Imperial launch new Centre to bring together health researchers in Africa

Professor Kathryn Maitland introduces a new Centre of Excellence within IGHI.

The Centre, which officially launches today on Africa Day, is a virtual Centre focused around website and aims to bring together Imperial’s scientists and engineers working across the African continent on a diverse range of health and environmental research programmes. 

The inspiration for this IGHI Centre came from Imperial’s Professor Kathryn Maitland who is leading on this new initiative.  Kath lives and works in Africa and was aware of Imperial’s huge wealth of African health and environment research taking place within the college.  However, throughout her years as a researcher, she has come to realise that there was no single resource on the Imperial website that captures this diversity or scope of our work in Africa.  ICCARE intends to bridge this gap. 

Imperial conducts integrated programmes encompassing all aspects human health at the interface of humans and environment that have made major contributions to regional and global health, in particular the translation of research into policy and practice.  ICCARE aims to provide a platform on which to assemble information about this research, education and policy (engagement) and synthesises it into recognisable and logical themes.  The ICCARE website highlights the scope and diversity of work and engagement, which is in no means comprehensive and aims to be continually updated with our recent outputs.    It will provide a portal via newsfeeds and publications for our partners to publicise their latest research outputs or awards for rapid dissemination, discussion and uptake of new ideas and findings.

The centre will also utilise IGHI’s Monthly Global Health Forums in which to highlight key challenges being addressed by our work in Africa. The Forums will focus upon particular health or environmental challenges to encourage dialogue between researchers with different backgrounds, a north-south and south-south exchange, cross-fertilisation of ideas and to enhance translational research. 

The ICCARE website will act as an important portal for Imperial students to obtain information on relevant courses, scholarships, awards and events. 

ICCARE will make use of IGHI’s social media channels in order to disseminate research findings and initiate discussion and collaboration and would therefore facilitate the development of interdisciplinary partnerships, drawing on the wide range of facilities, skills and expertise within the college. 

Director of ICCARE, Professor Kathryn Maitland said “As a researcher in Africa for 16 years, I really struggled to find researchers with the same research interests as myself at Imperial.  I knew that there was a huge diversity of work ongoing within the college but none of it had been assembled in a logical thematic way.  That’s where ICCARE comes in.  We would love to hear from Imperial staff and students with an interest in African research, so do get in touch if you would like to be involved”.  

IGHI Director Professor the Lord Ara Darzi said “IGHI is delighted to host ICCARE.  Here within the institute, we are always looking for synergies and new ways of doing things.  We pride ourselves on working in a multidisciplinary, collaborative way and we are very much looking forward to the connections and collaborations which this new Centre of Excellence will surely provide for IGHI and Imperial as a whole”. 

Further reading 

• Agriculture for Impact's Alice Marks writes for our blog on nutrition.  Read it here 
• Reader in Public Health Engineering, Dr Michael Templeton, writes for our blog on schistosomiasis in Africa.  Read it here.

• Get involved 

• Visit the new ICCARE website
• Follow ICCARE on Twitter here 

If you would like any further information about ICCARE or IGHI or would like to get involved, email us at ICCARE@imperial.ac.uk