Public Health Sciences

The Public Health Sciences Division focuses on developing and evaluating population-based interventions designed to address the major health problems faced by low-resource countries. In so doing, it addresses the Millennium Development Goals of reducing child mortality, improving maternal health, and controlling HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other infectious diseases, while taking issues of social equity and gender equality into account.

More specifically, the research division provides the infrastructure to test vaccines, determine drug resistance in disease-causing organisms, and explore the causes, distribution, means of prevention and treatment, and consequences of specific problems, such as low birth-weight, maternal morbidity, and arsenic contamination. It also conducts surveillance to identify and monitor illnesses, such as cholera and tuberculosis, and to follow the trends in fertility, population growth, urbanization, and migration. Integral to these efforts, the work of the social and behavioural scientists is to increase understanding of recognition and response of individuals to illnesses, their care-seeking patterns, and social equity in the use of health interventions and their provision.

The research seeks to identify what ensures health and what generates disease in communities, especially in the vulnerable or disadvantaged groups. It searches for simple, cost-effective approaches that could be widely applied to increase health levels equitably.

Public health science research at ICDDR,B is divided into five key units:

• child health
• health and demographic surveillances
• reproductive health
• social and behavioural sciences
• Matlab health research centre

The research efforts of the units and programmes are spread among several sites throughout Bangladesh: rural Matlab, Mirzapur and Chakaria.

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The International Training Centre at Matlab provides facilities for local, regional, and international training courses, while the training centre at Chakaria mostly caters to local needs.

The public health scientific staff consists of public-health professionals, epidemiologists, social scientists, demographers, anthropologists, and health economists.