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GACD sets initial priorities

Alliance to focus on hypertension, tobacco use and cooking-stove pollution

Posted in Government action on 16th November, 2009 | no responses

The Global Alliance for Chronic Disease, an alliance of institutions that between them collectively manage an estimated 80 percent of all public health research funding worldwide, has announced its first targets for action in a coordinated research programme addressing chronic non-communicable diseases.

These initial priorities, which were set at the GACD’s first scientific summit in New Delhi earlier in November, are:

  • lowering hypertension
  • reducing tobacco use
  • reducing the indoor pollution caused by crude cooking stoves in developing countries.

The research will focus particularly on the needs of low- and middle-income countries, and low-income populations in more developed countries.
Several scoping initiatives to prepare future joint research related to obesity and diabetes have been commissioned. These will be led by the Alliance’s acting Executive Director, Professor David Matthews of Oxford University.

Alliance members also agreed in New Delhi to fund a programme to identify the world’s ‘Grand Challenges in Mental Health’ (following the Grand Challenges process that led to the creation of the Alliance – click here >>), led by the US National Institute for Mental Health, in association with Alliance Board Chair Abdallah Daar and Vikram Patel, of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and the Sangath Centre in Goa, India.
Canada’s International Development Research Centre will host the Alliance secretariat.

Source: Press release, 16 November 2009 (click here >>).

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