King's Global Health Institute Launches
King’s Global Health Institute launched last week at Bush House. The Institute will act as a focal point for the growing community of researchers, educators and students working in global health at King’s.
Areas of focus for the Institute will include healthcare delivery in the context of continuing care, environment, conflict and health. These areas fit well with the expanded agenda of the new UN Sustainable Development Goals, such as Universal Health Coverage.
With more than 100 academics and post-doctoral researchers affiliated to KGHI from across King’s health, arts and sciences schools, the Institute will be well placed to deliver a truly interdisciplinary approach to research and education.
President & Principal Professor Ed Byrne welcomed 120 guests including Professor Chris Whitty, Chief Scientific Advisor at the Department of Health and Social Care. Professor Whitty delivered the event’s opening address that focused on the UK’s contribution to global health and the areas where King’s broad expertise could make a telling difference.
Students, academics and partners from the Institute gave a three-minute showcase about their work.
Professor Cath Sackley, Head of the Department of Population Health Sciences, talked about her career in stroke rehabilitation research, emphasising the importance of involving stroke survivors in setting the research agenda, working in partnership with patients and carers and working as part of a multidisciplinary team. She explained how she was very fortunate to come and work with Charles Wolfe and his international programme. She is now looking forward to working with King's Sierra Leone Partnership to develop stroke care and physiotherapy training.
Dr Oliver Johnson, King’s Centre for Global Health & Health Partnerships, spoke about founding King’s Sierra Leone Partnership in 2013. After just a year a small outbreak of Ebola was reported in neighbouring Guinea that spread rapidly. Over the following 18 months Oliver and colleagues established six Ebola units that managed about 1,200 Ebola patients and set up the Freetown Command Centre to coordinate patients and ambulances across the city. Oliver, having just written the Centre’s ten-year is keen to look to the future:
“The new King’s Global Health Institute is bringing academics and students from across the University together in a really exciting way, emphasising equitable partnerships and capacity building in its mission to strengthen health care delivery whilst leaving no one behind. In particular, it’s going to facilitate more widespread collaboration with the King’s Global Health Partnerships in Somaliland, Sierra Leone and the DRC – which sit within the School of Population Health & Environmental Health Sciences – creating new opportunities for innovative and interdisciplinary education and research."
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