FEBRUARY 20, 2023
THE LATEST

Nilanjan Chatterjee in the Spotlight
Bloomberg Distinguished Professor
 
“I wanted to give back, but I felt there was a dearth of epidemiology and genetic data studies in India.”

Professor Chatterjee points to his childhood in India, attending public schools, as a driving force behind his work in applying mathematical statistics and probability theory to public health, cancer, epidemiology, and genetics.

In this spotlight, Dr. Chatterjee discusses work with the National Cancer Institute, Tata Memorial Hospital, and the problems and future of Biostatistics.
AI pioneer Rama Chellappa elected to National Academy of Engineering
The Hub: February 7, 2023

Chellappa, a Bloomberg Distinguished Professor in electrical and computer engineering and biomedical engineering, was among 106 new members and 18 international members announced as part of NAE's Class of 2023 on Tuesday. Academy membership honors those who have made outstanding contributions to engineering research, practice, or education. Members advise the U.S. government on matters pertaining to engineering and technology.

Chellappa will be formally inducted during the NAE's annual meeting on Oct. 1, 2023.
Accelerating progress toward the end of AIDS in India

On January 28, the U.S. President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) will mark its 20th anniversary as a global effort that has invested $100 billion into the HIV/AIDS response and saved more than 25 million lives.

In India, the impact is felt by millions who access HIV prevention, testing, life-saving treatment, and care.

The third largest HIV/AIDS epidemic in the world, more than 2.4 million people in India are living with HIV. Still, about 900,000 people are not linked to treatment, and more than half a million people do not know they are living with HIV.

As a PEPFAR-funded USAID project implemented through the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, ACCELERATE is closing gaps in the response with innovative models that bring HIV services to the most vulnerable populations.
Dilip Mahalanabis to be Posthumously Honored with Padma Vibhushan Award

Dilip Mahalanabis' efforts led to widespread use of oral rehydration system, or ORS, which is "estimated to have saved over five crore lives globally," the government said in a statement.

Mahalanabis conducted cholera and other diarrheal illness research at the Johns Hopkins International Center for Medical Research and Training in Calcutta, India, in the middle of the 1960s. When cholera broke out in 1971, he spearheaded the Johns Hopkins Center's effort to demonstrate the life-saving potential of ORS.
EVENTS
GKII January Webinar Recording

Check it out! On Jan. 20, 2023, Dr. Sheela Magge, Chief of Division of Pediatric Endocrinology and Diabetes, Associate Professor of Pediatrics and Lawson Wilkins Endowed Chair of Pediatric Endocrinology at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, discussed her NIH-funded research on ancestry-related differences in body composition and the impact on cardiometabolic risk.
NEWS OF NOTE
GKII at the Student Involvement Fair

Working to enhance student engagement, GKII intern Ishir Sharma (right) and research associate Priyanka Das (second from left), attended the Student Involvement Fair (SIF). This is a semesterly event at the Homewood Campus for registered student organizations, clubs, and student groups to present and advertise their clubs to encourage membership. Sharma and Das distributed GKII brochures and met with students at the event.
IVAC’s Vaccine Hesitancy Training Course Has a Successful Test Run in Uttar Pradesh, India 

It is well-known that vaccines save lives, but their effectiveness continues to be undermined by rampant vaccine misinformation. Healthcare workers have voiced that they are not equipped with the right information or preparation to combat this often polarizing and sensitive topic. To address this need, researchers from the International Vaccine Access Center (IVAC) at the Bloomberg School of Public Health recently developed a training course aimed toward healthcare workers with a grant from the Sabin Vaccine Institute.

Healthcare workers can take the course either in person or asynchronously online. The course utilizes a highly interactive platform and contains modules covering topics such as evidence-based communication approaches, best practices for debunking misinformation, and vaccine and immunology basics.
IVAC Collaborates with Global Partners to Tackle Cervical Cancer

IVAC collaborates with several global partners across multiple projects to strengthen HPV vaccination efforts. It supports the Coalition to Strengthen the HPV Immunization Community (CHIC), alongside Jhpiego, the Vaccine Confidence Project at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, and the Centre for Evaluation of Vaccination at the University of Antwerp. CHIC aims to advance the dialogue on science, policy, and program implementation supporting cervical cancer elimination efforts. Recently, CHIC organized a South Asia-focused meeting in New Delhi, India, to support peer-to-peer exchange, learning, and engagement around the prevention and control of HPV infections. The meeting was co-organized with global non-profit INCLEN Trust International and other regional South Asian partners.  
GKII IN THE NEWS
Johns Hopkins Medicine: January 19, 2023
By Amy Entwisle

As a chemical engineering major, Kunal Parikh had learned a technique known as electrospinning, a method of manufacturing nanofibers and microfibers. Early on, scientists created mats out of the fibers, which were used for everything from water filtration and purification to surgery to repair torn rotator cuffs. Today these nanofibers are being manufactured for a range of applications, including sutures, cardiac stents and vascular grafts.

“A unique aspect of nanofibers is that they mimic the natural extracellular matrix that cells are around all the time,” says Parikh. “We're no longer just make mats, but now we're making all sorts of different embodiments that can have a big impact, primarily because of the way that cells interact and integrate with these types of nanofiber-based devices,” he says.
RECENTLY PUBLISHED
The Lancet Regional Health - Southeast Asia

Background Summary
The worldwide control rate for hypertension is dismal. An inadequate number of physicians to treat patients with hypertension is one key obstacle. Innovative health system approaches such as delegation of basic tasks to non-physician health workers (task-sharing) might alleviate this problem. Massive scale up of population-wide hypertension management is especially important for low- and middle-income countries such as India.
Frontiers in Pharmacology

Background Summary
Linezolid is an oxazolidinone used to treat multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB), including in the recently-endorsed shorter 6-month treatment regimens. Due to its narrow therapeutic index, linezolid is often either dose-adjusted or discontinued due to intolerance or toxicity during treatment, and the optimal balance between linezolid efficacy and toxicity remains unclear. India carries a significant burden of MDR-TB cases in the world, but limited information on the pharmacokinetics of linezolid and minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) distribution is available from Indian MDR-TB patients.
The International Journal of Tuberculosis and Lung Disease**
** Subscription may be Required

Background Summary
Annually, 1.5 million people die of TB. India has the highest burden of TB, and in 2020, the case fatality ratio (CFR) among people with drug-susceptible TB was 4.3%. Even after treatment, mortality is more than two-fold higher among people with prior TB compared to the general population. However, information about cause of death, particularly in India, is limited. Thus, we sought to characterise cause of death among individuals who accessed TB care. From 2013 to 2018, we enrolled individuals within 1 week of being diagnosed with drug-susceptible TB at public clinics in Pune and Chennai, India, into two pooled prospective cohorts. 
Health Policy and Planning

Background Summary
Vaccination decision making in low-and-middle-income countries (LMICs) has become increasingly complex, particularly in the context of numerous competing health challenges. LMICs have to make difficult choices on which vaccines to prioritize for introduction while considering a wide range of factors such as disease burden, vaccine impact, vaccine characteristics, financing, health care infrastructures, whilst being adapted to each country's specific contexts. Our scoping review reviewed the factors that influence decision-making among policymakers for the introduction of new vaccines in LMICs.
Open Forum Infectious Diseases

Background Summary
Drug resistance testing is limited in public-sector human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) care in India, and there are few systematic samplings for prevalent drug resistance mutations (DRMs), particularly among men who have sex with men (MSM) and people who inject drugs (PWID).

We conducted genotypic resistance testing on 915 HIV sequences sampled from viremic self-reported antiretroviral therapy (ART) experienced and naive PWID and MSM recruited from 21 cities across India in 2016-2017. We analyzed factors associated with resistance using logistic regression and evaluated evidence for transmitted resistance using phylogenetic analyses.
OPPORTUNITIES
Looking for Student Support?
Johns Hopkins faculty who are seeking student support for India-related projects can now submit position descriptions. We will post them online and share in our email updates!