Global Health

Every year there are an estimated 230,000 childhood deaths from TB. There is an urgent need for novel tests for TB diagnosis in children under 15 years. The Rapid Research in Diagnostics Development for TB Network (R2D2 Kids) and the Assessing Diagnostics at Point-of-care for Tuberculosis in children (ADAPT for Kids) studies seek to reduce the burden of TB worldwide by evaluating faster, simpler, and less expensive TB triage and diagnostic tests for use in children.

Mental health conditions, such as depression, anxiety, and harmful alcohol use are prevalent among people with chronic diseases, including HIV, and contribute to poor engagement in care. There is a need to address untreated mental health problems. Community health workers (CHWs) are frontline workers who play a central role in supporting vulnerable individuals to stay in care, including seeking people living with HIV who are newly initiating antiretroviral therapy (ART) or re-initiating after a period of care disengagement. CHW-delivered interventions are promising for improving engagement and retention in care. Yet, these programs rarely address mental health -a significant barrier to chronic disease care engagement and treatment. An approach that moves beyond providing care in the clinic setting is needed. Community-delivered home-based mental health care has been shown to be feasible and acceptable and shows promise for integration into broader community health care services for people with chronic conditions, such as HIV.

PVRI-GoDeep is a PH Meta-Registry, run under the umbrella of the Pulmonary Vascular Research Institute (PVRI). It merges anonymized PH patient related data from various local registries around the world run under the responsibility of PVRI members. It will be operated under the auspices of the University of Giessen/Giessen PH center. Combining deep phenotyping with worldwide outreach, PVRI-GoDeep aims to offer insights into specific geographical and ethnical profiles of PH, to deepen the epidemiological, clinical and molecular understanding of this disease and to promote strategies for improved individualized treatment of PH patients.