Preventive Health Programme (PHP)

Preventive Health Programme (PHP)

Cardiometabolic disorders, including diabetes and hypertension, are a complex and interdisciplinary public health challenge at a global level. While primary health screening leads to early diagnosis, prevention is the true goal. Indians are amongst the highest risk groups globally for development and progression of cardiometabolic disorders.

We need greater efforts towards understanding of genetic and lifestyle risks that are driving this epidemic.

Aims & long-term goal

• To understand factors governing susceptibility or resistance to cardiometabolic disease in India. 
• To conduct translational research driven by detailed studies in highly selected cohorts, drawn from extensive primary health preventive screening done by our clinical partner – Max Healthcare. 
• To understand potential role of gut microbiomes in protecting or increasing susceptibility to cardiometabolic disease.  

In the long term, we aim to build a strong collaborative initiative with hospitals, industries, other research organizations and policy makers to fight the challenge of cardiometabolic disease in India. Such collaborative efforts will be crucial in designing efficient strategies for prevention and hopefully cure. 

What we do

Build PHP database: From patient care centers of Max Healthcare. Data consists of health screening data including standard biochemical assays and associated clinical metadata

Identify subjects for deeper studies: A random sample and extreme contrasting phenotypes e.g. older obese subjects in good cardiometabolic health and younger lean subjects with cardiometabolic disease would be selected for further investigations (prospective arm) including dietary questionnaires, health apps for dietary assessments and recommendations, gut health markers, gut microbiome studies, and genomics. 

Computational Biomedicine: Apply appropriate statistical machine learning, network biology & computational genomics approaches to gain insight from the PHP database (clinical parameters, dietary habits, gut-microbiome profiles and genomics)  

Translation: Develop an understanding of whether modifiable gut health interventions can change cardiometabolic risk

Outreach: Collaborate to communicate the findings effectively with clinicians, policy makers and citizens in a palatable, innovative format 

Novelty

As a part of Ashoka Centre for Research on Wellness and Nutrition (CROWN), we tackle aspects of personalized nutrition to increase wellness, working at the cutting edge of biomedicine and data science. The project is also unique in it’s attempt to address larger issues such as later life management of early life undernutrition and low birth weight. A collaborative mesh of academia, hospitals, industry and policy makers guides such endeavours.

Our Collaborative Partners

Ashoka University and Max Healthcare Institute collaboration aims to build a joint research program on Preventive Healthcare Programme.

Interdisciplinary collaboration within Ashoka

 

	Prof. Anurag Agrawal, Dean, Biosciences & Health Research at Ashoka University, is leading the PHP project.
	Dr. Rintu Kutum is a Faculty Fellow at the Department of Computer Science at Ashoka University. He deals with the computational biomedicine part of the PHP project.

Other team members

• Dr. Tamoghna Ghosh, MBBS, AIIMS, New Delhi (Research Intern)
• Dr. Hara Prasad Mishra, MBBS, Delhi University (Research Intern)
• Ms. Himani Balutia, MS Pharmacoinformatics, Project Associate, Center for Bioinformatics & Computation Biology, Ashoka University

Funding Source

The PHP project, in collaboration between Ashoka University & Max Healthcare, is funded by the intramural grant from Trivedi School of Biosciences (TSB).