Blog posts

Harnessing technology to tackle undernutrition

A young boy with undernutrition eating an orange

Almost half of all deaths in children under the age of five are linked to undernutrition. Most of these occur in the developing world. There is therefore an urgent need to address this pressing issue which costs the lives of millions of children every year. And as detailed below, the answer is not as simple as providing more food.

In a new Gut review, led by IGHI lecturer Dr Alex Thompson, scientists explore the role that technology could play in improving understanding, management and prevention of this complex condition, with a focus on low- and middle-income countries.

We caught up with Dr Thompson to find out more. (more…)

Climate change is undermining people’s mental health – it’s time for action

Woman carrying child in flood water due to climate change
Image credit: Banjir Jakarta, World Meteorological Organization

I have spent the last 18 months encouraging effective international responses to COVID-19. I have learned that the coordinated and connected responses needed for responses to global threats are not easily achieved in today’s world. Yet unless nations can find ways to agree on the challenge, combine their responses and work willingly in synergy, success will be elusive.

Building the habit of working together is even more important when tackling climate change and its consequences. This particularly applies when exploring how changing climates affect people’s mental wellbeing.

There is indeed mounting evidence that climate change is affecting people’s minds as well as their bodies. The number who end their lives during extreme weather and climate events is on the increase. Following a climate-driven disaster, cases of psychological trauma can exceed those of physical injury by 40 to 1.

Yet the potent psychological effects of climate change are largely absent from the public and policy discourse. They need to be made tangible and accessible. This is even more important given the expected increase in the extent and severity of extreme weather all over the world.

The issue needs attention now because it has the potential to undermine the lives of millions of people. It needs professional bodies, universities, local authorities, governments and international organisations to act together now. If effective action is delayed, the scale of the challenge will increase sharply, as will the cost of action.

The Climate Cares team from Imperial’s Institute of Global Health Innovation and Grantham Institute has laid bare some of these issues in a major new review, released last week. The review sets out best how to support people whose mental wellbeing is undermined by changing climate. The proposed actions will enable them to live their lives to the full, enjoying good mental health. There is a clear appreciation of who needs to act, and how they should do so. Actions should be implemented with a view to their being adapted to local context and reviewed regularly.

Implementation can be challenging as those most at risk of climate-related mental ill-health often have limited power and agency and are hard to reach. Those who are at risk should be incorporated into any response. As health and social care systems adapt to their specific needs, they will make an even more important contribution to fair, healthy and happier futures for all.

Professor David Nabarro is co-director of the Institute of Global Health Innovation and WHO Special Envoy on COVID-19. 

Download the report, ‘The impact of climate change on mental health and emotional wellbeing: current evidence and implications for policy and practice’, by clicking this link. 

IGHI people: Meet Professor Ferdinando Rodriguez y Baena, Co-Director, Hamlyn Centre

IGHI is home to a team of staff who are skilled and passionate about their roles. Our talented people are the reason we’re able to tackle some of the most pressing global health challenges through cutting-edge innovation.

We’re giving you the chance to get to know our staff a little better and learn about what motivates them in their roles, who inspires them and what they like to get up to outside of IGHI.

Meet Ferdinando Rodriguez y Baena, co-director of IGHI’s Hamlyn Centre and Professor of Medical Robotics. Find out more about Ferdinando’s passion for engineering and medicine and his love for food!

What does your role involve?

As the engineering co-director of the Hamlyn Centre, I work with Professor Ara Darzi to deliver the strategy we have set out, keep our finances in check, and look for new ways to expand our remit, reach and impact.

What attracted you to the role?

The opportunity to influence a research field that is close to my heart. I was also attracted by the chance to build tighter links between engineering and medicine, which I think are key to understanding what is needed to translate research successfully and achieve clinical impact.

How would your colleagues describe you in three words?

Caring, funny, and with integrity.

What’s your biggest achievement to date – personal or professional?

The impossible question… remaining sane while juggling family life and career in a working couple household!

Who inspires you?

Amazing people that no one knows about.

If you had a superpower, what would it be?

Definitely teletransportation!

What’s your guilty pleasure?

Definitely food! Mrs and I are definitely foodies. Was it not for my discipline and self-control, I would most definitely be rolling into work!

Collaborating globally for better healthcare


Healthcare is for all.

Here at the Institute of Global Health Innovation, we know there’s no better way to make progress towards this than working together.

Global collaboration allows us to learn from each other’s experiences and successes and can result in unique solutions which carefully consider cultural and systemic differences.

To mark World Health Day, we’re shining a light on five IGHI projects, where working with international partners has brought tremendous benefits when creating innovative responses to healthcare challenges.

(more…)

COVID-19 reveals the injustices that underlie health inequities: what are the implications?

Person receiving vaccine

The COVID-19 pandemic has laid bare the social injustices that are holding back equity in health and care.

People living in poverty and deprivation are some of the hardest to reach and easiest to leave behind.

This means poor people are absorbing much of the brunt of the pandemic’s impacts, faced with challenges that leave them among the worst affected by the virus and exacerbating the struggles they already carry. (more…)

How seldom heard groups are helping us shape our research priorities – learnings so far

Person rubbing alcohol gel onto hands

Last summer, the Institute of Global Health Innovation, Imperial College Health Partners and Imperial College London were successful in being named as one of the five Network Data Labs (NDL) across the UK, funded by the Health Foundation.

This is an extremely exciting opportunity for our partnership. We have the opportunity to work with our local community in North West London to identify research priorities for health and care since COVID-19, and translate those findings into practice – helping to reduce inequalities.

In North West London we are also very fortunate to have access to a linked data set, known as Discover. This provides information from primary care, acute, mental health, community and social care. It gives us the unique opportunity to delve deeper into health inequalities, and use data to try and discover how communities have been affected by the pandemic.

Our first research project has been an analysis of people recommended to shield by the government, and how COVID-19 has affected them. North West London has a very diverse population in terms of income and ethnicity. We therefore wanted to be sure we were working with a range of patients and the public to help inform our research priorities. Two groups we worked closely with are the Imperial Research Partners group, a diverse group of 11 patients and carers, and also Community Voices, a group of community leaders linked to groups representing people from socially disadvantaged backgrounds, those who don’t have English as a first language and a range of other seldom heard communities.

Identifying priorities and concerns

Back in November around 50 people from Community Voices, 40% of whom were from a minority ethnic background and 40% who identified as having a disability, attended a design workshop to help consider two questions. 1) What changes have you noticed in the way that health and care are supported and delivered in North West London since COVID-19? And 2) In terms of the impact COVID-19 has on health and care in the UK, what are our local North West London community priorities for health and care? What are people most worried about and why?

There were two key elements that helped to ensure the workshop could be as productive as possible:

  • Ensuring we had plenty of time to explain the Discover data in plain English, and to allow questions around data security.
  • Having an analyst involved with each breakout session to help ensure emerging themes were issues we could analyse within our data.

A screenshot from the virtual workshop involving seldom heard groups

The impact of COVID-19 on mental health

After the workshop, we collated all of the themes that were raised and the analysts checked whether these themes could be answered using the Discover data set. Seven themes were put into a prioritisation survey. To reach as many North West Londoners as possible, we sent the survey to all the Community Voices network, the workshop attendees and other local community groups, via Twitter, Instagram, the Nextdoor App and Facebook groups for local COVID-19 Mutual Aid Groups. 112 community members completed the survey and the seven themes ranked in this order of importance:

  1. Diagnosis of other conditions
  2. Underserved communities (e.g. people on low incomes)
  3. Mental health
  4. Local availability of services
  5. Access to video consultations
  6. Social and community care
  7. Worse COVID-19 outcomes for minority ethnic groups.

We submitted these findings to the Health Foundation, along with the other NDL members. The next overarching topic we will be working on is the impact of COVID-19 on mental health – one of the top three priorities selected locally. Working with local clinicians and drawing on evidence from recent research and engagement with people with lived experience of mental health, including those from under-represented groups, the Health Foundation have decided our next focus will be on inequalities in children and young people’s access to mental healthcare.

Using data to drive real change

We know the pandemic has particularly impacted children and young people from socially disadvantaged backgrounds, particularly in terms of mental health service provision. So we will use Discover and other data sets to delve deeper into why access to services is so fragmented at the moment. We will also work with young people from North West London with lived experience of mental health conditions. We will discuss what is important to them in health and social care since COVID-19, as well as carers, families and teachers.

Building on learnings from IGHI’s co-produced CCopeY study, which has looked at the impact of lockdown on young people’s mental health, we’ll be making these sessions as interactive and as accessible as possible. Our intention is to use our findings – from both our engagement and our data analysis – to help effect real change locally in North West London. We’re so excited to start this work. And we’re looking forward to sharing our learnings as we progress through the journey.

For more information, or to get involved, please do contact me at a.lawrence-jones@imperial.ac.uk

By Anna Lawrence-Jones, PPIE lead for the Network Data Lab and IGHI