Public Health Interventions for Management of Hypertension and Vascular Risk Reduction in South Asia

The seminar will discuss the design and rollout of a trial*, which aims to evaluate the effectiveness of multicomponent interventions, versus the care that would normally be administered in rural communities in South Asia through the public healthcare system. The trial is viewed by policymakers as an important way forward for tackling non-communicable diseases (NCDs), and if shown to be effective and cost-effective, will provide a clear strategy for addressing hypertension and rising rates of NCDs in the region. Are there lessons for the UK?

Dr Tazeen Jafar is Professor of Health Services and Systems Research at Duke-National University of Singapore. Having studied medicine in Pakistan, doing her residency in Texas and obtaining an MPH from Harvard, she has since led many collaborative projects including 11 internationally-conducted trials regarding the progression of non-diabetic kidney disease. Her work facilitated recommendations by the US-National Kidney Foundation on the management of chronic kidney disease.

Funded by the NIH, Dr Jafar has extensive experience comparing data in national health surveys from Pakistan and the US. In Pakistan, she established a programme on chronic diseases including the Control of Blood Pressure & Risk Attenuation (COBRA) trial, as well as several projects related to lifestyle in children and adults. She has also served on several editorial boards, on the international advisory panel of Public Library of Medicine, and as a member of Wellcome Trust’s Population and Public Health funding committee. In 2012, she received the Boehringer Ingelheim Developing World Award from the International Society of Hypertension. Prof Jafar is the chief investigator of MRC/Wellcome Trust/Dfid funded COBRA-BPS in Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka.

Dr Aliya Naheed is a medical doctor and a health systems specialist with advance training in policy research. She has 22 years of research track record in a wide range of communicable and non-communicable diseases, mostly involving behavioural and therapeutic interventions, aimed at strengthening the local health systems. Her work in infectious disease epidemiology have established credible estimates of disease burden in children, and a few has been translated in to policies, including introduction of Hib and pneumococcal vaccines in children immunisation program, formulation of PCV10 vaccines, scaling up of street food safety intervention in urban cities, etc. She has edited a book on Bangladesh health system and its transitions for achieving MDG 4 published by the World Health Organization.

Currently she has been leading two large-scale randomized control trials for control of cardio-vascular diseases and type 2 diabetes. She has been awarded multiple research grants for studying  risk factor of myocardial infarction, causes of cancer deaths, care seeking for strokes, risk factors of diabetic retinopathy, double burden of  childhood malnutrition, and economic evaluations of various health innovations. As the Head of the Initiative for Non Communicable Diseases (NCD), Dr Naheed actively mentors a number of junior researchers in icddr,b and other institutions for building their capacities in implementation research in NCDs. She also leads a clinical research platform in Bangladesh, a joint venture with the British Medical Journal that aims at enhancing research capacities of the local clinicians and publishing local evidence in high impact international journals.