Global Child Health
Leads: Dr Matthew Ellis and Professor Alan Emond with Puspa Pant, Raghu Lingam, Santosh Bhatta and Toity Deave
Outcome of low birthweight at term in North east Brazil
Alan Emond is collaborating on a research project with Universidade Federal do Pernambuco (UFPE) in Recife, Brazil, the London School of Hygiene and the Institute of Child Health in London. The study is investigating the developmental, growth and behavioural outcome at 8 years of children born at term weighing less than 2500g, using a cohort enrolled in 1992-1993. Analysis has shown the worst outcomes in growth and development are found in those low birthweight (LBW) babies who are exposed to environmental and nutritional deprivation in the first 6 months of life. These findings have led on to an intervention programme based in nurseries targeted at young mothers from deprived urban communities in Recife with LBW babies, helping them to stimulate their infants. Alan Emond was an invited plenary speaker at the tri-annual Brazilian Paediatric Congress in Recife in October 2006.
Bangladesh
Toity Deave visited the Centre for Injury Prevention Research Bangladesh in 2013 where she met with the directors of the Centre to discuss future collaboration in respect of education and teaching, interventions and evaluation and publications. Toity has been invited for a return visit to present a keynote speech at the Third International Congress on Burn Injuries in October 2014 and to meet with Dr Fazlur Rahman and colleagues at the Centre.
Community-based child injury prevention in rural Nepal
Puspa Pant is working on a feasibility study to learn whether community mobilisation can prevent child injuries in rural areas of Nepal. In these communities mother's groups, supported by a Female Community Health Volunteer (FCHV), routinely meet each month to discuss health issues. The objective of the project was to develop a culturally appropriate, educational intervention for FCHVs that included child safety information that could be used in these meetings. Materials such as mother's group meeting facilitation manual, picture-book and posters on child injuries and their prevention were developed. All the involved FCHVs received first-aid training, after which the FCHVs facilitated injury prevention discussions during their monthly mothers’ group meetings over a period of six months. In addition, a parent-reported child injury data collection system was developed and tested. On-going feasibility work includes the development of a community crèche model and a neighbourhood injury assessment scheme. Funding has been from the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (RoSPA) and through the UWE-SPUR funding scheme.
Nepal Injury Research Centre
The aim of the Nepal Injury Research Centre project is to build sustainable capacity and capability in Nepal to deliver high quality injury research studies that can inform policy and reduce injuries. Nepal has high rates of injuries; from natural disasters, such as earthquakes and landslides, from road traffic, and from injuries at home and at work. Many of these injuries are potentially preventable, yet currently there is very limited research capacity to provide the evidence for change.
The project has four work streams;
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Engaging stakeholders: to understand their perspectives and priorities
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Evidence through data: to develop and pilot hospital and community based injury surveillance systems, to understand how injuries occur through qualitative and survey methods.
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Effective and cost-effective interventions: to prioritise, develop and test the feasibility of interventions to reduce injuries
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Enhancing capacity and enabling sustainability: to identify and support injury researchers in Nepal to enable them to generate internationally excellent research in a centre sustainable in the long term.
The NIRC is funded by the National Institute for Health Research Global Health Research Programme (Ref 16/137/49). Dr Julie Mytton is Director of the UK team and Prof Sunil Joshi at Kathmandu Medical College is Director of the Nepal team.