The launch of the IARU Early-Career Collaboration Grant Scheme in 2023 marked a significant opportunity for our emerging researchers. Eight grants were successfully awarded, empowering recipients to embark on global collaborative ventures across member universities.
Dr Sheena Ramazanu was one of the inaugural recipients of the IARU grant, enabling her visit from the Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health at the National University of Singapore to the College of Health and Medicine at the Australian National University (ANU).
In her reflections, she remarked: “The grant accelerated my career as an early-career research fellow by providing more opportunities to work with professionals with expertise in health economics, econometrics, and social determinants of health. It was also instrumental in my accomplishment of interdisciplinary collaboration to tackle the research problem from a diverse lens.”
At ANU, she collaborated with health economics experts to investigate challenges faced by Asian patients in accessing funding for novel drug therapies, such as cancer treatments. Here, the interdisciplinary collaboration with ANU professors enabled her to learn more about discrete-choice experiments, a future-focused method to quantify trade-offs and analyse how much more the public is willing to pay for innovative health therapies.
The result of this collaboration was a systematic mapping of economic policies and different financing mechanisms to invest in and prepare for reimbursement of novel therapies in Singapore and the region and the submission of one article to a peer-reviewed journal. Beyond work, Dr Ramazanu highlighted that she was also touched by the unique landscape of Canberra, where ANU is located, and was introduced to the indigenous Ngunnawal people, the traditional custodians of the region.
Lasting academic exchange
Other grant recipients are preparing for their journey later this year. Among them is Dr Kai Chen, Director of Research at the Yale Center on Climate Change and Health (YCCCH) based in Connecticut in the USA.
Examining the health impacts of climate change, his work has opened opportunities to collaborate with environmental epidemiologists from the University of Tokyo (UTokyo) including Professors Masahiro Hashizume and Yoonhee Kim. Dr Chen is looking forward to establishing an enriching academic exchange that can foster a lasting collaborative relationship between YCCCH and UTokyo in climate change and health.
He explains that “being awarded the grant ignited exchanges between himself and his UTokyo colleagues that have resulted in a recent research paper on the impact of population ageing on future temperature-related mortality at different global warming levels.” In UTokyo, he will finally meet Professors Hashizume and Kim and their team and get to experience the “wonderful” culture and scenery of Japan.
Investing more in collaboration
Recognising the value of this exchange, the presidents doubled the funding for research visits planned between 1 October 2023 and 1 October 2024. IARU recognises that in-person collaboration offers young researchers an invaluable experience and contributes to their academic careers in the making, especially when it comes to fostering interdisciplinary collaboration among researchers.
