Tagged / Sheetal Sharma research photography

HSC wins at PGR conference!

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HSC was well represented at the BU 6th Annual Postgraduate Conference 2014 with talks under the themes Lifelong Health and Wellbeing and Ageing, Society and Dementia by:

Jonathan Branney :“Is spinal manipulation associated with changes in cervical inter-vertebral motion”

Ashley Mitchell: “Can we fix it?!: Understanding the impact of children’s hospices on parental relationships of life-limited and life-threatened children and young people”.

Ben Hicks: “Using commercial computer game technology to benefit men with dementia residing in rural areas of Dorset”

Mevalyn Cross (HSC) won a prize for best xxx oral presentation with her work with Les Todres on “The delivery of humanly sensitive care in an older person’s hospital setting: A phenomenological and action research study”.

Also winning a prize for her photo, Sheetal poster, photo and oral presentations on “Pregnant and dirty: A qualitative study of childbirth practice, beliefs and myths in Nepal”. The paper is currently under review by eBU. eBU editor Andrew Harding, PGR, HSC was present and encouraged conference attendees to submit to eBU, as their abstracts will be published in eBU.

Also present was first year Clare Farrance part of the organising committee with Ashley and a chair. And a theme Leader: Professor Edwin van Teijlingen, Professor of Reproductive Health Research who spoke of student engagement with their profile pages, blogging and publishing endeavours.

Highlights included a keynote presentation by Professor Kevin Warwick, Professor of Cybernetics, from the University of Reading who twice has had implants which permitted manipulation as part of robot learning and appears in the 2013 edition of the Guinness World Records Book for the first direct electronic communication between two nervous systems with his wife Irena. His work centers on artificial intelligence, biomedical engineering and control systems.

Definitely a conference with something for everyone and a opportunity to engage with other schools.

Other presentations from HSC included:

Photos presentations:

Jib Acharya: “The Raute: An Ethnic and Nomadic Group (the hunters and gatherers) estimated from 900 years ago and few remaining only in South Asia”

Clare Farrance: “Keeping your fingers crossed for a health old age”

Posters included:

Jib Acharya: “A Comparative study on Nutritional Problems in Preschool aged children of the Kaski District of Nepal”

Jennifer Roddis: “Experience of interviewing: Face-to-face-v-Telephone”.

 Thank you to Vanora Hundley and Jen Lemmon for their feedback.


Realities of fieldwork: Sheetal Sharma, HSC PhD student on fieldwork in rural Nepal.

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(c) Sheetal Sharma

Open air focus group in rural Nepal, (c) Sheetal Sharma 2013.


Roosters crowing, cows mooing, bleating goats, birds chirping, mobile phones ringing, children screaming, laughing and running around while women, breastfeeding, talk over one another excitedly in the sun as they need to leave us soon to drop the children off to school and/or head to the field to cultivate the season’s crop this spring it is wheat, last summer, rice. Women do this work as most of their husbands are away in the capital, Kathmandu or in the Arab Gulf. This is the reality of conducting focus groups in rural Nepal.

Although we, as researchers, spend considerable time to perfect the ideal ‘tool’ of the interview schedule and imagine the transcription clear and the background; a researcher must be prepared for every eventuality. Noise, din and interruptions: Today a dog nibbled on a nearby goat and a few men kept creeping to listen in why was this videshi (foreigner) recording conversations and making notes. The women shooed them away as today was a discussion on contraception; also that the discussion of the focus groups should be in ‘controlled environment’, safe, quiet; and in Nepal where women are not the main decision-maker for their reproductive health, it should mean a lieu women should be able to discuss freely these issues. In this Green Tara’s (www.greentaratrust.com) intervention area, which my PhD, supervised at HSC BU by Catherine Angell, Vanora Hundley, Edwin van Teijlingen and University of Sheffield’s Padam Simkhada, aims to evaluate both quantitatively and qualitatively, shows one the decision-making outcomes improved: increased the use of contraception in the Pharping area from 4.3% (2008) to 24.6% (2012) after 5 years of health promotion conducted by two auxiliary nurse-midwives.
40 minutes later recording (with 2 digital recorders) and once the demographic data and recording is double-checked and any last questions answered we set off walking 2 hours downhill visiting a tea-shop on the way for a cup of chai.

Edwin van Teijlingen and Emma Pitchforth, Qualitative Research: Focus group research in family planning and reproductive health care J Fam Plann Reprod Health Care 2006;32:1 30-32doi:10.1783/147118906775275299
http://jfprhc.bmj.com/content/32/1/30.citation

HSC Student receives Graduate Scholar Award at University of Berkeley Conference.

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Sheetal Sharma, HSC presented at the Science in Society conference (SiS) at Berkeley University in November 2012 where she received a Graduate Scholar Award http://science-society.com/the-conference/graduate-scholar-award

As a PhD student presenting it’s an opportunity to practice for the inevitable viva and a chance to reflect on your work, as there’s always a question you do not expect. For instance, I had a few questions on cultural aspects of my PhD mixed-methods evaluation. That helped me prepare for my transfer viva, where I was asked on the cultural context of the health promotion intervention, specifically in a country context, run by Green Tara Nepal: http://www.greentaratrust.com/ The plenary was the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues http://www.bioethics.gov/cms/node/778 on ethics and morality of science.

Conferences can be competitive, in the sense, you need to be accepted. Secondly you also can compete for a ‘free space’ and in this instance you were able to compete to be a chair. At SiS, graduate students were invited to, through a very formal application process, to be chair of session. Although it means you won’t attend certain talks, the trade-off is worth is as one is forced to think of questions or how to manage, and be critical and aware of several issues of research.

Being ‘forced’ to be critical led to my planning more what aspects I want to present to the audience. This conference was concerned with the science of health, its epistemology and helped me think of how to discuss the development of theory. As in a PhD viva one might need to answer ‘new knowledge to the field’ how the theory or models proposed are better than competing theories.

I was also lucky to visit Howard University, where I spend time researching cultural ‘appropriateness’ of health programmes, specifically should postnatal care be done again at 40 days. For my PhD evaluation of the Green Tara Nepal that the cultural sensitive aspect led to its increase in health services uptake. I encourage those interested to visit their work as they are ranked school in the top 20% of social work programmes. The World Bank and USAID frequently have invitations to talks, the ones I attended highlighted the focus of women in development, what role programmes can play to develop rural areas; as it is women in Nepal who ‘stay’ in the villages to farm and care for the family as men migrate abroad or to the capital city Kathmandu.

This experience helped me begin the reflection of what my evaluation means, whether in a policy context or the epistemological context; on my return I spoke to my supervisory team. Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen, Prof. Vanora Hundley, Dr. Catherine Angell and my external supervisor Dr. Padam Simkhada (University of Sheffield) who encouraged me to on this basis strengthen my writing for my discussion on what the research done has meant.