BU Research Blog

This week we had the luxury of four exchange visitors from Manmohan Memorial Institute of Health Sciences (MMIHS) in Nepal who are here on the Erasmus+ scheme.  Erasmus+ funds are a great way to build academic networks and gain experience of teaching and learning elsewhere.  Global staff mobility, including training and teaching, leads to professional development and networking and brings great value to BU and our students, whilst also offering invaluable international experience for BU staff and postgraduate students in Nepal.

Today Prof. Sujan Marahatta, Dr. Sujata Sapkota and Dr. Sujan Gautam offered a workshop under the title ‘Introducing federalization in Nepal: What are the effects on its health system?’   All three academics are part of the Nepal Federal Health System Project, our major collaborative project examining the consequences for the health system of Nepal’s move to a federal government structure in 2015.  This is a joint project (2020-2024) led by the University of Sheffield and it is an collaboration with Bournemouth University, the University of Huddersfield, MMIHS and PHASE Nepal.  This longitudinal interdisciplinary study is funded by the UK Health Systems Research Initiative [Grant ref. MR/T023554/1].  After highlighting the difference between ‘federalisation’ and ‘decentralisation’, the Nepalese academics briefly explained the political changes in the Nepal over the past decade or so.  Followed by an outline of the project’s research methods and the key preliminary findings. The  presenters focused on the data generated through a participatory method called River of Life, and from the policy analysis based on the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) Health System Building  blocks.  This project has resulted in three publications to date [1-3].

Our visitors got involved in a range of teaching activities, for example, Prof. Beenu Bista, Professor of Nursing at MMIHS, taught various groups of BU nursing students earlier this week, whilst Dr. Sujata Sapkota helped supervise and advise one of BU’s M.Sc. Public Health students for her dissertation project.

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

Centre for Midwifery & Women’s Health (CMWH)

References:

1. Sapkota, S., Panday, S., Wasti, S.P., Lee, A., Balen, J., et al. (2022) Health System Strengthening: The Role of Public Health in Federal Nepal, Journal of Nepal Public Health Association 7 (1): 36-42.
2. Rushton, S., Pandey, S., van Teijlingen, E., Subedi, M., Balen, J., et al. (2021) An Investigation into the Impact of Decentralization on the Health System of Nepal. Journal of Manmohan Memorial Institute of Health Sciences, 7(1): 3–14. https://doi.org/10.3126/jmmihs.v7i1.43146
3. Adhikary, P., Balen, J., Gautam, S., Ghimire S., Karki J.K., et al. (2020) The COVID-19 pandemic in Nepal: Emerging evidence on the effectiveness of action by, and cooperation between, different levels of government in a federal system. Journal of Karnali Academy of Health Sciences 3(3)