9 MAY - 2022has been significant progress and the reduction targets are on track to be achieved in more than 15% of countries, there is still much work ahead of us.Upjohn recognizes the critical importance of healthcare partnerships to drive lasting progress in society. We believe that working together can achieve the greatest impact in public health. To effectively catalyze action around challenges of the scale and complexity of NCDs, we need greater collaboration across sectors of healthcare. Observation data are abundant but often siloed in Emerging Markets, such as Africa and the Middle East (AfME) and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). Therefore, it is important to find ways to harness real world data more effectively to generate actional real world evidence (RWE) and insights.PARTNERSHIP IN AFMEThe New York University Abu Dhabi (NYUAD) and Upjohn have announced a pioneering new collaboration to bring the private sector and academia together to launch a Center of Excellence to harness RWD. The center will be based in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and will contribute scientific insights that can impact patients locally, and across the region and world. This collaboration resonates strongly our commitment for long term investment with the government and for public-awareness of NCDs.The NYUAD-Upjohn partnership includes two further initiatives. The first is the development of a capability-enhancement module to train local talent for evidence-generation, hence investing and training the next level of new local researchers. The second is the collaboration as one of the critical partners in the UAE Health Future study, one of the largest observational NCD-studies of its kind in the Middle East. According to the study website, the "UAE Health Future study is the first prospective study to provide scientific evidence of the causes of chronic diseases in the United Arab Emirates. The study also plays an important role in the development of prevention methods for the benefit of the UAE and Arab societies."Through this cutting-edge scientific partnership, our vision is to harness RWD to generate RWE and identify actionable insights to advance the management of NCDs. Such insights can direct future programs and ultimately relieve the burden of NCDs. RWE offers tremendous possibilities to translate data into meaningful health outcomes, particularly through observational studies, patient-reported outcomes, clinical trial optimization, synthetic control arm construction and pragmatic trials. As analytic capabilities and digital innovation mature, we see new opportunities to harness computational power, artificial intelligence, and high volumes of data in an efficient way.PARTNERSHIP IN ASEANOne of the most vexing challenges in the management NCDs is that patients, care-givers and societies all have some control over health outcomes. Upjohn's groundbreaking collaboration was established with the Duke-NUS Medical School in Singapore to establish an RWE studies training curriculum for ASEAN policymakers and study conductors to standardize research methodologies across the ASEAN region. This partnership will train policy makers and research conductors in the ASEAN region on using systems thinking method in design and conduct of RWE studies to enable them to make evidence-based decisions in policy-shaping. Over the next two years, this training will support about 70 policymakers in the region to make more informed choices that can lead to better outcomes for people at high risk for NCDs. The collaborators via this partnership are at the forefront to lead the efforts for their leadership in public health and their commitment to public-private collaboration, through which we can unlock new data and insights that can advance the body of scientific knowledge on NCDs. Dr. David Matchar, who leads the collaboration from Duke, emphasized the importance of such a partnership because "it has always been the School's mission to provide innovative education and impactful research, and this collaboration will help both policymakers and conductors of RWE studies be more knowledgeable and better-equipped to commission and conduct these much-needed programs."CONCLUSIONBy working together, we can accelerate the convergence of previously disparate data and previously discrete tools to generate new scientific insights, identify risk factors, and define interventions that can make a difference in relieving the burden of NCDs. If communities and organizations lead with their respective strengths while standing united in this fight, it is possible to transform the trajectory of NCDs.
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