Research Platforms' Performance Reports SEACO 2015-2017 | Page 8

RESEARCH PROJECTS
SEACO Families Biomarker Study (Community Cohort)
Cambridge University
Evidence from early work in SEACO demonstrated that children with
one or more obese parents had a two-fold greater risk of being obese
compared to children without. However, it is not clear how much of
this risk is associated with environmental exposures (habits, diet and
physical activity) within the family, and how much of it may have some
hereditary or biological components. In collaboration with the Wellcome
Trust Sanger Institute at Cambridge, SEACO is collecting data from
families that includes not only the physical health status of parents and
children but also some questionnaire data to assess their eating habits
and physical activity and biological data to determine possible genetic
and other biomarkers that might explain the risks of obesity.
Citizen Science Reporter (CSR)
Wellcome Trust
The Wellcome Trust Citizen Science Reporter initiative provided
an opportunity to innovate using smartphones and multimedia, to train
interested individuals in the community to report SEACO research back to
the community and to enable community members to research (using
SEACO data where available), document and report public health issues
that were priorities for them. This helped us to identify breast cancer as
one of the priority areas and we have now obtained, in collaboration with
a breast cancer surgeon at the University Malaya Medical Centre
(UMMC), research funding to undertake a study that identifies the
bottlenecks in early screening, particularly among ethnic Malay women.
Other Collaborations
(National and International)
Singleton (Social Support and Care Arrangements
of Older People Living Alone in Rural Malaysia)
University of Amsterdam
This Singleton study assessed the social support (and the degree of it)
among older people living alone in rural Malaysia. The study
qualitatively approached social support and care arrangements
through five themes: aloneness, relationships, illness, care and death.
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