It was a moment of pride for RCSI & UCD Malaysia Campus (RUMC) when its academic members won two prestigious international awards by Cochrane Malaysia recently. The awards were presented at the virtual Cochrane Connects event held on 16 November 2021 (Tuesday).

Professor Dr Jacqueline Judith Ho, fractional academic at RUMC received the Anne Anderson Award for her significant contribution towards the enhancement and visibility of women’s participation in Cochrane. The recipient of the award donates money to a woman in a low-resourced setting to assist with her Cochrane work.

Professor Jacqueline has chosen to donate her prize money to a fellow colleague and mentee, Dr Foong Wai Cheng, Senior Lecturer from RUMC’s Department of Paediatrics, for her advocacy work on Kangaroo Care in Malaysia.

Professor Jacqueline felt truly honoured to receive this prestigious award from Cochrane, an organization recognised for its integrity, trust, sincerity, quality, and inclusiveness.

“I love it that I have received an award for something I get so much pleasure in doing. I would like to thank the women who have given me the opportunity to support them in their Cochrane initiatives,” expressed Professor Jacqueline.

The 2021 Kenneth Warren Prize was awarded to Associate Professor Dr Foong Siew Cheng. This is an annual prize by Cochrane to a scientist who publishes a Cochrane Review about a health issue in developing countries. Dr Foong’s research focused on milk boosters to increase breast milk production in mothers of healthy infants.

“All I had set out to do was to find answers for something that had happened to me as a mother. Receiving an award for pursuing answers to a question that people needed information on is truly rewarding, more so because of how important breastfeeding is for health – with its largest impact among low resource communities,” said Dr Foong in her award acceptance speech.

Founded in 1993, Cochrane is a global independent network of researchers, professionals, patients, carers and people interested in health. It has now grown into a huge team consisting of more than 30,000 dedicated people from over 130 countries. Since then, Cochrane has become an excellent source of systematic reviews which are considered to be at a high standard of evidence-based information.

Cochrane Malaysia operates as a network of sites around the country, with the coordinating site based in RCSI & UCD Malaysia Campus (RUMC). Prof Jacqueline Ho was the first Convenor of Cochrane Malaysia.

Part of the Malaysian branch’s role is to provide training to healthcare professionals, patients and others on how to access and use the reviews. There are also plans to train members of the media on the reviews’ impact on the general public. One of the recent roles of Cochrane Malaysia is to translate the plain language summaries of Cochrane Reviews, ‘Cochrane Summaries’ into Bahasa Malaysia.