New health research unit explores inter-generational pathways to health
- By Deborah Minors
The Wits Faculty of Health Sciences launched the MRC/Wits Developmental Pathways for Health Research Unit (DPHRU) on 7 December 2011, to study health and well-being across generations.
Professor Mark Hanson, President of the International Society of Developmental Origins of Health and Disease delivered the keynote address: Developmental Origins of Health and Disease: Mechanisms and Implications.
“The WHO has recognised the role of all players – civil society, academia and industry - to combat diseases of the lifestyle…There is a global need for it, and South Africa and the DPHRU has an incredibly important part to play here,” said Hanson.
Located in the paediatrics department in the School of Clinical Medicine, the DPHRU will address national priorities that include increasing life expectancy, decreasing maternal and child mortality, and strengthening health system effectiveness.
DPHRU director, Associate Professor Shane Norris (BSc Hons 1997) says the unit envisages conducting research throughout the life-course that will improve health and well-being across generations.
“Specifically, the DPHRU will investigate genetic, physiological, psycho-social and lifestyle determinants of growth and development, obesity and risk of cardio-metabolic disease, and healthy aging, through innovative multi-disciplinary methodologies across the lifespan,” Norris explained.
The DPHRU is a unique and fully resourced research platform with extensive longitudinal data from the Birth to Twenty cohort, and established links with urban and rural South African communities. It is able to provide research in the field of developmental origins of health, which will complement other research entities exploring metabolic disease, health and well-being in South Africa.
“The DPHRU will draw upon a conceptual framework that sees health in adult life as a product of a multi-generational process that can be affected adversely by shocks or deprivation, as well as enhanced by the existence of protective factors or appropriate interventions at critical periods.
Insight into the converging complexity of environmental and social factors across the lifespan in South Africa is critical for understanding the pathways to the development of ill-health, effective advocacy, and development of successful interventions,” commented Norris.
The DPHRU complements the Wits Molecular Biosciences Research thrust: Health for Africa and the Wits Chronic Diseases of Lifestyle Research thrust, as well as the MRC Cardiovascular and Metabolic Diseases National Collaborative Research Programme.
Source: Wits Communications http://www.wits.ac.za/newsroom/newsitems/201112/14815/news_item_14815.html