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Clara Chow: simple solutions to the world's no. 1 killer

Meet Professor Clara Chow, Director of the Cardiovascular Division at The George Institute for Global Health, and one of the winner of last year's Google Impact Challenge. 

How long have you been working at The George Institute?

I started at The George Institute as a PhD student in 2004. I did a stint overseas and returned in 2010.
 
What attracted you to working at The George Institute?

The projects seemed to have the potential to improve health on a significant scale, particularly in places and populations which were relatively under-served.

How would you summarise the research you do and the difference it will make to healthcare?

I like to try to focus my research on developing and examining ideas that have potential to be a scalable solution for an important health problem and hence substantial public health impact.  

One of your projects TEXTCARE won the Google Impact Challenge in 2016. What was your reaction when you were announced as a winner?

Really excited, really surprised and really appreciative! I think that this idea – which had started out with a pretty frugal development and evaluation budget – had been recognised by the community and a panel of pretty super-powered judges to be a good one.

What do you think made TEXTCARE stand out from the other nominees in the Challenge, and how will TEXTCARE improve people’s health?

I think its simplicity and that we had carefully examined it. I think that made it easier for people to understand how it worked and could improve health. More and more, I think people are realising that this light-touch but personal-touch support can help people to change behaviours, which is fundamental to a lot of chronic health conditions these days. I hope with TEXTCARE that we will be able to provide really high-quality, customised chronic disease education and support to people from many walks of life.

What motivates you most in your work?

Working with great people locally, across Australia and across the world. Many who are fantastic co-workers, many who are like-minded and some to test and challenge me to keep things fresh and interesting.

How did your career in research get started?

Well I first dabbled in research in molecular genetics as a medical student, but have to say while I admired many of the people I met and worked with, I felt I didn’t have the skills and aptitude for it, and it was not the moment that made me pursue it into the future.

I really walked into PhD studies at the George with a "let’s see what happens, let’s take it or leave it" type of attitude. I think it was later in my PhD studies, and through travelling around the place during my postdoc that I could see it was something I could do longer term.

Why do you enjoy working at The George Institute?

I have the luxury to dream about ideas, mull them over in my head to see if I could imagine if they would work, chat them over with friends and colleagues to hone them and then scrounge around a bit to get some money to try them – first small scale and then maybe larger-scale if things go well.

To explain to people what I do I say…

Well it depends on who I am talking to. To the other mums at school if asked directly, I say I’m a doctor that spends half my time doing teaching and research. If however someone wanted to know more, I would tell them the research is about preventing people having heart attacks and developing heart disease, and about identifying simple solutions that could work quickly to impact on the problem that cardiovascular disease is still the world’s number 1 killer.