New research centre to focus on global child and maternal health

The Institute of Global Health Innovation welcomes the launch of their new research centre which could help thousands of families across the globe.

The Centre for International Child Health (CICH), led by Imperial’s Professor Beate Kampmann, was launched last Friday to a packed lecture theatre at the St. Mary’s campus in Paddington.

The new centre, which is the seventh centre within Imperial’s Institute of Global Health Innovation (IGHI), aims to move away from working in isolated research silos with a view to facilitate the interactions of research groups already active in international child health across-faculties.

On introducing the event, Professor Beate Kampmann, Director of the CICH said “Globally, a shocking 7.6 million children died last year, which equates to 21,000 children per day and an unacceptable 14 children per minute.  The aim for the CICH is to provide a unifying voice for international child health and to join up existing global child health research activities within the college and through our national and international partner organisations”. 

During the event, we heard from a wide range of speakers from Imperial based across the Departments of Paediatrics, Disease Epidemiology, Engineering and the Partnership for Child Development, who introduced their own current research within a range of topics and diseases and a focus on child health. These included malaria, tuberculosis, HIV, vaccine preventable diseases, Ebola and emerging infectious diseases, engineering for global child health, provision of health interventions via school programs, and assessing the contributions from medical education to the development of a global health workforce.  

The keynote lecture was presented by Professor Joy Lawn from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

The keynote lecture was presented by Professor Joy Lawn from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, who talked about the move from the Millennium Goals for maternal and child health to the Sustainable Development Goals and what this means for the health of women and children. 

 In his opening remarks, Director of IGHI, Professor the Lord Ara Darzi said “I am delighted to welcome the CICH as a centre within IGHI.  By utilising the expertise within our already established centres of excellence and through working together to join up current research in global child health, we are better able to create a more focused, well informed and collaborative way of working.  IGHI is very much committed to improving health for children, mothers and families across the world and we are very much looking forward to working with Professor Kampmann on this new and exciting Centre of excellence”.  

Watch the event
If you were unable to make the event in person, you can watch the full event in its entirety here.

 Photos
All the photos from the event can be found here.

Find out more
To find out more about the Centre for International Child Health, visit their website here.