Nurturing the Global Child

Maternal Health in Developing Countries, Kibae Park United nations, 2010, Unmodified

Approximately 17,000 children die worldwide every day, 44% of which occur in the first month of life, often from preventable causes. Effective medical, behavioral, and social interventions exist, yet scalability – working across borders and sectors – remains a challenge. To nurture vulnerable children into healthy adulthood, we join global initiatives, such as those led by USAID, helping to deliver effective practices, to mothers, babies, and their caregivers in clinics and at home.

There is an urgent need to develop and scale medical, behavioral, and social interventions to prevent the preventable causes of child mortality. Our team brings together expertise from public health, pediatrics, development and behavioral economics, and the humanities. We are furthering novel and risky ideas to advance child survival: developing portable multimodal imaging for early detection of hypoxic ischemic encephalopathy resulting from birth asphyxia and leading to mortality and disability, investigating opportunities to strengthen delivery of pediatric surgical services in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, developing and testing a novel technology to detect heart rate in non-breathing newborns, and unlocking social norms that influence family planning among adolescents.

Our Working Solutions

Pavani Ram with international collaborators

Quality Improvement Initiatives for Hospitalized and Sick Newborns in Low- and Middle-Income Countries: A Systematic Review

1/9/19

Nabila Zaka, Emma C. Alexander, Logan Manikam, Irena C. F. Norman, Melika Akhbari, Sarah Moxon, Pavani Kalluri Ram, Georgina Murphy, Mike English, Susan Niermeyer and Luwei Pearson. Quality improvement initiatives for hospitalised small and sick newborns in low- and middle-income countries: a systematic review. Published in Implementation Science, January 2018

Clockwise from left: Loveness Nyanga (Faculty University of Zimbabwe), Nabila Ismail (UB PharmD Student), Charles Maponga (UB Faculty), Nadia Koyratty (UB EEH PhD Student), Laura Smith (UB faculty)

Mycotoxin Exposure, Child Stunting and Birth Outcomes: Future Directions for the SHINE Trial

1/9/19

Low height-for-age, or stunting, is a major contributor to childhood mortality globally and is often used as a marker of malnutrition in children. Stunting is most likely to occur in the first 24 months of life, and is characterized by a child having a length-for-age z-score (LAZ), or height-for-age z-score (HAZ), below two standard deviations. Stunted children are more likely to have cognitive delays, face higher rates of mortality, and can have decreased economic productivity in adulthood. Compounding on this, children are at increased risk of stunting if their parents were stunted as children themselves, establishing an intergenerational cycle of decreased economic productivity and increased mortality. Rural regions in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia especially suffer from a high prevalence of stunting in children under the age of 5.

Trial to Establish Causal Linkage Between Mycotoxin Exposure and Child Stunting

1/9/19

Mycotoxins are naturally occurring secondhand metabolites produced by molds that contaminate staple crops that populations depend on, like maize, in rural Sub-Saharan Africa. Currently, aflatoxin is the most studied mycotoxin, due to the intermittent outbreaks of high aflatoxin exposure that leads to acute aflatoxicosis. Despite this, there is still little research into chronic, low-level aflatoxin exposure during fetal and early-life development and its effects on child growth and stunting.