Grant: Travel Awards - Institute Community Support

Currently, health is not considered to be an isolated event. Complex interactions between biological, social, cultural and environmental entities often determine health of individuals, locally and globally. These intricate health issues often required innovative solutions involving multiple stakeholders from different sectors. Understanding these complex interactions and identifying innovative interventions has become the key mandate of the Institute of Population and Public Health's (IPPH) strategic plan 2015-2018. My broader research goal is to understand infectious disease epidemiology, interactions between pathogen, host and environment, and design efficient interventions to minimize public health issues. Which is very much aligned with IPPH's mandate and strategic research priorities 1 and 2 (coherent intersectoral action for population health improvements and scalable population health solutions). One of my previous research projects included identifying zoonotic pathways for Nipah virus (NiV) transmission in humans in Bangladesh and testing efficient primary intervention. Drinking raw date palm sap was one of the risk factors for human NiV infection. Anthropological studies in the affected communities suggested that villagers from the outbreak sites saw fruit bats on date palm trees harvested for human sap consumption. However, the specific mechanism of NiV transmission from fruit bats to sap was not clear. My research documented the frequency and manner in which fruit bats accessed raw date palm sap at night (Khan et. al. 2010). Later years, we performed a randomized controlled trial to demonstrate the efficacy of primary interventions (locally made physical barriers on a date palm tree) that could prevent sap contamination by fruit bats (Khan et. al. 2012). The travel award would help me better understand CIHR grant application procedures and expand on my past experience of inter-disciplinary research in the current context to promote IPPH mandate.