New grants/funding

Katie Glass, Emily Lancsar, Martyn Kirk, Siobhan Bourke, Angus McLure and Dani Cribb have been awarded a consultancy with Food Standards Australia New Zealand on “Provision of the annual cost of foodborne illness in Australia.” worth AUD $179,731.

Katie Glass is part of a team led by Dr Hannah Moore at the Telethon Kids Institute that has been awarded US$203,409, through an MSD Investigator Initiated Study on “Characterising the epidemiology of RSV in Australian children through record linkage: clinical burden, outcomes and risk factors”.

Meru Sheel is a co-investigator with the University of Sydney and Sydney Children’s Hospital Network; Burnet Institute; Murdoch Children’s Research Institute; Menzies School of Health Research; University of New South Wales (Kirby Institute); Telethon Kids Institute on the Australian Regional Immunisation Alliance – Regional Immunisation Support and Engagement (ARIA-RISE) funded by the Indo-pacific Centre for Health Security for AUD $4,984,377.12.

Keynote and invited presentations

Meru Sheel was an invited Guest Lecturer at the Manipal School of Life Sciences, MAHE in India on 28 November 2020 on ‘Outbreak, epidemics and pandemics: lessons learnt for operational research?”.

Awards

Meru Sheel was a co-winner of the Vice Chancellor’s Impact and Engagement Award.

Outreach and engagement

A team from CHM that included Katie Glass, Emily Lancsar, Siobhan Bourke and Liza Munira from RSPH ran a short course on vaccines for the Department of Health Vaccine Taskforce.  The first half of the course covered the laboratory and clinical side of vaccine development and trials, and was led by Professor David Tscharke from JCSMR and Diana Perriman from ANUMS.  The RSPH team covered the population impact of vaccines, including assessing cost and effectiveness.

Meru Sheel hosted a webinar on Vaccinating against misinformation with Prof Angus Thompson, Senior Social Scientist on ‘Demand for Immunization at UNICEF with Global Health Security Network webinar series’ (watch here https://www.ghsn.org/Previous-Webinars).

Meru Sheel is newly appointed on the Board of Directors of the Global Health Security Network (https://www.ghsn.org/About-us), which is a new multidisciplinary professional association dedicated to facilitating evidence-informed policy for the detection, prevention and control of infectious disease threats, irrespective of origin or source.

Media releases/interest

Meru Sheel presented on ‘Australia's coronavirus vaccination program to start from March’ (https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/7026591/when-will-canberrans-be-able-to-access-a-covid-19-vaccine/).

Papers accepted/published:

• Hedtke SM, Zendejas-Heredia PA, Graves PM, Sheridan S, Sheel M, Fuimaono S, Lau CL, Grant WN (2020). Genetic epidemiology of lymphatic filariasis in American Samoa after mass drug administration, International Journal of Parasitology