̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - global health

Innovation for Africa's Climate Future

plc32 — Wed, 25 Sep 2024 10:07:20 +0000

̽��ֱ��2024 Mastercard Foundation Scholars Program at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge Entrepreneurship Prize Competition recognises innovative ideas in agriculture, women’s health and digital technology.

A habitable planet for healthy humans

plc32 — Wed, 13 Dec 2023 17:28:42 +0000

Cambridge Zero symposium gathers researchers to examine the connections between planetary and public health.

Carbon-omics and global health

plc32 — Fri, 17 Nov 2023 12:05:53 +0000

Cambridge Zero to host two research symposia to discuss critical climate change challenges

̽��ֱ��virologist helping us to stay one step ahead of infectious diseases

cg605 — Tue, 10 Aug 2021 10:02:05 +0000

An established virologist specialising in the field of HIV drug-resistance, Ravi Gupta pivoted his expertise to address the COVID-19 pandemic. Over the last 18 months his pioneering research has helped us to stay one step ahead of emerging variants. He talks about his career as an infectious disease specialist and, in celebration of South Asian Heritage Month, what his heritage means to him.

Open-source ventilator designed by Cambridge team for use in low- and middle-income countries

sc604 — Mon, 20 Apr 2020 10:44:38 +0000

Built primarily for use in low- and middle-income countries, the OVSI ventilator can be cheaply and quickly manufactured from readily available components. Current ventilators are expensive and difficult to fix, but an open-source design will allow users to adapt and fix the ventilators according to their needs and, by using readily available components, the machines can be built quickly across Africa in large numbers. ̽��ֱ��cost per device is estimated to be around one-tenth of currently available commercial systems.

̽��ֱ��first ventilators will be delivered in May by a team of South Africa-based companies led by Defy, a leading southern African manufacturer of domestic appliances, and Denel, a major state-owned company.

Recent tentative estimates published by the WHO have suggested that there could be as many as 10 million cases of COVID-19 in Africa within three to six months, resulting in anywhere between 300,000 and 3.3 million deaths. There are 10 countries in Africa that do not have any ventilators at all and according to the WHO, it is estimated that there are fewer than 2,000 working ventilators across 41 countries in Africa.

“Fulfilling the unique requirements of local clinicians was key to this project,” said Professor Axel Zeitler from the Department of Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology, and OVSI team lead. “Clinicians told us the ventilator needed to cover the wide spectrum of patient ventilation requirements, and therefore work in three modes – non-invasive, mandatory or patient-triggered ventilation.

“We also know that oxygen availability varies within countries, hospitals and wards. ̽��ֱ��system must use the smallest amount of oxygen possible, but include the potential to add an oxygen concentrator.”

̽��ֱ��Open Ventilator System Initiative is a consortium of academics, engineers, intensive care medics, innovators and industry partners across the UK and Africa. Formed in March this year, the initiative has grown quickly from an initial idea at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge to a team of 60 individuals contributing remotely.

̽��ֱ��team is being advised by a panel of clinical experts including physicians in Uganda, Kenya, the DRC, South Africa and the UK. ̽��ֱ��clinical partnerships were established with the support of the Cambridge-Africa programme and Cambridge Global Health Partnerships. ̽��ֱ��ventilator was designed and built by a team based at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge’s Whittle Laboratory.

“Critical to this project has been the speed of technology development,” said Professor Robert Miller, Director of the Whittle Laboratory. “In recent years, the primary focus of the Whittle Laboratory has been to accelerate the process of technology development. By merging the digital and physical systems integral to the technology development process and by using Formula One-style teams, we’ve cut the amount of time this takes by a factor of 10 to 100. This capability has been key to delivering the OVSI ventilator.”

̽��ֱ��prototype is currently being developed further into a version that can be easily mass-produced by Prodrive Ltd, a British motorsport and advanced engineering group based in Banbury, Oxfordshire. It has been thoroughly tested at the National Physical Laboratory in Teddington and passed the MHRA test specifications with flying colours. ̽��ֱ��OVSI team is currently working on securing regulatory approval for the device.

̽��ֱ��first manufacture will be led by Defy Ltd and Denel Ltd in South Africa. Evren Albas, CEO of Defy Appliances in South Africa said, “Defy’s flexible manufacturing capabilities in Africa, together with the design and development expertise of the consortium with whom we are partnering, will allow us to fast-track ventilator production and distribution. Teams are working around the clock to start production by May.”

“While the immediate need is to save lives in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, we wanted something that will be useful to healthcare workers around the world going forward,” said Dr Lara Allen, CEO of the Centre for Global Equality and a founding member of the OVSI team. “It’s often the case that those living on less than $4 per day are excluded from the innovation process. As a result, many well-meaning innovations are not what is needed or wanted by the intended beneficiaries and end up not being used. This is disappointing for designers, a waste of humanitarian resources, and low-resource communities continue to go without the support they desperately need. This is why taking an inclusive innovation approach is vital for sustainable impact.”

Present efforts to adapt the design for low- and middle-income countries include collaboration with the long-term inclusive innovation partners at the Bahir Dar Institute of Technology, at Bahir Dar ̽��ֱ�� in Ethiopia, and the Science & Technology Park at the ̽��ֱ�� of Nairobi in Kenya.

OVSI will work with partner countries in Africa and elsewhere to enable local manufacturing and maintenance of the ventilator, and to design, prototype and gain regulatory approval for system upgrades.

How you can support Cambridge's COVID-19 research effort

Donate to support COVID-19 research at Cambridge

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, a team at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge has designed an open-source ventilator in partnership with local clinicians, engineers and manufacturers across Africa that is focused to address the specific needs for treating COVID-19 patients and is a fully functioning system for use after the pandemic.

Fulfilling the unique requirements of local clinicians was key to this project

Axel Zeitler

Open-source ventilator designed for use in low- and middle-income countries

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright © ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – as here, on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.

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Food and drinks industry uses non-profit organisation to campaign against public health policies, study finds

fpjl2 — Mon, 03 Jun 2019 08:07:13 +0000

̽��ֱ��study, published today in the journal Globalization and Health, analysed over 17,000 pages of emails obtained through Freedom of Information requests made between 2015 and 2018. ̽��ֱ��documents captured exchanges between academics at US universities and senior figures at a non-profit organisation called the International Life Science Institute, or ILSI.

Comprising of 18 bodies, each of which covers a specific topic or part of the globe, ILSI has always maintained its independence and scientific rigour, despite being funded by multinational corporations such as Nestle, General Mills, Mars Inc, Monsanto, and Coca-Cola.

Founded by former Coca-Cola senior vice president Alex Malaspina in 1978, ILSI states on its website that none of its bodies “conduct lobbying activities or make policy recommendations”. As a non-profit organisation, ILSI is currently exempt from taxation under US Internal Revenue codes.

However, researchers from the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, ̽��ֱ�� of Bocconi, and US Right to Know, found emails explicitly discussing tactics for countering public health policies around sugar reduction, as “[T]his threat to our business is serious”.

These include exchanges with an epidemiology professor at the ̽��ֱ�� of Washington, as well as the US Centre for Disease Control’s then director of heart disease and stroke prevention, all strategising how best to approach the World Health Organisation’s then Director-General Dr Margaret Chan, to shift her position on sugar-sweetened products.

“It has been previously suggested that the International Life Sciences Institute is little more than a pseudo-scientific front group for some of the biggest multinational food and drink corporations globally,” said the study lead author Dr Sarah Steele, a researcher at Cambridge’s Department of Politics and International Studies.

“Our findings add to the evidence that this non-profit organisation has been used by its corporate backers for years to counter public health policies. We contend that the International Life Sciences Institute should be regarded as an industry group – a private body – and regulated as such, not as a body acting for the greater good.”

In one email, Malaspina, who also served as long-time president at ILSI, described new US guidelines bolstering child and adult education on limiting sugar intake as a “real disaster!”. He writes: “We have to consider how to become ready to mount a strong defence”. Suzanne Harris, then executive director of ILSI, was among the email’s recipients.

James Hill, then director of the Center for Human Nutrition at the ̽��ֱ�� of Colorado, was involved in a separate exchange on the issue of defending industry from the health consequences of its products. Hill argues for greater funding for ILSI from industry as part of “dealing aggressively with this issue”. He writes that, if companies keep their heads down, “our opponents will win and we will all lose”.

̽��ֱ��FOI emails also suggest ILSI constructs campaigns favourable to artificial sweeteners. Emails reveal Malaspina passing on praise from another former ILSI President to a former Coca-Cola employee and the Professor, describing both as “the architects to plan and execute the studies showing saccharine is not a carcinogen”, resulting in the reversal of many government bans.

̽��ֱ��FOI responses suggest that ILSI operates strategically with other industry-funded entities, including IFIC, a science communication non-profit organisation. “IFIC is a kind of sister entity to ILSI,” writes Malaspina. “ILSI generates the scientific facts and IFIC communicates them to the media and public.”

“ ̽��ֱ��emails suggest that both ILSI and IFIC act to counter unfavourable policies and positions, while promoting industry-favourable science under a disguised front, including to the media,” said Steele.

In fact, the emails suggest ILSI considers sanctioning its own regional subsidiaries when they fail to promote the agreed industry-favourable messaging. Correspondence reveals discussion of suspending ILSI’s Mexico branch from the parent organisation after soft drink taxation was debated at a conference it sponsored. Mexico has one of the highest adult obesity rates in the world.

Email conversations between Malaspina and the CDC’s Barbara Bowman are open about the need to get the WHO to “start working with ILSI again” and to take into account “lifestyle changes” as well as sugary foods when combatting obesity.

Further exchanges between Malaspina and Washington Professor Adam Drewnowski support ILSI’s role in this. Drewnowski writes of Dr Chan that “we ought to start with some issue where ILSI and WHO are in agreement” to help “get her to the table”.

In a further email, Malaspina points out that he had meetings with the two previous heads of the WHO, going back to the mid-90s, and that if they do not start a dialogue with Dr Chan “she will continue to blast us with significant negative consequences on a global basis”.

̽��ֱ��tide has begun to turn against ILSI in recent years. ̽��ֱ��WHO quietly ended their “special relations” with ILSI in 2017, and ILSI’s links to the European Food Safety Authority were the subject of enquiry at the European Parliament. ̽��ֱ��CDC’s Bowman retired in 2016, in the wake of revelations about her close ties with ILSI. Last year, long-time ILSI funder Mars Inc. stopped supporting the organisation. Much of the study’s correspondence precedes these events.

“It becomes clear from the emails and forwards that ILSI is seen as central to pushing pro-industry content to international organisations to support approaches that uncouple sugary foods and obesity,” added Steele.

“Our analysis of ILSI serves as a caution to those involved in global health governance to be wary of putatively independent research groups, and to practice due diligence before relying upon their funded studies.”

Reference
Are industry-funded charities promoting “advocacy-led studies” or “evidence-based science”?: a case study of the International Life Sciences Institute. Globalization and Health; 3 June 2019; DOI: 10.1186/s12992-019-0478-6

A new study shows how a non-profit research organisation has been deployed by its backers from major food and beverage corporations to push industry-favourable positions to policymakers and international bodies under the guise of neutral scientific endeavour.

We contend that the International Life Sciences Institute should be regarded as an industry group – a private body – and regulated as such, not as a body acting for the greater good

Sarah Steele

Photo by Peter Bond on Unsplash

High-angle photography of grocery display

Yes

Licence type:

Public Domain

Contracts give Coca-Cola power to ‘quash’ health research, study suggests

fpjl2 — Tue, 07 May 2019 23:35:29 +0000

A study of over 87,000 documents obtained through Freedom of Information requests has revealed a contract mechanism that could allow Coca-Cola to “quash” findings from some of the health research it funds at public universities in the US and Canada.

̽��ֱ��study, published today in the Journal of Public Health Policy, identified several clauses in legal documents that give the company early sight of any findings, combined with the right to “terminate without reason” and walk away with the data and intellectual property.

Taken together, these clauses could suppress “critical health information”, and indeed may have done so already, according to the study’s authors. Much of the research Coca-Cola supports is in the fields of nutrition, physical inactivity and energy balance.

̽��ֱ��authors argue that the clauses contravene Coca-Cola’s commitments to transparent and “unrestricted” support for science, which came after criticism of the opaque way some major food corporations fund health research.

Researchers from the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, ̽��ֱ�� of Bocconi, and US Right to Know, call on corporate funders to publish lists of terminated studies. They say scientists should publish agreements with industry to reassure the public that findings are free from influence.

“It is certainly true that the contracts we have found allow for unfavourable developments or findings to be quashed prior to publication,” said lead author Dr Sarah Steele, a policy researcher from Cambridge’s Department of Politics and International Studies.

“Coca-Cola have declared themselves at the forefront of transparency when it comes to food and beverage giants funding health research. In fact, our study suggests that important research might never see the light of day and we would never know about it.

“We are already hearing accusations from experts in nutrition that the food industry is copying tactics from big tobacco’s playbook. Corporate social responsibility has to be more than just shiny websites stating progressive policies that get ignored.”

Consumption of high calorie, low nutrient food and drink is believed to be a major factor in the childhood obesity epidemic. Last year, the UK government introduced a “sugar tax” on many soft drinks, including Coca-Cola’s flagship product.

US Right to Know, a non-profit consumer and public health research group, submitted 129 FOI requests between 2015 and 2018 relating to academics at North American institutions who received Coca-Cola funding.

̽��ֱ��research team combed through the vast tranche of resulting documents and discovered five research agreements made with four universities: Louisiana State ̽��ֱ��, ̽��ֱ�� of South Carolina, ̽��ֱ�� of Toronto and the ̽��ֱ�� of Washington.

̽��ֱ��funded work includes “energy flux and balance” studies and research on beverage intake during exercise. Coca-Cola’s own transparency website declares that scientists retain full control over their research and the company has no right to prevent publication of results.

However, while contracts show Coca-Cola does not control day-to-day conduct, the company retains various rights throughout the process. These include the right to receive updates and comment on findings prior to research publication, and the power to terminate studies early without reason.

̽��ֱ��documents yielded by the FOI requests contained no firm examples of Coca-Cola suppressing unfavourable research, although the study authors say “what is important is that the provision exists”. All documents relating to the contracts are now accessible on the US Right to Know website.

Emails show one scientist expressing uncertainty over his study termination (“…they have not communicated with us in several months”) and concern over intellectual property.

Another scientist is seen arguing that his contract is “very restrictive for an ‘unrestricted grant’”.

“These contracts suggest that Coke wanted the power to bury research it funded that might detract from its image or profits,” said Gary Ruskin, co-director of US Right to Know.

“With the power to trumpet positive findings and bury negative ones, Coke-funded science seems more like an exercise in public relations.”

̽��ֱ��researchers acknowledge that the food and beverage industry may be updating research contracts in line with new public commitments, but without seeing those contracts it is hard to know.

They say their Coca-Cola case study suggests a continued lack of transparency that should be remedied with “hard” information on funding, rather than relying on self-reported conflicts of interest.

“Journals should require authors of funded research to upload the research agreements for studies as appendices to any peer-reviewed publication,” said Steele.

“ ̽��ֱ��lack of robust information on input by industry and on studies terminated before results are published, makes it impossible to know how much of the research entering the public domain reflects industry positions.”

New study of FOI documents uncovers provisions that could allow the beverage giant to suppress findings from health science it funds at North American universities. Researchers argue that Coca-Cola’s contracts run counter to their public declarations of openness.

It is certainly true that the contracts we have found allow for unfavourable developments or findings to be quashed prior to publication

Sarah Steele

Meghan Schiereck

Untitled

Yes

Cambridge researchers join new initiative on urban air pollution

sc604 — Mon, 25 Jun 2018 09:37:24 +0000

As part of the initiative, a network of air quality sensors will be deployed across the capital, measuring pollution levels in tens of thousands of locations. Findings from the project will be shared with other cities across the UK and globally, including the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group.

From July onwards, more than a hundred low-cost air quality sensors will be attached to lampposts and buildings in the worst-affected and most sensitive locations in the capital. These fixed sensors will be deployed alongside mobile sensors carried by Google Street View cars taking readings every 30 metres.

It is hoped that the resulting 'hyperlocal' network of sensors will create the world’s most sophisticated air monitoring system. Improving the monitoring of London air quality in this way should help identify those initiatives that make the biggest contributions to cutting air pollution.

Cambridge's Department of Chemistry is a pioneer in the use of low-cost sensors for the measurement of air quality and our researchers have used them in projects at Heathrow airport, in Beijing, and most recently Dhakar. Their role in this project is providing expertise in low-cost air quality sensors, and the analysis and interpretation of results from the static and mobile sensor networks.

This initiative brings together a range of partners from academia, industry and charity. It will be run by a team of air quality experts led by the charity Environmental Defense Fund Europe, partnering with Air Monitors Ltd, Google Earth Outreach, Cambridge Environmental Research Consultants, the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, the National Physical Laboratory and the Environmental Defense Fund in the United States. King’s College London will also be undertaking a linked study focused on schools that will form part of the year-long project.

According to the Mayor’s office, London already has one of the best networks of air quality monitors of any city. However, it does not cover enough of the capital. More sensors and more data are needed to say for sure which actions to tackle pollution are working best.

More sensors will also help to explain how air quality changes not just because of the amount of traffic, but also because of other factors such as the weather and the topography of the capital.

Online maps showing data in real time will be created, giving Londoners information on just how dirty the air they breathe really is as they move around the city. New tools like this will help the capital take action to tackle the most dangerous environmental threat to their health.

"This project will provide a step change in data collection and analysis that will enable London to evaluate the impact of both air quality and climate change policies and develop responsive interventions," said Baroness Bryony Worthington, Executive Director for Environmental Defense Fund Europe. "A clear output of the project will be a revolutionary air monitoring model and intervention approach that can be replicated cost-effectively across other UK cities and globally."

"Addressing air pollution in cities is a vital but complex challenge," said Professor Rod Jones from the Department of Chemistry. "Many factors influence air quality and we are looking forward to working alongside our partners on this project as we know that by combining fixed and mobile monitors, and sampling air quality at so many locations, we will get a much more accurate picture of what is going on - I’m particularly excited by the potential of this project to be repeated in other megacities worldwide that have critical air pollution problems."

Originally published on the Department of Chemistry website.

Cambridge researchers are part of a cutting-edge project unveiled by Mayor of London Sadiq Khan last week to better understand Londoners’ exposure to air pollution and improve air quality in the capital.

Addressing air pollution in cities is a vital but complex challenge.

Rod Jones

Bad Air Day? Low-cost pollution detectors to tackle air quality

David Holt

London Sunrise February 18 2018

Yes