traumas such as violence and abuse, the effects of poverty, and the experience of emergencies or disasters have a major impact on the health of pregnant women and their children.

As the impact of climate change multiplies the threats, understanding why and how we can make effective and early interventions is paramount.

Click through to read the full story.

In 2015 a WUN-funded research collaboration among the Universities of Bergen, Cape Town, and Southampton set out to understand whether parasite exposure is having an impact on allergy rates. Their research since suggests that the answer is yes, but exactly what is happening and why remains a mystery.  Click through to read the full story.

New technologies are capturing different information about health and treatments, opening up new pathways for more efficient and effective care. With its distinctive collaborative model, the WUN Digital Health Research Network has founded a new international society and is developing methodologies for studying and evaluating digital health innovations.  Click through for the full story.

Michielse returned to Edmonton in the fall of 2018 to join Malykhin in his lab as part of a larger partnership the University of Alberta has with the Worldwide Universities Network (WUN).

Apply for a travel grant by 15 January 2019 and submit your abstract by 15 February 2019.

WUN research: an inexpensive and easily replicable journalling exercise can build resilience in pregnant women affected by natural disaster.

Promoting adaptability across the life course

CUHK and  one of the University of Exeter launched a new HK$20m joint research centre to embark on large, impactful interdisciplinary collaborations to tackle emerging issues related to a changing environment and human health and well being.

International Inflammation Network announces name change

A grant of 3 million US dollars from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is enabling the University of Bergen professor Ole Frithjof Norheim and his research group to teach health priorities to Ethiopian students.

Scholarship Opportunity for early career researchers to participate in WUN academic workshop Promoting Adaptability across the Life Course held in Perth on 21-22 May 2018.

CUHK and the Hong Kong Jockey Club Charities Trust join hands to co-host the Hong Kong chapter of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network.  

A team from the Faculty of Medicine at CUHK has developed a Chinese medicine MOOC in English and Asia’s first Chinese medicine clinical evidence online portal which gathers studies from around the world.

The CUHK-DGIST-ETH Zurich Joint Research Laboratory on Innovative Nanotechnology for Medicine and Healthcare was recently formed to promote the R&D of innovative technologies for the diagnosis and treatment of gastrointestinal and cardiovascular diseases.

Helping adolescents and the people who work with them adapt positively to adversity is the aim of this ambitious collaboration between researchers in South Africa, the UK & China.

How life-course research can help more of us stay healthy as we age

Early Career Researcher travel grant opportunity to attend the International Inflammation Network (inFLAME) annual meeting in Canmore, Canada, 4-6 April 2018

WUN Project the DREAMS Network organised second workshop. 

The World Universities Network Global Africa Group launched its inaugural Strategic Research Workshop, hosted by the University of Ghana, in July 2017.

CUHK and the University of Sydney established a joint laboratory to share the best of information technology, data analysis, and clinical research for the advancement of evidence-based integrative medicine.  

Developing countries struggling to cope with huge volumes of human waste may finally get some relief – and a new business opportunity.

Research in Focus: in-FLAME

WUN supported research group has introduced novel Glucose-Responsive Hydrogels for Glucose Detection. 

The Institute of Future Cities at CUHK has developed the first platform in Hong Kong for integrating and analysing urban big data in an effort to help Hong Kong to become a smart city in the areas of personalized health monitoring, urban planning, air quality, and social care.

“It has been very difficult to get these [results] published, because the concept of adolescent boys, having impact on their offspring born years later is new and editors could not believe our findings. I think that the WUN can inspire further research to support our findings and convey the new concepts to public health policy makers…”

Multi-disciplinary team from the Worldwide Universities Network (WUN) publishes in Nature Plants.

CUHK has conducted the world’s largest study that examines the prevalence and progression of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) in diabetic patients, in order to determine whether screening should be recommended.

CUHK forms tri-continental partnership with the University of Toronto and Utrecht University for innovative solutions on urban issues

Scientists from the University of Leeds have solved a 25-year-old question about how a family of proteins allow bacteria to resist the effects of certain antibiotics. Proteins of the ABC-F protein family are a major source of antibiotic resistance in ‘superbugs’ such as Staphylococcus aureus, a group of bacteria that includes MRSA. The findings, published in the American Society for Microbiology journal mBio, provide the first direct evidence of how this family of proteins ‘protect’ the bacterial ribosome, the protein makers in cells, from being blocked by antibiotics.

On 2-7 April, close to 400 academics and university leaders from around the world will descend on Maastricht for the WUN Conference & AGM 2016, hosted by Maastricht University.

Environmental health science researcher Richard Peltier at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, with others around the world, is launching a series of webinars and events for a Do-It-Yourself, citizen science campaign called “Air Sensors Everywhere.” It aims to bring small air pollution sensors to the developed and developing world “to empower people everywhere to use low-cost pollution sensors to reduce pollution-linked disease.”

A research team led by the University of Leeds has observed for the first time how HIV and Ebola viruses attach to cells to spread infection. The findings, published in the journal Angewandte Chemie, suggest a new way of treating these viruses: instead of destroying the pathogens, introduce a block on how they interact with cells.

A group of drugs already in everyday use to treat psychosis or depression may also be used to defeat deadly and emerging viruses. Researchers from the University of Leeds found that common drugs in everyday use were successful in preventing a particular virus from infecting cells, by blocking the ion channels that regulate potassium levels in those cells.

A new test could help patients with advanced bowel cancer get the best treatment for their disease. A Cancer Research UK clinical trial, run from the University of Leeds and St James’s University Hospital, studied almost 1,200 patients at hospitals all over the UK with advanced bowel cancer.

University of Leeds researchers are part of a project to transform the UK’s pharmaceutical industry by introducing new digital design processes. The £20.4 million ADDoPT (Advanced Digital Design of Pharmaceutical Therapeutics) project is a major four-year collaboration between the Government, industry and universities. It is expected to reduce the development time and cost of innovative medicines and improve the competitiveness of the UK’s pharmaceuticals sector.

The researchers of the joint team from Zhejiang University, University of Leeds and University of York are currently exploring novel glucose-responsive materials for GOX-free glucose sensors which will be more sensitive and stable. 

Around 7,000 colorectal cancer survivors in the UK struggle to cope with daily life years after their diagnosis, according to new analysis led by University of Leeds researchers. The study, recently published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology and partly funded by Macmillan Cancer Support, shows that just under 1 in 6 (15%) people who survive a year to three years after a colorectal cancer diagnosis in England experience ‘social distress’, perceiving their daily social interactions to be severely negative or distressing.

Meet the UCT researcher discovering how parasitic worms can benefit human health.

Much like the printing press, the invention of the world wide web has afforded us unprecedented opportunities for spreading information. Not only do we now have the capacity to share rich data sets online, we also have vast amounts of data about our online activity. However, without a proper framework in place, it is difficult to take full advantage of this rich information resource. There are currently multiple barriers to using this resource effectively, including accessibility of datasets, lack of comprehensive and shareable metadata, dataset identification and searching, access control and privileges, and analytics.

The Leeds Academic Health Partnership (LAHP) has been involved in an initiative to bring a centre of excellence in precision medicine to the city, the government has announced. Precision medicine uses diagnostic tests and data-based insights to understand a patient’s disease more precisely and so select treatments with more predictable, safer, cost-effective outcomes. The UK’s research and clinical expertise, combined with government’s major investment in relevant research infrastructure, has placed it in a leading position in this area. The Leeds centre, which will run alongside other similar centres in Belfast, Cardiff, Glasgow, Manchester and Oxford, was compiled by the LAHP, a consortium that brings together ten statutory organisations in Leeds — the city’s six NHS organisations, its three universities and Leeds City Council – into a formal partnership.

The Chinese University of Hong Kong Jockey Club Institute of Ageing held a Launch Conference on ‘Creating Age-Friendly Communities’ on 8 October 2015 to enable experience sharing and discussion on various aspects of the theme. Topics covered in the conference included: Redesigning Communities for Aged Society, Frailty and Geriatric Syndromes, and Age-friendly Hospital and Service. The event attracted some 300 renowned academics in gerontology from the U.S., Singapore, Japan, mainland China and Hong Kong, as well as representatives from organizations working on improving seniors well-being and welfare.

Professor John Hearn, Executive Director of WUN and Chairman of the Australia-Africa Universities Network, discusses the prolific threats that continue to plague public health and outlines initiatives in place that promote education and prevention.

Based on the methods used to calculate the Global AgeWatch Index which measures the wellbeing of older people in the world, The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) Jockey Club Institute of Ageing, with support from The Hong Kong Jockey Club (HKJC) Charities Trust, revealed that Hong Kong ranked 24th among 97 countries or territories in 2014. 

Medical research and advanced mathematics are usually considered separate disciplines. But for one WUN collaboration, bringing maths and biology together could hold the key to understanding how cells in the human body signal to each other, and might potentially unlock the secrets of a range of non-communicable diseases.

There has been a significant increase in asthma and allergies in high-income countries over the past few decades. These diseases are also increasingly prevalent in developing countries, which can substantially increase mortality rates since proper medication is often expensive. The causes of asthma and allergies are not well understood, and there is currently neither a cure or effective prevention. At the same time, parasitic infections have decreased and have known immunological effects.

Non-communicable diseases (NCDs) such as allergies, asthma, cancer, diabetes and obesity are on the rise. Inflammation and immune dysregulation are common features of these conditions, often associated with environmental and lifestyle risk factors such as dietary patterns, environmental pollutants, microbial patterns and stress.

Anne Christine Johannessen takes over as chair of the Worldwide Universities Network’s Public Health Global Challenge Steering Group.

What is the connection between parasitic infections and allergies? This question is at the core of a new University of Bergen-led research project, which has received seed funding from the Worldwide Universities Network (WUN).

Health literacy is a relatively young field of research which focuses on people’s ability to understand health information and make decisions about their own health care. By helping patients to become more health literate, researchers hope to find ways to improve public health outcomes across low, middle and high-income countries.

In three independent studies, scientists from the Universities of Southampton and Cambridge have identified how a simple chemical called nitrate, found in leafy green vegetables, can help thin blood ensuring oxygen can be delivered to all corners of the body efficiently. Reducing the thickness of blood may also decrease instances of dangerous clots forming and reduce the risk of stroke and heart attacks.

Caring for the growing number of patients with non-communicable disease is a challenge faced by policy-makers and healthcare providers across the world. To tackle the issue, a team of WUN experts in healthcare system planning have come together to share their unique insights from across Canada, the UK and Australia.

The University of Southampton is part of a new £120 million national network of Quantum Technology Hubs, that will put its cutting-edge research in quantum sensors at the forefront of future technologies to drive the UK’s economy.

Autism Spectrum Conditions (ASCs) are one of the most important emerging health concerns. Approximately one in every 100 children is diagnosed with an ASC, which includes autism, Asperger syndrome and atypical autism. 

While most medical research focuses on the quest for new treatments, much less attention is paid to how we can make better use of medicines that already exist. Yet up to half of patients don’t take long-term medicines as prescribed, which can result in serious harm or even death.

Researchers from the Medical Research Council Lifecourse Epidemiology Unit, University of Southampton, believe the key to making future generations healthier could lie before the mother becomes pregnant.

People around the world are living longer, but social policies to support their wellbeing in later life are lagging behind in many countries. This is according a new report by HelpAge International, developed in partnership with the University of Southampton.

Geographers at the University of Southampton have developed a new way to measure the ‘health’ of poor regional communities.  They aim to improve the wellbeing of people by guiding sustainable development practices to help avoid social and environmental collapse.

Demand for better care by women linked with the expansion of basic services, rather than political pressure, has helped to improve midwifery services in low to middle-income countries, according to international research involving the University of Southampton.