Your Health

Your Health

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), lifestyle factors such as tobacco and alcohol use, physical inactivity, unhealthy diets, overweight/obesity, and stress, account for more than 70% of mortality due to non-communicable disease. This means that we can improve our daily choices and habits to reduce our likelihood of getting diseases like diabetes, hypertension and heart disease.

Many people may be willing to make some efforts to keep healthy, but find it difficult to make healthy choices given the conflicting information, misconceptions, and advertising. Sahyog team is working to continue creating and disseminating information designed to help you make informed evidence-based healthy lifestyle choices to keep well and prevent major illness. We also provide tips on reducing our carbon footprint, as we cannot have healthy lives without a healthy planet. In addition to materials created specifically for Sahyog, we may also share materials developed by other entities with appropriate acknowledgement/citations/links.

See how you can move more throughout the day in “CreActive” ways (www.vmovement.org)

Dr. Kaumudi Joshipura is the Dean of the School of Public Health and the Susmita and Subroto Bagchi Professor in Public Health at Ahmedabad University. She is also an Adjunct Professor at Harvard Chan School of Public Health. She completed a Master’s degree in Biostatistics and a Doctorate in Epidemiology from Harvard University. She has served as the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Endowed Chair and Director of the Center for Clinical Research and Health Promotion (CCRHP) at the University of Puerto Rico.

Dr. Joshipura’s research (H-index 66) focuses on modifiable lifestyle factors (risk and preventive) for cardiometabolic and other non-communicable diseases across the lifespan. She has mentored numerous students and faculty and led several projects funded by US NIH and other entities, including cohort studies, a randomised controlled trial, and a mentoring grant. Her recent work combines research and health promotion in relation to hurricane preparedness, and COVID-19.

She has served on several editorial boards and is currently the inaugural Chief Editor for an open-access Frontiers journal. She has served as an advisor to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the American Association of Periodontology (AAP), and the World Health Organization (WHO). She also served on the American Public Health Association Climate and Health Equity advisory committee.

Her work prioritises identifying and promoting preventive measures that are free, low-cost, or cost-saving, and that can be adopted widely and globally. To this end, she has started a global public movement, VMove, to help individuals and organisations incorporate physical activity daily. VMove, launched at a TEDx talk, aims to reduce the risk of several chronic diseases by promoting “CreActivity” (creative physical activity) in different settings to enable people to overcome barriers, change norms and move more throughout the day in a fun manner, and encouraging everyone to help spread and lead the movement. She has also written songs to translate research into action (to reduce sedentary time and single-use plastic). Dr. Joshipura’s interdisciplinary research has garnered global attention and has been featured in CNN, Newsweek, Forbes, Prevention, UK Telegraph and others. Her passion lies in advancing human and planetary health through integrating innovative research, education and a commitment to promoting health, especially of the underserved.