Awards

Evelyne Kiptot from the World Agroforestry Centre in Kenya will evaluate whether television programs can teach innovative agricultural practices to dairy farmers, and whether mobile phones can be used to measure their performance. Rural farmers in sub-Saharan Africa have traditionally been told about improved farming practices in person, which is expensive and has limited coverage. They will film a series of four television programs in the field and air them on a popular TV station in Kenya. Viewers will be encouraged to provide feedback on their experiences and give their opinions via mobile phone, which will be responded to by experts. Their approach will be evaluated by surveying a population of farmers for changes in knowledge and agricultural practices.

Ratul Narain of BEMPU Technologies Private Ltd. in India will develop and test a temperature monitoring baby bracelet to reduce the incidence of hypothermia in newborns. Newborns are unable to regulate their body temperature, and low temperatures can lead to life-debilitating illnesses. Skin-to-skin warming (kangaroo care) can maintain a healthy body temperature, but is not commonly practiced in resource-poor regions in India, where newborn hypothermia rates are high. To address this, they will further develop an inexpensive and simple bracelet to be worn by babies during the first two months of life that sounds an alarm when the baby's temperature gets too low to prompt the parent to respond. Sensitivity and specificity will be optimized, and the bracelet evaluated in field trials.

Romeo Montoya of OPS/OMS Honduras in Honduras will test an integrated approach of deworming, education, vitamin A supplements, and improved water quality and sanitation to decrease the incidence and effects of intestinal parasites in school children in Honduras. Intestinal worms are highly prevalent in Honduras and a significant cause of morbidity and mortality. By integrating several treatment strategies together with national vaccination campaigns they hope to broaden coverage to the entire population and reduce costs.

Prasenjit Mondal of the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research in Bangladesh will test whether supplying deworming medication to women of reproductive age reduces the incidence of helminth infections and associated anemia. Current mass drug administration efforts to eradicate parasitic infections are fairly successful but focus predominantly on school children. The incidence of infection in women of fertility age remains high, which affects both maternal and child health. To reach this vulnerable population, they will exploit the infrastructure of a current government program, which provides folic acid tablets to pregnant women via Community Clinics, by also providing deworming medication and associated counseling. They will evaluate their approach by measuring its effect on helminth infection levels.

Eamonn Keogh from University of California, Riverside in the U.S. will design and test a human computational game for individuals in developing countries to encourage positive behavior such as taking medication or attending school. The game is played on mobile phones, and begins with an automatic prompt to perform a specific healthy behavior, which then requires the individual to respond by sending photographic evidence of the behavior to a randomly selected individual for evaluation, with rewards offered for compliance. They will develop the game, write the necessary open source software, and conduct a case study in the developed world to evaluate and refine the approach.

Abdur Razzaque Sarker from the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease in Bangladesh will test whether group prenatal care for women has a positive effect on maternal and child health when compared with traditional one-on-one prenatal care. They hypothesize that prenatal classes with groups of 8-10 women will promote support networks and social interactions, and facilitate learning, thereby improving health outcomes. This will be tested using a prospective study in selected health centers in Bangladesh.

Beth Smith from the University of Southern California in the U.S. will determine whether monitoring the arm movements of infants can be used to as a non-invasive proxy for neural development to help identify defects and aid treatment. They will perform a longitudinal study of 45 children, including preterm infants, who will be assessed monthly from one to six months of age. Motion sensory equipment will measure the type and quality of their arm movements, which will be correlated with cortical brain activity measured via electroencephalography (EEG). These data will then be used to generate standard curves of brain function based on movement that may be able to identify children with impaired neural development.

Stephen Chou of Princeton University in the U.S. will further develop a simple and inexpensive assay for diagnosing fetal brain injury using smartphones to detect biomarkers from a drop of blood that can be used by untrained individuals. Biomarkers of brain function have been identified, but technological limitations mean their detection requires expensive assays and trained professionals. They have developed special nanostructures known as D2PA (disk-coupled dots-on-pillar antenna- array) to enhance the fluorescence emitted on a small assay plate by over one million fold thereby substantially increasing sensitivity. The plate can then be photographed with a smartphone and the result sent to a doctor. They will develop and test the assay for accurately and rapidly detecting several biomarkers in single drops of blood.

Susana Nery of the University of Queensland in Australia will test whether soil transmitted helminth infections in school children from developing countries can be better controlled by providing deworming and improved hygiene practices to an entire community as opposed to just the schools, which is the current WHO recommendation. They will conduct a pilot study in Timor-Leste by recruiting primary schools and providing the recommended anti-helminthic drug albendazole along with access to improved water and hygiene practices either within the schools or to the local community. The incidence of parasite infections in the school children and the comparative cost of each approach will be evaluated.

Hesham Al-Mekhlafi of the University of Malaya in Malaysia in collaboration with Azal University for Human Development in Yemen will recruit and train youths and young researchers from rural areas in Yemen to teach their communities about preventing and treating specific enteric diseases. Although effective drugs exist for treating intestinal parasitic diseases such as soil-transmitted helminthiasis, many remain endemic in Yemen, particularly in rural populations where knowledge and attitudes towards these diseases are poor. They will select four communities and meet with local leaders to garner support for their project and help raise awareness. The effect of their approach will be evaluated on the incidence and severity of infections.