JH-IIRU Travels to Malaysia for Drowning Prevention Conference

On November 4-6, 2015, Johns Hopkins International Injury Research Unit (JH-IIRU) team members Kunle Alonge, assistant scientist and Shirin Wadhwaniya, sr. research program coordinator, participated in the World Conference on Drowning Prevention, held in Penang, Malaysia.

H-IIRU presented the work we are doing on the Saving of Lives from Drowning (SoLiD) Project in Bangladesh. Our team was joined by collaborators on the project, the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh (icddr,b) and the Centre for Injury Prevention and Research, Bangladesh (CIPRB).The presentations included,  “Application of implementation research methods to drowning prevention in Bangladesh: An innovative trial in injury prevention research,” from Dr. Alonge, as well as an update on the “Anchal” model for childhood drowning from Dr. Aminur Rahman, CIPRB and a discussion on integrating childhood drowning prevention programs into child health programs in Bangladesh, from Dr. DM Emdadul Hoque, icddr,b.

The Saving of Lives from Drowning (SoLiD) Program, Bangladesh is one of the largest implementation research studies on drowning in low- and middle-income countries. SoLiD project is testing the effectiveness of two interventions to prevent and reduce the burden of childhood drowning in Bangladesh, playpens and enrollment in community daycare centers (sometimes referred to as “crèches” or “anchals”), along with family education and community awareness on drowning prevention.

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