New project aims to strengthen immunisation policy decision-making in Lao PDR
Professors Fiona Russell and Nigel Crawford from the Department of Paediatrics and the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute are leading a new project in Lao PDR, bringing together experience from ATAGI and the support of countries in the Asia-Pacific region with the generation of data to inform immunisation policy. The project will support the capacity of the Lao PDR National Immunisation Technical Advisory Group (NITAG) in evidence-based decision making, with the local University of Health Sciences to collate and undertake the research needed to support these policy decisions.
The project team: Professor Nigel Crawford, Dr Sarah Sheridan, Dr Shereen Labib, Dr Vannida Douangboupha, Associate Professor Meru Sheel, Ms Rachael Macguire, Dr John Hart and Professor Fiona Russell.
For over two decades, the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute has partnered with academics, clinicians and policymakers from across the Asia-Pacific region to support the generation of data to inform immunisation policy. This project builds on a decade-long acute respiratory tract surveillance project in Lao PDR, which started with the design of a successful HPV vaccine pilot introduction, and then a pneumococcal conjugate vaccine impact evaluation. Partners from Lao PDR are also investigators on our NHMRC-funded Centre of Research Excellence for Pneumococcal Disease Control in the Asia-Pacific, which aims to address some of the key research issues regarding this vaccine, including the immunisation schedule and vaccine economics, as well as build capacity in early-career researchers.
Participants in the co-design workshop in Vientiane, Lao PDR.
This project is funded by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, and brings together other vaccine experts and vaccine economists from Australia, Thailand and the United Kingdom.