Category: Events

WHOCC members participated in a leadership and health management training in Nairobi

On the 13th of September, members of the WHO Collaborating Centre left to Nairobi, Kenya to conduct a one-week course on Leadership and Health Management. The training, held in partnership with UNICEF Somalia Country Office, targeted high-level health officials of the Somali Ministry of Health, as well as WHO and UNICEF country officials.

The WHOCC leadership training aims to provide current national, regional and local leaders and decision makers the necessary management and leadership skills to cope with every day as well as crisis situations. By becoming better leaders, health officials will be able to contribute to the improvement of the Somali health system and to provide more effective services to the population.

Throughout the course and by means of very hands-on exercises, participants developed leadership skills such as delegation, team work, or evidence-based decision making. Each day was dedicated to a specific area of health management: from leadership skills to quality of care, management in health, policy and strategy, and governance. After receiving their certificates, participants returned to Somalia, with the skills and tools to inspire and influence those around them.

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IGHI Autumn Update

Student Challenges Competition 2014 – a chance for students to win up to £5k in funding towards their global health research project.  Applications deadline: Midnight 28th November 2014.

student challenges

Maternal care in Somaliland – IGHI welcomed special guest speaker, Edna Adan Ismail, who presented a seminar on the issues affecting maternal and child health in Somaliland, Africa.

Edna Ismail

IGHI’s Helix Centre publish new End-of-Life Care guidance apps – the HELIX Centre has released Apps on the iTunes and Google Play app stores to provide End of Life Care Guidance to health workers on the front line.

Helix app for news splash

The World Innovation Summit for Health (WISH) Invites Innovators To Showcase Their Projects at the 2015 Summit – WISH has announced its first ‘Innovation Showcases’ competition.

innov showcase 2

WISH joins forces with Health Affairs to launch September issue – ten articles inspired by the World Innovation Summit for Health featured in September issue of Health Affairs

Health Affairs

Social networking can help people lose weight – social networking programmes designed to help people lose weight could play a role in the global fight against obesity, according to research.  This was one of the ten articles featured in the September issue of Health Affairs.

The Commonwealth Fund’s U.K Harkness Fellowship Scheme – The Centre for Health Policy to coordinate applications on behalf of Imperial & Imperial College NHS Trust, nominating 1 candidate per organisation.

 

Jo Seed
Communications and Events Officer
Institute of Global Health Innovation

Call for workshop ideas for the Faculty Teaching Forum

Dear all,

You are probably aware that the faculty teaching forum will be held this year on Thursday 27 November  12.45–5pm in the Glenister Lecture Theatre on the Charing Cross campus.

It is open to all staff who teach at Imperial and as ever promises to be a stimulating afternoon where we can learn together and enhance our knowledge of education. There is a theme of resilience and compassion and there will be an afternoon of talks and workshops together with a panel debate on “How do we promote resilience in our students?”

We are keen to make it relevant to you, our teachers and have some ideas from the feedback received last year.
However we would like to give you the chance to contribute to the event by running a workshop for your colleagues on any topic – not necessarily related to the theme. Current workshops include, “how to improve your lecturing skills” and “teaching on the run: how to teach in a busy clinic” as well as mindfulness  and a workshop on resilience vs compassion in our students.
The workshop would be a one hour session from 3.30 to 4.30 for a mixed group of approximately ten participants (clinicians, academics and support staff) and should be designed to be interactive.

Please contact either Professor Karim Meeran k.meeran@imperial.ac.uk, Dr Jo Harris joanne.harris@imperial.ac.uk, Dr Sonia Kumar Sonia.kumar@imperial.ac.uk or Dr Graham Easton g.easton@imperial.ac.uk  with any ideas you have for a workshop and feel free to discuss them with us if they are still at an early stage.

Due to lack of space we will not unfortunately be able to use all your ideas but possibly we can feed them forward to other events.

 

IGHI Summer Update

Disruptive Innovations in Life Sciences –  IGHI Annual Lecture – Dr Noubar Afeyan of Flagship Ventures presents IGHI’s annual lecture.

IGHI1

Sowerby conference: the power of medical records – Electronic health records as important as the thermometer and the stethoscope, says new report from IGHI’s Centre for Health Policy.

IGHI2

Imperial NHS Trust staff rise to the challenge to improve patient safety – 11 teams of Imperial NHS Trust staff pitched at the Dragon’s Den style Patient Safety Challenge for a chance to win up to £30,000 funding.

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Evolving Medical Robotics with the Hamlyn Symposium 2014 – Over 250 surgeons & engineers gathered at the annual Hamlyn Symposium last week to try their hand at the latest developments in medical robotics.

IGHi4

 

 

Jo Seed
Communications and Events Officer
Institute of Global Health Innovation

 

Institute of Global Health Innovation April update

IGHI

  • New Adjunct and Visiting Professors announced. Forming effective collaborations is important to the Institute of Global Health Innovation (IGHI). By working in partnership with established academics, policy makers and business leaders, we can make better-informed decisions and obtain a broader understanding of the issues facing global health today. IGHI are pleased to announce our new Adjunct and Visiting Professors who have recently been appointed within the institute.

 

Jo Seed
Communications and Events Officer
Institute of Global Health Innovation

Babies and Bumps New Parents’ Network

New parents and parents-to-be are invited to meet other Imperial colleagues in a similar situation for informal networking and mutual support over tea/coffee.

HR will be present to answer any questions in relation to maternity and paternity leave.

For further information of network meeting dates and details of who to contact, please view the relevant campus link below:

MRC Centre for Outbreak Analysis & Modelling participate in World Health Day event at Houses of Parliament, coordinated by Malaria No More

MNM

This experimental event will be held in the Attlee Suite, Portcullis House, from 17.30 to 19.30 on 7 April 2014 – World Health Day, which this year is themed on vector-borne diseases.

Members of the malaria group within the MRC Centre for Outbreak Analysis & Modelling at Imperial College London will encourage parliamentarians to investigate the implications of future malaria investment using two custom-built modelling games. The games will challenge attendees to determine the best way to spend the global malaria budget and to explore the implications of changing the global level of investment in malaria control.The Malaria No More goal is to engage new parliamentarians and motivate existing supportive parliamentarians for the coming critical year in the malaria campaign.

mosquitoThe aim is to build a large group of parliamentarians who have had direct experiential contact with the major malaria messages (e.g. achievement of last decade/cost effectiveness/vision of future).

The event will be attended by MPs including Jeremy Lefroy, Stephen O’Brien and Fiona O’Donnell together with journalists, DFID staff, SPADs, researchers, and APPMG members. MPs who attend will also be given a chance of a photo opportunity with Malaria No More’s own Mozzie Man and a press release relating to the number of lives their constituency has saved and protected from malaria.

Visit our website to find out more information about the malaria work undertaken in the MRC Centre for Outbreak Analysis and Modelling.

Alison Reynolds
Diagnostics Modelling Consortium

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Imperial Confidence in Concept Showcase Event – 17th Feb 2014

The second call of the Imperial Confidence in Concept (ICiC) was launched in January 2014. Building on the success of the 2013 ICiC scheme and NIHR Imperial Biomedical Research Centre (BRC) / Imperial Innovations Therapeutic Primer Fund, the College has received further funding from the Medical Research Council (MRC), as well as additional support from NIHR Biomedical Research Centre at The Royal Marsden and The Institute of Cancer Research, to continue this scheme. The ICiC scheme provides pilot funding to bridge the potential gap between discovery research and well-developed applications for MRC Biomedical Catalyst: Developmental Pathway Funding Scheme support.

Confidence in Concept event 17.02.2014   051

The annual ICiC event was held on Monday 17th February in The Great Hall on South Kensington Campus. This year’s event was focussed on devices and diagnostics and was a great success, attended by approximately 100 academics across the College. Attendees included recipients of awards from last year’s scheme and early career researchers who showcased their ICiC-funded work.

This cross-College event had a wide range of speakers including representatives from the Faculties of Engineering (Prof Andrew Amis), Medicine (Prof George Hanna), and Natural Sciences (Profs Tony Cass and Paul French) as well as our collaborators at the NIHR Biomedical Research Centre at The Royal Marsden and The Institute of Cancer Research (Prof Stan Kaye, Drs Nicola Valeri and Gert Attard).

The talks were engaging, informative and stimulating and special thanks goes to our external speakers Dr Helen Lee (University of Cambridge) and Dr Ray Bacon (CEO, TRIG1) for sharing their experiences of device and diagnostic development for commercial use with their talks entitled ‘Challenges in developing diagnostics for resource-limited settings’ (Lee) and ‘Commercial…is not a dirty word’ (Bacon).

The deadline for applications was 5th March with shortlisting due to take place at the end of March and final funding decisions to be made in May.

Dr Kimberley Trim
Research Strategy Officer
Faculty of Medicine

WHO Collaborating Centre – March Update

  • WHO Collaborating Centre (CC) has launched its new website: http://imperialwhocc.org/ which provides regular updates on the Centre’s activities.
  • The WHO CC training course on Advanced Academic Skills is running for its sixth time. The coarse is designed to train participants in modern teaching methods, student assessments; both undergraduate and poste graduates and research methodologies. In addition the course focuses on Academic leadership styles, communication skills and curriculum development.  13 participants are currently attending the course from Iraq and Libya.
  • The WHO CC’s Health system Development Course, as part of the Masters of Public Health (MPH), is planning a trip to Geneva in mid-June to visit the WHO Head Quarters and the UN. The aim of the trip is to introduce the students to both Global Health institutions and to expose them to the dynamics of work on an international scale.
  • The WHO CC’s paper on ‘Tobacco Control efforts in countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC)’ has been accepted by the Eastern Mediterranean Health Journal, and will be published in the upcoming issue. The work reports the findings for the empirical analysis of a multidimensional investigation into the current state of tobacco use; governance and national commitment for control; and current intervention frameworks in place to reduce the use of tobacco among populations in GCC countries.  It further reviews structured policy-oriented interventions that represent government actions: to strengthen, implement and manage tobacco control programmes and to address the growing epidemic of tobacco use.
  • A delegation from Imperial College London’s School of Public Health comprised of Professor Elio Riboli-Director, School of Public Health, Professor Azeem Majeed-Head of Primary Care and Public Health Department, Professor Salman Rawaf-Director World Health Organization Centre, and Dr Josip Car-Director of Global eHealth Unit are leaving on an official visit to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia on the 14th of March. The one week visit will be with their counter parts in King Saud University in Riyadh, and aims to build collaborations and links between both institutions; particularly in research generation and capacity building.
  • WHO CC is working in project partnership with UNICEF. The aim is to deliver on Advanced Leadership and Management Course in Nairobi for various Somali Government representatives.  The course will cover many topics that enable health mangers and decision-makers, in today’s challenging health systems and services, to obtain the skills and adopt the right tools to inspire and influence those around them.

Dr Sondus Hassounah and Ela Augustyniak
WHO Collaborating Centre

Institute of Global Health Innovation (IGHI) news round-up

IGHI participates in the World Economic Forum 2014

Global leaders join forces with academics from IGHI at an IdeasLab session at the 2014 World Economic Forum.

The World Economic Forum brings together top business leaders, international politicians, academics and journalists to discuss the most pressing challenges facing the world. IdeasLab sessions allow experts from the world’s leading universities to address specific issues of importance with a high profile audience.

Lord Darzi receives Qatari honour

On 16 January, His Highness the Emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani  conferred upon Lord Darzi the Sash of Independence in recognition of his continuing contribution to developing the health sector in Qatar.

IGHI PhD application deadline – 2 March 2014

The PhD programme is open to UK/EU and overseas students. The funding is for three years and covers both fees and living expenses. Research progress is assessed each year and continuing receipt of funds will depend on satisfactory academic progress.

 

8th UK and Ireland Occupational & Environmental Epidemiology Meeting

Thursday 3 April 2014 – National Heart and Lung Institute (Imperial College), London SW3

Course description

Suitable for those with research interests in occupational and environmental epidemiology.  Early career researchers are particularly welcome.  Held each year from 2005, the aim is to enable cross-fertilization of research interests between those with an interest in occupational and environmental epidemiology.  Various topics are examined in a fairly informal environment, and encourage discussion and collaborative networking.

Registration details

Registration fee: £50; rising to £75 after ‘early bird’ closes on Friday 21 February (midnight).

Registration link Online Registration Form.  This form and the provisional programme, registration/abstract submission details, including the submission form, are accessed via our website: http://lungsatwork.org.uk/courses.php . Please complete and save the abstract submission form to your PC, and then e-mail it to Magda Wheatley at m.wheatley@imperial.ac.uk.

Keynote speakers

  • Mr Robie Kamanyire, Public Health England, will speak on the subject of shale gas extraction (also known as ‘fracking’).
  • Dr Ruth Travis, University of Oxford, Cancer Epidemiology Unit, will speak on the subject of shift work.
  • Dr Martie van Tongeren, Institute of Occupational Medicine, Edinburgh, will speak nanotechnology.

We are very grateful for the support of Public Health England and the MRC-PHE Centre for Environment and Health, and for the Colt Foundation’s endorsement of this meeting.

Magda Wheatley
Departmental Administrator
Department of Occupational and Environmental Medicine – National Heart & Lung Institute

 

Academic Unit of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry – January Update

Awards

European Psychiatric Association

Dr Mari Dominguez (Honorary Lecturer) was awarded the EPA Research Prize in the ‘Child and Adolescent Psychiatry’ category for the best scientific paper published in 2013, and will be attending the 22nd European Congress of Psychiatry in Munich in March.

Publications

A paper published by Dr Mari Dominguez (Dominguez, M-d-G., Fisher, HL., Major, B., Chisholm, B., et al (in press). Duration of untreated psychosis in adolescents: ethnic differences and clinical profiles. Schizophrenia Research, doi/10.1016/j.schres.2013.08.018)   garnered national press attention:

The Evening Standard (31.10.13) carried a piece on the study highlighting that the misattribution of symptoms to cannabis use rather than psychosis can lead to delays in adolescents getting the appropriate treatment.

Nicole Hickey
Academic Unit of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry

The Great Debate 2013 – Raising Standards in Hip and Knee Arthroplasty

On the 20th and 21st June, the MSk Lab ran the Great Debate for the second time after taking the gauntlet on from industry who had organised it in previous years. Professor Cobb is one of the founders of the meeting 7 years ago and chaired the event since its inception – so last year it was great to finally bring it in house.

The Great Debate is a two day interactive conference which gives the attendees opportunities to vote on topical issues in hip and knee arthroplasty, as well as question the faculty on controversial themes in the session debates. Last year the time of year it was held changed as well as a move of venue to The Mermaid Conference Centre. 2013 also brought some changes – the avatar/logo was given a new lease of life and breakout sessions run by industry were added each day. We had the support of 19 Industry sponsors, a 25 strong international faculty with renowned speakers joining us from; Australia, USA, Germany, Italy and the UK.

“The big issues debated this year included hip bearings, and partial knee replacements competing with top of the range total knees. In the hip bearing debate, ceramics were clear winners, although interestingly resurfacing is not dead. Almost 80% of the surgeons thought there was still a place for the procedure, and accepted the functional gains that it brought.

In the knee debate, huge interest was found in the compartmental knee approach, with most speakers expressing dissatisfaction at the joint registry and its inability to report poorly functioning but unrevised total knees”

Having almost finished dotting all the t’s and crossing all the I’s to finalise this year’s event, we may just have time for a cuppa before starting to plan The Great Debate 2014. With such good feedback – how could we not!

“I have attended three times since 2006, I think this is the best joint arthroplasty meeting in the UK”

Tweet us or follow us @Great_Debate_UK, which we will be using to try and keep some debate going, accept suggestions as to topics for discussion, and provide details of who to expect to see, where and when in 2014.

Zoe Williams
Public Engagement and Patient Involvement Manager
MSk Lab

Invitation to Imperial College Healthcare Charity Concert: 25 July 2013

An evening concert has been organised on Thursday, 25 July in support of the Imperial College Healthcare Charity.

After three weeks of applications and two weeks of auditions, some of the best musicians from Imperial College and Royal Academy of Music have been chosen to perform for you.

Tickets are priced at just £10 and include welcome drinks. Additional donations are welcome. All proceeds will be go towards improving the quality of patient care and safety for NHS hospitals.

The concert website is available at http://www.ruzannagulakyan.wix.com/musicforthesoul, where you can find out information about the programme, musicians, venue, registrations and more.

If you have any questions about the concert, please contact Ruzanna Gulakyan.

Ruzanna Gulakyan
Hamlyn Centre Administrator
Department of Surgery and Cancer

Department of Medicine Young Scientist Day 2013

The Department of Medicine held its third annual Young Scientist Day (details of the 2012 young scientist day), chaired by Professor Wendy Barclay, on 24 April 2013. The event attracted large numbers of research students, postdocs and academic staff who had the unique opportunity to hear and see the range of research being undertaken across the Department.

Over 70 posters were displayed by research students in their 2nd and 3rd years from across the Department. Two Departmental panels of judges, comprising academic staff (Dr Kevin Murphy, Professor Julian Dyson and Dr Ramesh Wigneshweraraj) and Student Reps (Nathali Grageda, Lauren Capron, William Jackson and Ming-Shih Hwang), judged the posters.

The event was formally opened at 1400 by Professor Shiranee Sriskandan. Professor Sriskandan informed everyone of recent grant successes of the Department’s PhD students and Post Docs as follows:

3 successful Junior Research Fellow (JRF) applications, 2013:

  • Christopher Rhodes
  • Kathleen McCaffrey
  • Claire Turner

2 MRC Centenary Awards, 2013:

  • Nicki Lynskey
  • Anna Simmonds

Miscellaneous Awards:

  • Paul Turner (Post Doc), Paediatrics, successful in acquiring an MRC clinician/scientist award
  • Kelsey Jones (PhD student), Paediatrics, currently in the 3rd year of his PhD research based in Kenya, obtained a Gates foundation grant. This is to institute a trial of an innovative nutritional reconstitution formula for severely malnourished children.
  • Ben Bleasdale, PhD student, Virology, won 1st prize for his scientific essay in the Royal College of Science Unions Science Challenge, 2013. He was presented with his prize at the House of Lords by Lord Winston.
  • Moira Cheung, PhD student, Molecular Endocrinology, won the 2013 International Conference on Children’s Bone Health New Investigator Award
  • Apostolos Gogakos, PhD student, Molecular Endocrinology, won the  2013 British Endocrine Societies British Thyroid Association Prize
  • John Logan, Post Doc, Molecular Endocrinology, awarded  a £10,000 Society for Endocrinology Early Career Award in 2012/2013

Professor Barclay expertly Chaired the afternoon, introducing the postdocs’ high quality scientific presentations. The floor was handed to five postdocs who had been selected to orally present their research:

  • Nicki Lynskey, Division of Infectious Diseases:
    A Molecular Basis for Group A Streptococcal Hyper-encapsulation
  • David Bernardo Ordiz, Division of Infectious Diseases:
    Immune compartmentalization in the gastrointestinal tract: differences between ascending and descending human colon
  • Ana Cehovin, Division of Infectious Diseases:
    Specific DNA   recognition mediated by type IV pilins
  • Anna Herasimtschuk, Division of Immunology:
    Therapeutic immunisation in conjunction with IL-2, GM-CSF and rhGH improves CD4 T-cell counts and reduces immune activation in cART-treated HIV-1+patients: a phase I clinical study
  • Amy Birch, Division of Brain Sciences:
    The ablation of reactive astrocytes in APP23 mice induces spatial memory decline & increases amyloid plaque load

Following the above oral presentations, Ms Katie Anders, from the Postdoc Development Centre, drew everyone’s attention to the  Postdoc Development Centre and the ongoing support and development opportunities it offers to postdocs. Dr Claire Turner, recently awarded a JRF, then joined Professor Barclay at the poster and oral presentation prize announcement as follows:

Prizes were given to all Post Docs who had been selected to give an oral presentation.

Post Docs with Dr Claire Turner

  • 1st prizes for posters were given to Ian Harrison, Katherine McCullough, Mark Reglinska and Korina Li
  • 2nd prizes for posters were given to Yuliya Nigmatullina and Catherine Ong

Prizes for posters

At the end of the afternoon, refreshments were served in the breakout space providing an opportunity for networking and poster viewing. Thanks go to everyone who supported this event. Special thanks to the Postdoc Development Centre for financially supporting the event. Plans are now underway to build on its strengths to ensure its continuing success on an annual basis.

Hayley Kendall
Education Research Manager
Department of Medicine

Sixth The Union Europe Region Conference on TB and Lung Diseases – event report

Lord Boateng encourages The Union Europe Region to unite in partnerships in its response to the challenges of TB and public health

Load Boateng speaking at The Union Europe Conference
Load Boateng speaking at The Union Europe Conference

The European Region was energised by Lord Boateng, former Chief Secretary to the UK Treasury and High Commissioner to South Africa, who spoke of the best practices in working with governments to harness political will and resources to respond to the challenges of TB and Public Health at The Union Europe Conference held at Imperial College in London on 4-6 July 2012. Lord Boateng said about The Union in his speech “your mission is a great one. You bring huge knowledge, experience and wisdom to the fight”. He encouraged The Union to “go back to its origins” and continue to “develop a response based on the principle of partnership” and engage locally to reach “the movers and shakers on the ground” to achieve successful health interventions.

Lord Boateng was joined by an exceptional panel of plenary speakers in Professors Ajit Lalvani from Imperial College, Christopher Dye from World Health Organisation and Dr David Heymann from the Health Protection Agency and more than 40 speakers from across Europe and beyond.  Nearly 450 delegates from sixty-one countries participated in a productive 3 day conference in London, which was host to almost one hundred attendees from Eastern Europe.

Subjects for symposia included TB in big cities, TB and Migration, Drug resistant TB, TB in the elderly and in Children, TB immunology and vaccines, Latent TB infection, HIV and mycobacterial diseases, Tobacco control, nursing, advocacy and civil society, New drug development in TB, hot topics in lower respiratory tract infection, COPD in Europe and tackling TB in poorly resourced but high burden settings. Poster sessions which were held on two of the three days added to the sharing of experiences and provided an avenue for informative discussion and debate, as well as post-graduate sessions held on the first day.

Group discussing issues during poster session
Group discussing issues during poster session

Professor Peter Davies, the newly serving President of The Union Europe Region was extremely pleased with the outcomes of the conference. Professor Davies commented “all symposia and post-graduate sessions were excellent and stimulated many questions and healthy debate from the highly participatory audience. We hope participants will be able to build upon new ideas, partnerships and networks formed from their attendance”.  The conference was supported by a number of sponsors and exhibitors without whom the conference would not have taken place, especially the host joint-organisers Health Protection Agency and The Union Europe Office.

A feature of the conference was the simultaneous translation offered in Russian in the main conference hall, which allowed further engagement and interaction by a large delegation from countries including Russia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan.

The Organising Committee hope that all who attended felt it was a highly successful conference and looks forward to continuing to advance partnerships across the European region and beyond.

Prepared by the Organising Committee of The Union Europe Conference

Dept of Medicine Young Scientist Day 2012

The Department of Medicine held its annual Young Scientist Day on 23 April 2012. The event attracted large numbers of research students, postdocs and academic staff who had the unique opportunity to hear and see the range of research being undertaken across the Department.

Over 100 posters were displayed by research students from across the Department. A Departmental panel judged the posters and awarded first, second and third prizes respectively to:

  • 1st Mika Falck-Hansen, Kennedy Institute
  • 2nd M S Cheung, Investigative Medicine
  • 3rd Richard Lawrenson, Infectious Diseases and Immunity
  • 3rd Chris Grice, Microbiology

The event was formally opened at 2pm by Professor Gavin Screaton who welcomed everyone and presented the Department’s annual teaching award to Professor Jackie de Belleroche in recognition of her extensive teaching commitments in both undergraduate and postgraduate Neuroscience.

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