Log in
Impact: Health and welfare; raised awareness of childhood pneumonia as the largest single cause of global childhood mortality, which has led to increased investment and action. Global deaths have reduced from 2.01M (in 2002) to 1.58M (2008) and 1.26M (2011).
Significance: Global child pneumonia mortality (2008-2013) showed about 1M deaths fewer than if 2008 levels had persisted throughout this period.
Attribution: Campbell and Rudan (UoE) derived global pneumonia incidence and mortality estimates as the pneumonia technical experts for the WHO / UNICEF Child Health Epidemiology Reference Group.
Beneficiaries: Young children and families, international agencies, Ministries of Health.
Reach: Global (>170 countries on all continents, especially low- and middle-income countries).
Imperial College researchers demonstrated that the risk of occupational asthma is related directly to the level of exposure in the workplace and not, as previously thought, to host susceptibility. These findings directly informed UK government and industry policy with a consequent reduction in disease incidence.
Permanent childhood hearing impairment (PCHI) is common and adversely affects language acquisition. Early identification enables effective early interventions including hearing aids and cochlear implants. Research at Southampton was central to the case accepted by policymakers in the UK, USA and across several continents to recommend universal newborn screening (UNS) for PCHI. From 2008-13 more than three million babies in the UK were screened and over 5,000 cases of PCHI were identified with benefit to family functioning, literacy, academic achievement, social-emotional well-being, employment, wider society and the UK economy.
University of Bristol research has led to a marked and persisting reduction in the number of cot deaths (sudden infant death syndrome or SIDS). The dramatic 67% fall from 1988 to 1992 in England and Wales resulted from the identification of risks associated with putting babies to sleep face-down (prone). Nationally, death rates have more than halved again (54% fall) between from 1992 and 2011, with an estimated additional 1025 lives saved between 2008 and 2011, after two studies conducted in 1993-6 and 2003-6 identified further contributory risk factors. Tens of thousands of SIDS deaths worldwide have been prevented thanks to the team's research, international collaboration and development of risk-reduction recommendations.