leaders in health: dr. gagandeep kang – winner of the 2024 john dirks canada gairdner global health award
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dr. gagandeep kang has dedicated her career to developing vaccines and surveillance systems that can be utilized to help prevent diarrhea caused by specific pathogens, including the rotavirus.
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this article was produced by the healthing editorial team with the support of a grant from the gairdner foundation. while the gairdner foundation made the production of this article possible, they did not have any editorial influence or control over the content, including review prior to publication.
dr. gagandeep kang, affectionately known as cherry by friends and colleagues, got into medicine because she wanted to help people.
both her grandfathers and her father worked in government, and her mother was a teacher, so all her life, she desired to follow in their footsteps of serving people and doing for others. it was a sentiment “deeply ingrained” in her family.
as she grew up and explored her options, she landed in medicine and research, and since then, she has never looked back. she initially thought she would land in public health and serve people on the frontlines and in clinical settings, but her trajectory changed when she discovered her love for research.
after completing her schooling in southern india, she started her lab, began working with other bright minds looking to change the world, and realized that she wanted to take global science and shrink it down into something that could benefit populations that needed real care now – not 20 years from now.
the reason for this is that people in developing worlds often have to wait years to receive medicines, vaccines, and other advancements, often long after they’ve been available in the western world.
dr. kang wanted to “take the best of what global science had to offer and then adapt” it to suit populations “who lived in slum areas, people who lived in villages” and the issues experienced by those groups so she could make a real difference in the lives of those the world seemed to have left behind regarding medical innovation.
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what did dr. kang focus on? diarrhea, a problem that continues to claim the lives of roughly seven per cent of children below the age of five in developing countries. her work, which she will humbly tell you was completed only because of the many other bright minds she got to work alongside for the past three decades, has been so impactful that she is this year’s winner of the john dirks canada gairdner global health award.
janet rossant, the president and scientific director of the gairdner foundation, recognizes how important it is to showcase medical researchers making fundamental changes in the health landscape across the globe, and dr. kang’s recognition is well-deserved.
“she is an amazing researcher, working almost entirely in india, working on diarrhea diseases, children’s diseases, infant diarrhea caused by rotaviruses,” she said. “that’s an incredible thing, the number of lives saved by somebody like cherry (dr. kang). it’s pretty amazing.”
dr. kang’s work in the diarrhea space has significantly accelerated the path toward finding viable prevention measures.
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the gairdner awards
the canada gairdner awards celebrate the world’s best in biomedical and global health research. since its inception in the 1950s by philanthropist jim gairdner, who felt that researchers behind the scenes driving medical advancement were not getting the recognition they deserved, 418 awards have been given out to the game-changers of the world.
these awards are prestigious, and close to 100 of their award winners have gone on to receive the nobel prize.
“there were big things happening in research that were really changing medicine,” said rossant. “and so, he (jim gairdner) had put aside some money to set up international awards, and that was the key component.”
it wasn’t until 2008, when the government gave funding to the foundation, that the name was changed from the international gairdner awards to the canada gairdner international awards. this change was made to showcase that, while winners can be everywhere, these awards are uniquely canadian.
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the john dirks canada gairdner global health award is a specific recognition given to exceptional researchers who have, through their work, addressed health inequities across the globe to improve the health and well-being of those who experience them.
“recognizing that this was really something special in canada but also allowing us to develop this new award, the global health award,” said rossant, “it’s really become one of the most prestigious global health awards in the world.”
the global health award can be received by anyone from any country, just so long as their work makes a significant impact on world health inequities.
dr. kang is this year’s award winner, and while she’s honoured to receive it, she believes it’s not just for her.
“obviously, it’s an honour, but i don’t think it’s for me so much as it is highlighting the importance of the field in which we work,” she said. “that public health really does matter. that diarrhea, even though it’s so common, is a disease that we haven’t fully addressed yet.”
dr. gagandeep kang, the diarrhea doctor
dr. kang got into medicine to address a problem that wasn’t getting enough attention in the developing world: diarrhea. for many, this gastrointestinal distress is a quickly passing ailment that’s remedied with some rest and fluids, medication from the local pharmacy, and eating particular foods. after it subsides, people return to their daily lives completely unscathed.
however, in some countries, diarrhea is a severe and potentially lethal disease that is severely underestimated.
that is why dr. kang has dedicated her career to it – mainly developing vaccines and surveillance systems that can be utilized to help prevent diarrhea caused by specific pathogens, including the rotavirus.
“i spent 30 years working in india on this idea of developing rotavirus vaccines, of establishing the burden of disease studies, thinking about interventions that related to water and sanitation, looking at nutrition of children that were affected by diarrhea, looking at their cognitive development,” dr. kang said. “and last year i retired from the institution… but i haven’t stopped working.”
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even after dedicating her life to the cause and retiring from her position, she’s not done finding new ways to solve problems that many people don’t think about.
dr. kang is now with the gates foundation in seattle, washington, trying to devise an even better way to administer the life-saving vaccines she’s spent her career developing. instead of an injectable vaccine, she wants to determine whether it’s possible to give these preventative measures orally, making it even easier to distribute to those in developing countries and beyond.
“when you have vaccines that go in through the oral route, it makes it easy to give a vaccine because you’re not doing an injection,” she said.
the issue is that children in developing worlds who could benefit most from these vaccines already have damage in their gastrointestinal tracts, making an oral vaccine less effective for them.
“really young babies, their guts have already begun to be damaged, which means a baby in india versus a baby in canada will have a very different response to an oral vaccine. so, the baby in india needs the diarrhea vaccine more than the baby in canada. but the baby in canada will make a better immune response than the baby in india,” she said.
this is the latest problem she is trying to solve with the help of other great minds working toward a brighter future for people who live in underserved communities. the next step in her work is to find out how to fix the intestinal injuries in those who need the vaccine most so their bodies respond better.
“(it’s the) same problem from a different angle,” she said.
dr. kang says that one of the most rewarding parts of her work is getting to know people while creating new interventions that can improve their children’s lives.
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paving new ways forward in research
while dr. kang’s work in the diarrhea space has significantly accelerated the path toward finding viable prevention measures, it isn’t everything she’s accomplished in her career.
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her work has also allowed her and other companies in india to conduct clinical trials for the vaccines without having to work from a more developed country. this is possible by the establishment of laboratories in india that make it easier for healthcare companies to utilize their own facilities to find the answers they need to make their ideas for change into reality.
by paving the way forward in vaccination and preventative medicine, dr. kang and those she worked with throughout her career can address the societal issues that keep these health problems alive.
“for a society, illness in children is actually a socioeconomic concern,” she said. “and if we were to invest in the prevention of disease or the treatment of disease so that we limit these consequences, it has humongous payouts for all societies. that’s why i think this is an important area for us to focus on.”
her national rotavirus and typhoid surveillance networks are also significant contributions to the healthcare space, models that can be implemented in other countries due to their efficacy and viability when addressing the issue of enteric infections in children.
driven forward through community
dr. kang has wanted to serve and help people her whole life, and that love of community and connection has motivated her throughout her career. it’s not about the accolades, even if they are of the highest honour, such as the global health award from gairdner. it’s about meeting people, both patients struggling with conditions and infections and colleagues who share the same goals.
she tells a story about a study she worked on about rotavirus infections. each family had to come in, and the children were monitored for growth through stool and blood samples and other health parameters, such as height and weight measurements.
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the study in question was not yet for the vaccine but rather a preliminary investigation used to discover how the rotavirus infection affected children in a way that helped them design a vaccine. the study was demanding on both parents and their children, but people in the community participated anyway. these families became not just participants but a connected group, all looking to help advance medicine in the rotavirus space in any way they could.
that’s what makes it all worth it for dr. kang – getting to know these people while creating new interventions that can improve their children’s lives.
“my defining moment was when i was in the clinic one day, and the father of one of the children came up, and he said, ‘oh, you know, my child was in your rotavirus study, and i saw an ad on tv, and there is a rotavirus vaccine now. wasn’t that what you were working on?’” she said, reminiscing about how it felt to hear about the impact she’s had on communities directly from the source.
as for what’s next, dr. kang is excited to continue changing the world and advancing medicine in countries that have been left behind.
“we have some ideas,” she said, later continuing, “i’m just grateful that we have the opportunities to be able to put resources toward being able to solve these kinds of problems.”
the gairdner awards will be held during gairdner science week 2024 from october 23 to october 27. you can attend science week 2024 by registering for free on the gairdner website.
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