€4 million EU grant for interdisciplinary health research in Asia

A team of Groningen researchers has won a €4 million grant to research how to effectively treat hypertension and diabetes in Indonesia, Vietnam and Myanmar. The grant was awarded by the European Union Horizon 2020 programme, the bloc’s largest ever investment in research and innovation.

Scaling-up NCD Interventions in South-East Asia, or SUNI-SEA, brings together medical experts and economists to study community and health-based interventions to prevent and improve hypertension and diabetes in lower and middle-income countries. The researchers will use econometric methods in the area of cost-effectiveness and operations research to analyse which interventions are best suited for an environment where funding is scarce. The aim is to identity which could be upscaled in an economically attractive way.

Inclusive and sustainable health systems

‘This knowledge will support the further development of inclusive and sustainable health systems covering affordable and cost-effective interventions,’ said Maarten Postma, one of the main applicants, professor at the Faculty of Economics and Business and the University Medical Center Groningen (UMCG).

Healthy ageing

‘The project will provide evidence for innovative synergies between community mobilisation and health system improvements to fight diabetes and hypertension and will translate this into evidence-based strategies and guidelines affecting non-communicable disease interventions. This knowledge will support scaling-up of viable healthy ageing approaches worldwide,’ said fellow applicant Jaap Koot, medical doctor and dean Learning Community Global Health at UMCG.

The project fits well with the ambitions of the Aletta Jacobs School of Public Health, an initiative of the University of Groningen and UMCG launched earlier this year to bring together the skills of different disciplines to make breakthroughs in healthy aging.

More information

To read more about the project, check out this blog.

________________________________________________
> More news from the Faculty of Economics and Business
> FEB experts in the media