Monthly Archives: June 2017

Community-based interventions in improving tuberculosis treatment outcomes in rural South Africa

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Bambisanani is a community-based organization operating in rural areas of South Africa’s Eastern Cape Province. Tuberculosis (TB) is a major cause of death in South Africa – in 2010, over 10,000 people died of TB in the Eastern Cape Province alone. Recognizing the acute importance of improving and expediting the efforts against TB in South Africa, the Bambisanani organization, supported by the Bristol-Myers Squibb Foundation, implemented the WHO ENGAGE-TB approach between November 2013 and August 2015.

Health

Technology of sleep monitoring… consumer beware!

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In contrast to gold standard medical sleep monitoring, which entails a full night of monitoring in a lab and hours of specialist analysis, commercial sleep monitoring is portable, accessible and affordable, often consisting of motion sensors worn on the wrist or even an app on a smartphone. But are these products actually effective in monitoring our sleep? Here to explore this issue is sleep expert Dr. Magdy Younes.

Health Technology

The use of social networks associated with increased computer literacy skills in adolescents

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It’s a widely held view that adolescents spend far too much time communicating with peers on their smartphones. However, new research published in Large-Scale Assessments in Education could help ease parents’ concerns as it finds a strong positive relationship between students’ computer and information literacy proficiency levels and the frequency of their use of electronic devices for social communication.

Health Technology

Funding the war on hepatitis – deploying innovative finance mechanisms to eliminate hepatitis C in Europe

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In this blog, co-authors Rob Walton (Cello Health Public Affairs), Jeffrey V Lazarus (CHIP, WHO Collaborating Centre on HIV and Viral Hepatitis at Rigshospitalet, the University of Copenhagen and Editor-in-Chief of Hepatology, Medicine and Policy), Homie A. Razavi (Center for Disease Analysis), Jagpreet Chhatwal (Harvard Medical School), Charles Gore (Hepatitis C Trust), Pierre Van Damme (Vaccine & Infectious Disease Institute – VAXINFECTIO, University of Antwerp), Luís Mendão (GAT –Treatment Activist Group), and Angelos Hatzakis (Athens University Medical School and Hepatitis B & C Public Policy Association), discuss an innovative financing mechanism to eliminate Hepatitis C in Europe.

Health
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How to help social and behavioral research findings make their way into practice settings

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Behavioral interventions are often complex, resource intensive and extend beyond healthcare settings. Combined with the lack a market driven, regulatory structure of medical interventions; behavioural interventions often fail to be adopted. Facilitating the adoption of these interventions is now the priority of the Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research (OBSSR). Here to discuss the challenges and opportunities associated with this priority is William T. Riley, author of a commentary on this topic published in Translational Behavioral Medicine, a SpringerOpen journal.

Health

How research is creating new knowledge and insight

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The pursuit of knowledge and discovery has always been an intrinsic human characteristic, but when new knowledge is curated and put in the right hands it has the power to bring about high value change to society. I work in the research team at the Health Foundation, an independent charity committed to bringing about better health and health care for people in the UK. Our aim is a healthier population, supported by high quality health care that can be equitably accessed. And one key way in which we go about realising this vision is through supporting and funding innovative research and evaluations, which I explore below.

Health