What if one of the leading contributors to disability and death worldwide wasn’t a disease, infection, or virus? What if it was a systematic failure to prioritize the question “how do you get what works to the people who need it?”
Judd Walson, a University of Washington professor of Global Health, Medicine, and Pediatrics, recently received $621,029 in funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation for a research grant focused on the development of a molecular diagnostic platform for the detection of soil transmitted helminths (STH), commonly known as parasitic worms. Investigators will use these methods to support a large, multi-country, randomized trial evaluating the feasibility of interrupting STH transmission through expanded mass drug administration.
By University of Washington
For two billion people around the planet, anemia, weakness and malaise are part of daily life.
These symptoms are part of living with soil-transmitted helminths – more commonly known as intestinal worms – that inhabit victims’ bellies, sapping their nutrients and stunting their physical and cognitive development.
Home to the world's first PhD program in implementation science, the School of Public Health's DeWorm3 project is turning research into action to interrupt the transmission of intestinal parasitic worms in developing countries.