Topic: Public health

Round 2 is open for doctoral researchers presenting at in-person conferences between November 2026 and April 2027. Applications close on 4 October 2026 through UCT’s PeopleSoft Student Portal. Awards contribute to travel, registration and conference-day subsistence. Local and specified SADC conference support is capped at ZAR 10,000; the overall maximum is ZAR 32,000. The grant does not normally fund the full trip. Applicants must secure remaining costs, provide proof of paper acceptance before payment and submit a post-conference report. At most one local and one international grant may be aw

The Adolescent Accelerators Research Hub at UCT’s Centre for Social Science Research seeks a fellow to analyse quantitative evidence on adolescent health and interventions in resource-limited settings. Work includes analysis of longitudinal and cross-sectional data, methodological support, mentoring, data collection and publications, with collaborators at Oxford. The appointment runs from January 2027 to December 2028, with start-date flexibility. The fellowship is worth up to ZAR 350,000 annually, depending on experience and qualifications. Apply by 25 September 2026 with one PDF containing a

Nature reporters discuss Dolly Parton's advocacy for vaccines and public health alongside promising phase III results for a personalised mRNA cancer vaccine for melanoma.

Lifestyle factors such as sleep, diet, stress, and exercise, profoundly influence cardiovascular health. Seeking to understand how lifestyle affects our biology is important for at least two reasons. First, it can expose a particular lifestyle’s biological impact, which can be leveraged for adopting specific public health policies. Second, such work may identify crucial molecular mechanisms central to how the body adapts to our environments. These insights can then be used to improve our lives. In this talk, I will focus on recent work in the lab exploring how lifestyle factors influence cardi

Mental Health problems among youth constitutes an area of significant social, educational, clinical, policy and public health concern. Understanding processes and mechanisms that underlie the development of mental health problems during childhood and adolescence requires theoretical and methodological integration across multiple scientific domains, including developmental science, neuroscience, genetics, education and prevention science. The primary focus of this presentation is to examine the relative role of genetic and family environmental influences on children’s emotional and behavioural

COVID -19 has affected social interaction and healthcare worldwide. This talk will focus on the impact of the pandemic and “lockdown” on mental health services, community physical health services, and patient mortality in Cambridgeshire and Peterborough, based on the analysis of de-identified data from the primary NHS provider of secondary care mental health services to this population (~0.86 million)

This presentation will include a brief resume of research in older populations led from Cambridge that have informed current clinical understanding and policy regarding services and prevention for and of dementia. These population studies have more recently been ‘re-purposed’ with enthusiasm from participants into a trial platform, and this also has enabled ongoing follow-up by telephone during the COVID pandemic. Although there are no formal outputs from these latter developments general impressions will be shared.