Current Projects

The Centre for Control of Chronic Diseases in Bangladesh is now executing different activities to implement its five goals.
 

GOAL 1: Assessment of current burden of chronic disease in Bangladesh

Milestone: In order to begin to assess the current burden of chronic disease and the risk factors for chronic diseases, surveillance on these areas will be introduced in three rural and one urban field sites (Matlab, Abhoynagar, Mirsarai and Kamalapur). This will serve as a first step toward determining and monitoring risk factors for chronic diseases as well as changes in those which will result from future interventions. In Year 1 this surveillance will serve as an initial capacity building activity for field workers on approaching chronic disease and risk factor surveillance. This initial round of surveillance and analysis will be followed up with more extensive research in both NIH and Ovations work.

Activities:
1)     Develop new surveillance instrument: design risk factor and chronic disease surveillance items to be added to routine surveillance materials
2)     Train surveyors on the use of the new tool
3)     Collect the data from the four field sites
4)     Analyze the data

GOAL 2: Synthesis of existing knowledge of gaps in chronic disease in South Asia

Milestone: The chronic disease situation in Bangladesh has a number of knowledge gaps. These gaps include information on existing programmes, limited information on burden of disease and risk factors, and little data on cost effectiveness of programmes. The first year work sets the stage to finish an assessment of chronic disease programmes in Bangladesh. This work will provide recommendations on future direction with chronic disease programmes in Year 2 of the Ovations work, as well as for further analytic work that can uncover risks in chronic diseases and relationships to poverty, which will be a feature of the NIH proposal.

Activities:
1)     Initial assessment of current CD programs in Bangladesh, according to systematic framework of programs
2)     Identification of potential model primary and secondary prevention programs
3)     Review of methods and literature on linking chronic diseases and poverty

GOAL 3: Bangladesh policy and capacity: Pre-intervention support

Milestone: In order to gain a clear understanding of the situation in Bangladesh, a first step is to review the national policies that deal with the prevention and treatment of chronic diseases as well as uncover some of the pre-existing health care user and provider preferences that fall outside of the formal sector. This objective will also seek to use the strong links that exist with the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare and non-state actors to inform and disseminate findings.

Activities:
1)     Review existing policies on chronic diseases in Bangladesh
2)     Initiate small studies on chronic disease treatment and risk factors in Bangladesh to include informal providers in the rural areas, community management of diabetes and the role of informal “park” providers and their patients in the urban areas, and barriers to exercise among urban Bangladeshi women.

GOAL 4: Intervention and chronic disease scaling up: Translating knowledge into action

Milestone: Scaling up will occur after the basic and community research is completed as highlighted by the work in Goals 1-3. Thus, the activity in the first year will be to emphasize issues and efforts in the other goals. As all of the other Goals support the ultimate goal of broad knowledge translation it is important to not omit this Goal even if it has no distinct deliverables during Year 1.   Supporting items to this goal include the identification of existing chronic disease programmes through the systematic framework in Goal 2 and the extensive dissemination and sensitization activities of Goals 3 and 5.

GOAL 5: Technical support and communications:

Milestone:  A communication strategy will be developed at the beginning of the project to ensure that communications are built into the Centre’s research and interventions all the way through. The role of communication initiatives of the collaborating organizations will be crucial in this regard. Drawing upon the expertise of the ICDDR,B and BRAC communications departments and the IDS’s information services, work in these first stages will include the identification of main target audiences and the modalities for reaching them. There will be a website with current activity and information and links to collaborating organizations. Dissemination of the lessons learned among beneficiaries, policy makers, service providers, and program managers will also take place through seminars, conferences, exchange visits, workshops and other similar fora.

Project Management Activities

Milestone: The Year 1 programme management activities of this multi-institutional partnership programme, the Centre for Control of Chronic Diseases focuses on establishing the secretariat, hiring a Programme Head who will serve as primary investigator, and formalizing the relationships between partners.