St. John’s Research Institute - Core Function Groups

	Unit Head:
		Dr Prem Mony, M.D.

	Staff:
		Dr Mario Vaz, M.D.
		Dr. Divya Rajaraman
		Dr. Sumathi Swaminathan, PhD

	Statistician:
		Dr Tinku Thomas, MSc, PhD
		Ms. R.S Sumithra, MSc Bio-Statistics

	This unit undertakes and coordinates several population health research projects that are in consonance with the mission of the Research Institute (A brief description of some of the current research projects is listed below). It also undertakes training programs in epidemiology and biostatistics for the staff at St John's. Added to this, it also undertakes educational programs directed toward professional development of field staff. It also provides technical support services to staff within the St. John’s as also to extramural requests from government departments and non-governmental organizations.

	The field practice areas that are linked to the group for the population health research projects are located in 3 rural areas:
		Palamaner (Chittoor district, Andhra Pradesh)
		Mugalur (Bangalore district, Karnataka)
		Bagalkot (Bagalkot district, Karnataka)

		Palamaner site is located near the Emmaus Swiss Referral Hospital which consists of a 70-bedded hospital, as well as a project area covering a population of about 250,000 people. Palamaner is a semi-arid rural area, with a high level of poverty. Agriculture is the main source of income.

		Mugalur site is located at the outreach center of the Community Medicine Department of St. John’s Medical College. This training and service center serves a population of about 40,000 people.

		The Bagalkot site is run with the International Health Action Trust, which is a non-profit trust dedicated to service and research among HIV infected people.

	Population Health Research Projects
		PURE
		The PURE study is a paired cohort study of urban and rural populations with the aim of evaluating traditional and novel risk factors involved in the genesis of coronary heart disease, hypertension and diabetes. The study is a collaboration with the Population Health Research Institute, McMaster University, Canada. The team at the institute is also the national coordinator for the implementation of the study in Chennai, Trivandrum, Jaipur and Chandigarh. By 2006, close to 25,000 people between the ages of 35 and 70 years had been recruited and the 5 year follow up had been initiated at the Bangalore site.
		Aeras – TB studies.
		The Aeras Global TB Vaccine Foundation, USA is the sponsor of two epidemiological studies in childhood tuberculosis. The first study measures the incidence of pulmonary tuberculosis in infants followed up from birth to 2 years and aims to recruit 4800 newborns into this cohort. The second study will enroll 7500 adolescents between 12 and 18 years of age who will be followed up for 2 years. The study will aim to determine the incidence of TB in this age group and also evaluate the immunologixcal correlates of disease. The studies are being conducted together with the Emmaus Swiss Leprosy Project at Palamaner in Southern Andhra Pradesh.
		Sample Registration System (SRS) Prospective Study of 1 Million Deaths in India
		carried out along with the Registrar General of India, New Delhi, the Centre for Global Health Research (CGHR) at the University of Toronto, and SRS partners from all across India, this study will monitor nearly 14 million people in 2.4 million nationally representative households over a 14-year period (1998-2014) to collect information about the health status of all household members and about key risk factors such as smoking, alcohol use, childhood immunization, and indoor air pollution. About one million deaths expected to occur among these people during this period will be studied using verbal autopsy (VA) and medical certification. This study will reliably document the cause of childhood and adult deaths and also key risk factors. It offers a globally replicable model for reliably estimating cause-specific mortality using VA (see Publications section, Jha et al, PLoS Med 2006)
		ToPS (Total Population Survey)
		Demographic and Health Survey of the field area (population = 250,000) situated in the erstwhile Palamaner taluk of Chittoor district of the southern state of Andhra Pradesh.