Three UCC projects win share in €7m health research funding 

THREE University College Cork-led projects have won a share of €7m funding from the Health Research Board, to tackle health inequality, prevent childhood obesity, and explore how the gut could be linked to schizophrenia.

On Wednesday, the Health Research Board (HRB) announced €7m for nine new projects, under its Emerging Investigator Awards for Health, three of which are led by researchers at UCC.

Based in UCC’s Institute for Social Science in the 21st Century, Dr Monica O’Mullane has been funded to develop a health-impact assessment tool to tackle health inequalities.

Dr Mullane said that people’s health and wellbeing are affected by the circumstances into which they are born, grow, live, work, and age. She said her assessment tool is “now needed more than ever to ‘health-proof’ public policies as we cope with challenges such as the global climate emergency”, and to reduce the risk of health policies that impact health and wellbeing, especially for marginalised groups.

A lecturer in UCC’s School of Public Health, Dr Karen Matvienko-Sikar has been awarded funding to develop a standardised approach to measuring infant feeding outcomes, so as to prevent childhood obesity. One in five children worldwide is obese, so Dr Matvienko says it is a “major public health challenge”, which she hopes to tackle with a “toolkit of measurement instruments” by studying what, how, and when children are fed in their first year of life.

“This will enhance the evaluation of interventions to prevent childhood obesity, with potential for significant impact on, and meaningful improvements for, population health,” she said.

Finally, Dr Linda Katona, a neuroscientist at UCC’s Department of Anatomy and Neuroscience and the APC Microbiome Ireland SFI Research Centre, has been granted funding to investigate the link between gut microbiomes and schizophrenia, as disruptions in communication between the gut and the brain often accompany the symptoms of schizophrenia.

“This project will… attempt to answer questions such as how our gut microbiome, through the vagus nerve, interferes with our memory, how it influences our social interactions, and how it can affect our concentration,” said Dr Katona.

Welcoming the announcement, UCC president, Professor John O’Halloran, said UCC is delighted to have secured the “prestigious, highly competitive research awards”.