Chronic diseases like Hypertension, Diabetes, and Coronary Heart Diseases including Renal Failure are fast becoming the epidemic health problem of our times, even surpassing what once was the domain of infectious disease. The global burden of these diseases now makes up for 30% of all human illnesses. These diseases are not just the problem of our aging population but are the result of faulty lifestyle.

While the health care cost of these diseases is exponentially increasing – these diseases if detected early can be prevented and therefore can scale down the cost of health care.

It was for this reason that the Global Alliance for Chronic Diseases (GACD) was established. This institution collaborates with big-time industries to fund medical researches that could help address if not avert this impending pandemic now encroaching Asia.

GACD is now the super global body overseeing and promoting the medical direction to address chronic diseases through research.

The 4th General Assembly of GACD was held in Mexico City (Nov. 9-13, 2015). ADZU- SOM was privileged to be invited to this forum as the only representative from the Philippines and perhaps Southeast Asia. The whole conference ran in 3 simultaneous mainstream sessions: the mHealth (Mobile Health) stream; Health system stream; and the health belief model for behavioral changes stream.

ADZU-SOM’s participation was made possible because of its on-going research project on Diabetes. This project dubbed as the CHAP-P (Community Health Assessment Program of the Philippines) is in collaboration with University of McMaster, Canada. This is a 5-year research project pursued by our ADZU-SOM Center for Chronic Diseases aims to avert the growing diabetes epidemic in the Philippines. This project ambitiously hopes to develop strategies applicable to LMIC (Low, Middle Income Countries) and if this pilot project succeeds, it will be disseminated to other LMIC like Nepal, Laos, and Cambodia.

The mHealth stream of the GACD conference is particularly interesting as it propose to bring mobile IT technology into the health stream as an integral part of the health delivery system. This thrust happens to be in line with our newly approved Biomedical Engineering course offering in collaboration with ADZU-SOM, designed to develop local scientists who could invent innovative machines that could help bring health technology, at the point of care in the community.