Congratulations to Professor Carol Clark, Dr Sujan Marahatta and Professor Vanora Hundley for their new interdisciplinary paper exploring the prevalence of pain catastrophising among women of reproductive age in Nepal.
It is well-acknowledged that there are multiple factors that contribute to constructing perceptions of pain – this paper explores previous pain experiences and the prevalence of pain catastrophising. The team found a high prevalence of pain catastrophising in Nepal, which could contribute rising obstetric intervention, particularly caesarean births, in Nepal.
The work is part of a programme of work looking at how best to support women during the latent phase of labour (early labour). You can hear more about this work by listening to a recent vodcast from Carol and Vanora:
Please be aware that there will be a planned upgrade to BRIAN taking place 4-6th September, during which time BRIAN will be unavailable for use. We are hoping for BRIAN to resume running again by 9th September 2024, if not earlier.
Please do plan your BRIAN usage accordingly to take this period of inaccessibility into account. For all BRIAN related queries, please email BRIAN@bournemouth.ac.uk.
As part of the interdisciplinary Sonamoni project our collaborator Mirza Shibat Rowshan will be presenting at Safety 2024. The 15th World Conference on Injury Prevention and Safety Promotion (Safety 2024) will be held between in the first week of September in New Delhi, India. The conference is hosted by The George Institute for Global Health and co-sponsored by the World Health Organization (WHO).
Sonamoni is being coordinated by Bournemouth University and CIPRB (The Centre for Injury Prevention and Research, Bangladesh) in collaboration with the University of the West of England, Bristol, the University of Southampton, the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI), and Design Withour Borders in Uganada. This project, with Prof. Dr. Aminur Rahman as Bangladesh lead, includes a BU-based PhD project Mr. Md. Shafkat Hossain. The interdisciplinary team at Bournemouth University covers three faculties through: Dr. Mavis Bengtsson, Dr. Kyungjoo Cha, Dr. Mehdi Chowdhury, Dr. Yong Hun Lim, Mr. John Powell, and Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen.
Shibat works at CIPRB, which is a world leading injury prevention organisation based in Bangladesh. This presentation focuses on a needs assessment of the risk of very young children drowning in rural Bangladesh.All conference abstracts will be published in a pre-conference supplement of the scientific journal BMJ- Injury Prevention.
Barcelona residents marched against tourists in July after similar protests in Venice earlier in 2024. Recently, residents of Santorini in Greece were in uproar after a Facebook post reportedly asked them to stay home and make room for the thousands of tourists expected to arrive during the peak holiday season.
These are symptoms of overtourism: a situation where visits exceed a destination’s capacity, making residents angry and tourists miserable. Local governments have proposed tourism levies or entry fees to make visits more expensive and thereby limit how many people show up. Some tourism researchers have encouraged people to holiday in rural areas or poorer countries instead, to give a boost to their economies.
However, overtourism exists in the developing world too. Here’s what it looks like.
Travel on a tourist-swamped island
Bali is a major tourist destination in the Indonesian archipelago that accounts for nearly half of international arrivals in the country. Air travel is the most reliable way to get there, although a big source of carbon emissions, which inflame a climate crisis that is expected to disproportionately harm poorer countries like Indonesia. Roughly 15 million visitors arrived in 2023 – close to their level in 2019, before the pandemic.
Bali’s tourism-dependent economy (providing 61% of regional GDP in 2019) was more or less frozen by COVID-19. Yet, for tourists who spent lockdown in cities, the pandemic also left Bali, and particularly the island’s rural parts, with a renewed lustre. Penglipuran, a traditional Balinese village in the central highlands, was attracting thousands of visitors every day in July.
Encouraging people to visit poorer areas can disadvantage residents, but in a different way to how people in Venice or Barcelona experience it. After all, roads and public transport in richer European cities are better maintained.
For all its problems, vehicle rental offers a roaring trade in Bali. Swuerfel/Shutterstock
In rural Bali, the hilly terrain, tropical weather and poorer public transport mean residents must rely on cars and motorbikes. The resulting noise and pollution degrades the rural experience. Converting these vehicles to run on electricity would not solve the problem entirely if most power in Bali remains fossil-sourced. Nor would it cut road congestion.
Tourists want to visit lots of places in rural Bali with a reliable source of transport. The limited options have prompted many to rent cars or motorbikes, but weak traffic enforcement has allowed misbehaviour: tourists driving without shirts or helmets – or even licenses. The regional government temporarily banned motorbike rentals for foreigners in March 2023.
Despite chaotic traffic on the island, residents have found work transporting tourists informally for decades. That’s why efforts to ease congestion and travel chaos, by designing public transport for tour groups or free shuttle bus services, have met with local protests and the ire of vehicle rental businesses.
To travel or not to travel
Unbridled development squanders the mutual benefits that tourism can have for residents and visitors. Likewise, neither residents nor tourists should be prohibited from travelling, but should instead travel responsibly.
A railway transport plan that promises to connect Bali’s airport with Seminyak and Nusa Dua, the most popular areas in urban Bali, could help ease road traffic around the city centre. Local vehicle rental businesses could continue to operate in rural areas, but restrict their riders to less busy roads.
Poor destinations should be cautious about depending on tourism in the long term. The Balinese government is exploring its options in other sectors at least, such as agriculture and the digital economy.
Poorer destinations such as Bali are less well equipped than richer countries to manage the socioeconomic and environmental costs of overtourism. And ultimately, a swollen tourism sector contains the seeds of its own demise: declining environmental quality, unhappy residents and eventually, fewer tourists.
Don’t have time to read about climate change as much as you’d like?
Am I getting grumpier or are academic getting lazier? Or both? This morning I had to write an email in my role as one of the editors of The Journal of Asian Midwives to a group of authors somewhere in South Asia with the following text:
‘I don’t think you have read the author instructions for our journal. The Journal of Asian Midwives is interested in promoting midwifery and maternity care in South Asia. Your article is about a different profession ‘nursing’ and worse it mentions neither midwifery, maternity care nor pregnancy. This manuscript is not appropriate for our academic journal.
Moreover, in terms of style, I am not impressed by an email addressed to me which ends with the following:
Best regards,
[Your Full Name]
[Your Affiliation]
[Your Contact Information]
[Enclosures: Main Document, First Page, Cover Letter]
Please, try (1) submitting to a nursing journal and (2) have a bit less of an AI-generated cover letter.
The multiverse, the idea of different universes that exist at the same time, has been a plot device on screen and in comic books for years. The success of the recently released Deadpool & Wolverine, which has already earned US$1 billion (£778,180,000) at the box office, and the excitement around Iron Man actor Robert Downey Jr’s imminent return to the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) – this time as villainous Doctor Doom – show the phenomenon is unlikely to go away anytime soon.
You could track it back to Sliding Doors (1998), which cut back and forth between two different realities, showing the ways a woman’s life diverged due to happenstance. Or you could go further still, with It’s a Wonderful Life (1946) which showed a different, darker, reality if James Stewart’s character, George, had died in childhood. Or even Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, where the Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come shows Scrooge an alternate, bleaker reality where he doesn’t change his ways.
On TV, an episode of The Twilight Zone first dealt with parallel worlds in 1963 – while, in a 1967 episode of Star Trek, Leonard Nimoy played an evil version of Spock from an alternate reality, signified mainly by his facial hair.
The moment Robert Downey Jr. was revealed as Doctor Doom.
As Marvel fans know, Downey Jr’s familiarity as Tony Stark/Iron Man means it’s overwhelmingly likely that his new role as Doctor Doom will mean the two worlds (or multiverses) colliding in some way. But we don’t know yet how the return of Downey Jr to the MCU will lead to him playing a villain.
Perhaps in this alternate universe, Tony Stark became evil because of different choices taken in his life. Or perhaps he will be playing an entirely different character – Doctor Doom masquerading as Iron Man to shock or beguile the characters that trust him.
Doom is traditionally a Fantastic Four villain, so may first appear in that forthcoming movie. As Mark Hibbert, the author of Data and Doctor Doom (2024) suggests, it wouldn’t be out of character for Doom to “swap bodies with the original Tony Stark” and “travel backwards in time to before he died fighting Thanos”.
Doom often surrounds himself with robot doppelgangers (as seen on stage at San Diego Comic-Com, when Downey’s casting was announced), so it’s not a complete surprise that this character would look like another character.
Multiverse narratives and dark storylines
Multiverses hold the potential for infinite narrative freedom. This means gaining access to all possibilities, and alternatives to the mistakes of history – but multiverse stories seldom seem to work out that way.
The trope is found in various genres and media, from British comics such as Bryan Talbot’s Luther Arkwright saga (1978-2022), to novels including Adrian Tchaikovsky’s The Doors to Eden (2020) and Michael Moorcock’s Eternal Champion series (1962-2012), which coined the term.
Stepping into the multiverse is generally discomfiting and unnerving at best, and downright dangerous and homicidal at worst, as in Sarah Pinsker’s 2017 novella And Then There Were (N-One).
Travelling the multiverse leads to colonisation in Stephen Baxter and Terry Pratchett’s The Long Earth series (2012). It enables corporate greed and eco-violence on an unprecedented scale in M.R. Carey’s Infinity Gate (2023). As Carey’s protagonist Essien Nkanika discovers, in the multiverse, strangeness and familiarity are twisted together, producing a feeling of sickening pressure and emotional dread.
Those who visit parallel worlds usually come back traumatised and changed – sometimes even becoming the monsters they once hunted, or tried to escape.
Often the alternate world is conveyed as an uncanny experience – Sigmund Freud’s term for the familiar made strange, an effect which “arouses dread and creeping horror”. How could it not? There is the danger of meeting another version of yourself – the ultimate doppelganger.
This notion signals the collapse of the idea of a single self, when the multiverse traveller finds themselves suffering a profound sense of otherness and displacement. These parallel worlds connect to ours in discomfiting ways, showing us our own world replaced and dislocated, where familiar landscapes hide unfamiliar threats. This theme is explored in Brian Crouch’s 2016 novel Dark Matter and the 2022 TV adaptation, where a parallel world doppelganger can steal your life.
It’s unsurprising that superheroes lend themselves so well to this scenario. These characters are already divided selves, with superhero identity frequently opposing the alter ego – think powerful Superman versus weak Clark Kent, brash Spiderman versus timid Peter Parker, obsessive and proactive Batman versus idle Bruce Wayne.
Chris Evans plays two Marvel characters in Deadpool and Wolverine.
Deadpool & Wolverine also comments on the phenomenon of the same actor playing different characters in the same multiverse. In the movie, Chris Evans plays two characters. This is first used for surprise, then humour, and finally to inflammatory effect.
This isn’t a new phenomenon. DC Comics got there first in 1961, when The Flash met a doppelganger from an alternative reality. On TV, Brandon Routh played both The Atom and Superman in a 2019 episode of Batwoman, that also featured multiple Clark Kents.
The cartoon series Rick and Morty (2013-present) often returns to the plot of the characters facing evil versions of themselves from other dimensions, while their domestic life features two versions of Morty’s mother now living in the same house.
The multiverse brings new twists and turns to comic book sagas on screen and in print, and allows reboots to be folded into the same narrative (as seen in Spider-Man: No Way Home, 2021) which helps a film studio, reuse, revive and advertise their back catalogue.
Since cinema-goers are currently voting with their feet for this narrative style, we should expect to see many more multiverses to come. But don’t be surprised when the consequences of visiting these parallel worlds turns increasingly dark.
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Bournemouth University PhD student Md. Shafkat Hossain has been invited to attend the international Safety 2024 conference in India in September. The 15th World Conference on Injury Prevention & Safety Promotion (Safety 2024) will be held 2-4 September at the Taj Palace in New Delhi. Safety 2024 global event will focus worldwide attention on safety and injury prevention. This conference will gather international experts in the field with a united goal of “Building a safer future for all: Equitable and sustainable strategies for injury and violence prevention”.
Shafkat will be presenting this PhD work to date under the title ‘Using Human-Centred Design (HCD) to develop community-led interventions to prevent drowning among children under the age of 2 in rural Bangladesh’. Mr. Md. Shafkat Hossain who has been selected by Bloomberg Philanthropies as one of the Emerging Leaders in Drowning Prevention programme. This programme has been designed to create a cohort of younger leaders to join national and international efforts to raise awareness and strengthen solutions and political commitment towards drowning. This programme is hosted by the Global Health Advocacy Incubator and provides a unique opportunity for people like Shafkat to develop leadership skills in drowning prevention, and be a part of a global community working to reduce drowning deaths. This first group of Emerging Leaders includes people from Bangladesh, Ghana, India, Uganda, United States and Vietnam.
Shafkat’s PhD study is part of the interdisciplinary Sonamoni study. Sonamoni is coordinated by BU in collaboration with Centre for Injury Prevention and Research, Bangladesh (CIPRB), the University of the West of England, Bristol, the University of Southampton, Design Without Borders (DWB) in Uganda, and the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI). We are working to reduce drownings among newly-mobile children, generally under two years old. This £1.6m project has been made possible thanks to a grant from the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) through their Research and Innovation for Global Health Transformation programme. For more information about our ongoing research in Bangladesh, please visit the NIHR website.
I am delighted to share that our most recent methods paper in the International Journal of Qualitative Methods entitled “Most Significant Change Approach: A Guide to Assess the Programmatic Effects” [1] is now published and is available online (click here!). This paper is co-authored by Mohan K. Sharma, Shanti P. Khanal and Edwin R.van Teijlingen.
The paper outlines the so-called ‘Most Significant Change’ (MSC) participatory technique to monitor and evaluate programmatic effects. MSC is a form of monitoring that can be applied throughout the programme cycle and it provides information to help manage the programme. Furthermore, MSC as an evaluation method, provides stories from which programmes’ overall impact can be assessed. However, MSC, as a participatory evaluation technique using qualitative approaches, is often neglected by many evaluators.
This is the latest in a series of papers describing the strengths and weaknesses of applying specific research approaches. Other recent methods papers included two on positionality [2-3], a paper on interview methods [4], reflections on conducting participatory policy analysis in Nepal [5], some considerations about the selection of study localities in health research [6], distinguishing between methods and methodology [7], the use of the appreciative inquiry methods [8], reflections on interdisciplinary research [9], and patient and public involvement in research in Bangladesh and Nepal [10].
Whilst older methods papers published Faculty of Health & Social Sciences academics include topics such as focus group discussions, working with translators, conducting pilot studies, the Delphi Method, comparative studies, and qualitative interviews [11-22].
Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen
CMWH
References:
Sharma, M.K., Khanal, S.P., van Teijlingen E. (2024) Most Significant Change Approach: A Guide to Assess the Programmatic Effects, International Journal of Qualitative Methods, https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/16094069241272143
Gurr, H., Oliver, L., Harvey, O., Subedi, M., van Teijlingen, E. (2024) Positionality in Qualitative Research, Dhaulagiri Journal of Sociology & Anthropology 18(1): 48-54. https://doi.org/10.3126/dsaj.v18i01.67553
Thapa, R., Regmi, P., van Teijlingen, E., Heaslip, V. (2023) Researching Dalits and health care: Considering positionality, Health Prospect21(1): 6-8.
Sapkota, S., Rushton, S., van Teijlingen, E., Subedi, M., Balen, J., Gautam, S., Adhikary, P., Simkhada, P., Wasti,SP., Karki, JK., Panday, S., Karki, A., Rijal, B., Joshi, S., Basnet, S., Marahatta, SB. (2024) Participatory policy analysis in health policy and systems research: reflections from a study in Nepal. Health Research & Policy Systems, 22(7) https://doi.org/10.1186/s12961-023-01092-5 .
Wasti, S.P., van Teijlingen, E., Simkhada, P., Rushton, S., Balen, J., Subedi, M., Karki, J., Adhikary, P., Sapkota, S., Gautam, S., Marahatta, S., Panday, S., Bajracharya, B., Vaidya, A. for the Nepal Federal Health System Team (2023) Selection of Study Sites and Participants for Research into Nepal’s Federal Health System, WHO South-East Asia Journal of Public Health
Harvey, O., Regmi, P.R., Mahato, P., Dhakal Adhikari, S., Dhital, R., van Teijlingen E. (2023) Methods or Methodology: Terms That Are Too Often Confused. Journal of Education & Research, 13(2): 94-105. https://doi.org/10.51474/jer.v13i2.716
Arnold, R., Gordon, C., Way, S., Mahato, P., van Teijlingen, E. (2022) Why use Appreciative Inquiry? Lessons learned during COVID-19 in a UK maternity service, European Journal of Midwifery 6 (May): 1-7. https://doi.org/10.18332/ejm/147444
Shanker, S., Wasti, S.P., Ireland, J., Regmi, P., Simkhada, P., van Teijlingen, E. (2021) The Interdisciplinary Team Not the Interdisciplinarist: Reflections on Interdisciplinary Research, Europasian Journal of Medical Sciences3(2): 1-5. https://doi.org/10.46405/ejms.v3i2.317
Simkhada, B., van Teijlingen, E., Nadeem, A., Green, S., Warren A. (2021) Importance of involving patients and public in health research in Bangladesh and Nepal. International Journal of Technology Assessment in Health Care 37: e10. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0266462320000811
Kirkpatrick, P., van Teijlingen E. (2009) Lost in Translation: Reflecting on a Model to Reduce Translation and Interpretation Bias, The Open Nursing Journal, 3(8): 25-32 web address: bentham.org/open/tonursj/openaccess2.htm
van Teijlingen E, Hundley, V. (2005) Pilot studies in family planning & reproductive health care, Journal of Family Planning & Reproductive Health Care 31(3): 219-21.
van Teijlingen E, Pitchforth E. (2006) Focus Group Research Family Planning & Reproductive Health Care, Journal of Family Planning & Reproductive Health Care 32(1): 30-2
van Teijlingen E, Pitchforth, E., Bishop, C., Russell, E.M. (2006) Delphi method and nominal group techniques in family planning and reproductive health research, Journal of Family Planning & Reproductive Health Care 32(4): 249-252.
Pitchforth, E, van Teijlingen E, Ireland, J. (2007) Focusing the group, RCM MidwivesJournal 10(2): 78-80.
Pitchforth, E., van Teijlingen E. (2005) International Public Health Research involving interpreters: a case study approach from Bangladesh, BMC Public Health,5: 71 Web address: http://www.biomedcentral.com/content/pdf/1471-2458-5-71.pdf
Forrest Keenan, K., Teijlingen van, E., Pitchforth, E. (2005) Analysis of qualitative research data in family planning & reproductive health care, Journal of Family Planning & Reproductive Health Care 31(1): 40-43.
Brindle S, Douglas, F, van Teijlingen E., Hundley V. (2005) Midwifery Research: Questionnaire surveys, RCM MidwivesJournal 8 (4): 156-158.
Douglas, F, van Teijlingen E, Brindle S, Hundley, V, Bruce, J., Torrance, N. (2005) Designing Questionnaires for Midwifery Research, RCM MidwivesJournal 8: 212-215.
van Teijlingen E, Sandall, J., Wrede, S., Benoit, C., DeVries, R., Bourgeault, I. (2003) Comparative studies in maternity care RCM MidwivesJournal 6: 338-40.
This week the Global Health Journal accepted the latest article on female migrant workers from Nepal [1]. The paper is co-authored by Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen in the Centre for Midwifery & Women’s Health as well as by Faculty of Health & Social Sciences Visiting Faculty Prof. Padam, and other Nepalese co-authors are based in the UK and Nepal. Ms. Manju Gurung is co-founder & strategic advisor of POURAKHI Nepal, an Nepal-based organisation supporting ,migrant workers. Dr. Sharada P.Wasti, is based at the University of Greenwich, and he has collaborated with Bournemouth University academics on several previous academic papers on health, work-related migration and human trafficking [2-4].
The paper highlights the plight of women working abroad and the problems they encounter destination countries. This study reported in this paper was conducted among 1,889 women who were registered as migrant returnees at an organisation called POURAKHI Nepal. The study extracted and analysed data from this non-governmental organisation that
supports returning female migrant workers in Nepal.
Around half (43.1 %) of the women in the study were 35 or older, 30.9 % were illiterate, and 63.6 % were in their first overseas job. Over one-third (38.5 %) had experienced self-reported workplace harassment. Gender-based violence was a serious problem as physical violence was highly prevalent (68 %), followed by verbal abuse (37.5 %), mental stress (29.7 %), and sexual abuse (14.1 %).
Women who worked abroad with the following characteristics were at the greatest risk: those who were illiterate (adjusted odds ratio [AOR]1.25, 95 % confidence interval [CI]: 1.01 to 1.55), unmarried (AOR 1.27, 95 % CI: 1.05 to 1.56), worked abroad twice or more years (AOR 1.35, 95 % CI: 1.10 to 1.66), changed their place of work (AOR 2.38, 95 % CI: 1.42 to 4.01), lived without documents (AOR 1.24, 95 % CI: 1.03 to 1.50), worked as domestics (AOR 3.56, 95 % CI: 2.03 to 6.23), worked in other than Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries (AOR 1.45, 95 % CI: 1.06 to 1.99), women who did not have a fixed salary (AOR 1.64, 95 % CI: 1.28 to 2.10) and did not receive salary (AOR 3.71, 95 % CI: 2.88 to 4.77) were more likely to be harassed at work.
The authors recommend that the host governments should introduce and enforce policies protecting women in the workplace. Moreover, migrant women should be provided with better information about health risks and hazards as well as how to improve preventive measures in destination countries to reduce workplace harassment.
Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen
Centre for Midwifery & Women’s Health
References:
Simkhada, P.P., van Teijlingen, E., Gurung, M., Bhujel, S., Wasti, S.P. (2024) Workplace harassment faced by female Nepalese migrants working aboard, Global Health Journal 8(3): 128-132. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S241464472400040X
Simkhada, P.P., van Teijlingen, E.R., Gurung, M., Wasti, S. (2018) A survey of health problems of Nepalese female migrants workers in the Middle-East & Malaysia, BMC International Health & Human Rights 18(4): 1-7. http://rdcu.be/E3Ro.
Simkhada, P., van Teijlingen, E., Sharma, A., Bissell, P., Poobalan, A., Wasti, S.P. (2018) Health consequences of sex trafficking: A systematic review, Journal of Manmohan Memorial Institute of Health Sciences, 4(1): 130-49.
Regmi, P., Dhakal Adhikari, S., Aryal, N., Wasti, S.P., van Teijlingen, E. (2022) Fear, Stigma and Othering: The Impact of COVID-19 Rumours on Returnee Migrants and Muslim Populations of Nepal, International Journal of Environmental Research & PublicHealth 19(15), 8986; https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph19158986
Our research project on kidney disease in Nepalese migrant workers funded by the Colt Foundation has been published this week by PLoS ONE. The paper ‘Exploring lifestyles, work environment and health care experience of Nepalese returnee labour migrants diagnosed with kidney-related problems‘ [1] is led by Bournemouth University’s Drs. Pramod Regmi and Nirmal Aryal, both based in the Centre for Wellbeing and Long-Term Health. This is one of the first qualitative papers to focus on the rising kidney health-related risks among Nepalese labour migrants in the Middle East and Malaysia.
This qualitative study explored the lifestyles and work environment of returnee Nepalese migrants who were diagnosed with kidney health problems. In-depth interviews were carried out with twelve male returnee migrants, with half having worked abroad for at least a decade. Our analysis yielded seven themes: (a) living and lifestyles; (b) work environment; (c) exposure to pollutants; (d) Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD) experience; (e) use of painkillers and healthcare; (f) medical expenses for CKD patients; and (g) pre-departure training. This study indicates that Nepalese migrants face numerous challenges, including limited access to clean water and sanitation facilities, poor diets, exposure to occupational hazards, and overuse of pain medication, all of which may contribute to an increased risk of kidney disease. An enhanced pre-departure and on-arrival orientation programme focusing on kidney health-related topics, including the necessary advocacy at the country of destination to provide access to basic services, may encourage migrants to adopt healthy lifestyles and safe working environments, as well as help educate migrants to their kidney health risks.
The is the latest in a series of academic papers related in one way of or another to kidney disease in migrant workers from Nepal [2-5].
Aryal, N., Sedhain, A., Regmi, P.R., KC, R. K., van Teijlingen, E. (2021). Risk of kidney health among returnee Nepali migrant workers: A survey of nephrologists. Asian Journal of Medical Sciences, 12(12), 126–132. https://doi.org/10.3126/ajms.v12i12.39027
Aryal, N., Regmi, P.R., Faller, E.M,, van Teijlingen, E., Khoon, C.C., Pereira, A., Simkhada, P. (2019) Sudden cardiac death and kidney health related problems among Nepali migrant workers in Malaysia, Nepal Journal of Epidemiology9(3): 755-758. https://www.nepjol.info/index.php/NJE/article/view/25805
Aryal, N., Regmi, P.R., Sedhain, A., KC, R.K., Martinez Faller, E., Rijal, A., van Teijlingen, E. (2021) Kidney health risk of migrant workers: An issue we can no longer overlook. Health Prospect 20(1):15-7
Regmi, P., Simkhada, P., Aryal, N., van Teijlingen, E. (2022) Excessive mortalities among migrant workers: the case of the 2022 FIFA World Cup. Europasian Journal of Medical Sciences,4:31-32. https://doi.org/10.46405/ejms.v4i0.455
In partnership with the University of the West of England (UWE) and regional organisations, we have received £1.4m to deliver the INSIGHT programme for the South West Central region.
This includes providing fully funded Master’s with Research (MRes) programmes and a range of engagement activities – such as workshops, networking opportunities and mentoring programmes to promote research careers within health and care.
Professor Carol Clark, Professor in Physiotherapy at Bournemouth University who is leading the INSIGHT programme at BU, said: “The NIHR INSIGHT programme provides an outstanding opportunity for health and care professionals to build their research skills. Embedding research into careers has the potential to improve outcomes for all the people who access health and care in England.
“We are delighted to be working alongside UWE to deliver MRes programmes for the South West Central region for the next three years, building research capacity and capability.”
Dr Adele Drew-Hill, Dean and Head of School of Health and Social Wellbeing at UWE, said: “We’re delighted to be working with Bournemouth University to deliver this innovative and engaging programme designed to enable students to explore a career in research. Our shared vision is to develop the leading regional hub for healthcare research skills development in the Southwest.”
The INSIGHT Programme funds a wide range of engagement activities and research Master’s places for current students and recent graduates within healthcare, social work and public health professions.
The £33.2m funding from the NIHR is for three years and supports institutions across 12 regions in England to deliver engagement programmes to attract people into research careers, and fully-funded Research Master’s places to train those new to research.
Professor Waljit Dhillo, Dean of NIHR Academy, said:“We know how important early exposure to research is for helping students and early career professionals develop the knowledge and skills needed to join the research workforce and build successful research careers in the future.
“I’m delighted that we can invest in our next generation of researchers in the South West Central region, and show students all of the benefits that research roles and careers have to offer.”
Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen in the Centre for Midwifery & Women’s Health (CMWH) has been invited to give a key note address at the 4th International Conference on Medical & Health Sciences 2024 in Mauritius next month. Edwin will be highlighting the difficulties of conducting interdisciplinary research, based on recent CMWH publications [1-2]. At the conference Edwin will also join two Bournemouth University Visiting Faculty members in running a workshop on academic publishing, his co-presenters are Ms. Jillian Ireland, Professional Midwifery Advocate at UHD (University Hospitals Dorset NHS Foundation Trust), and Prof. Padam Simkhada (University of Huddersfield).
In addition, Edwin has also been invited at this upcoming conference be act as a panelist to analyse the current research strengths of SSR (Sir Seewoosagur Ramgoolam) Medical College, Mauritius. Interestingly, the panel activity will take place over two days: a 15-minute SWOT analysis on September 16, followed by a 45-minute panel discussion on September 17.
References:
Shanker, S., Wasti, S.P., Ireland, J., Regmi, P., Simkhada, P., van Teijlingen, E. (2021) The Interdisciplinary Team Not the Interdisciplinarist: Reflections on Interdisciplinary Research, Europasian Journal of Medical Sciences3(2): 1-5. https://doi.org/10.46405/ejms.v3i2.317
van Teijlingen, E., Regmi, P., Adhikary, P., Aryal, N., Simkhada, P. (2019). Interdisciplinary Research in Public Health: Not quite straightforward. Health Prospect, 18(1), 4-7. https://doi.org/10.3126/hprospect.v18i1.19337
van Teijlingen E. (2008) RAE pulls academics away from applied multidisciplinary health promotion research International Journal of Health Promotion & Education 46: 116.
The UK Parliament Knowledge Exchange Unit have announced a new online Parliament for Researchers with the House of Lords training session.
In this session, they will be joined by Lord Krebs who will share insights on the value of academic research in Parliament, informed by his background in Biological Sciences.
About the session
During the session, you will find out about how research evidence is used in both the House of Commons and the House of Lords, and how you can work with Parliament as a researcher.
Who is this for?
This session is suitable for early career researchers, PhD students and researchers who are new to engaging with the UK Parliament as well as those who would benefit from a refresher. The session will cover useful information for researchers of all academic backgrounds and will be of particular interest to those in the life sciences.
Environmental DNA (eDNA) captures genetic material from the environment such as water, soil and air and can be used for species detection. Until recently, wildlife surveys would involve physically looking for species but now we can use DNA sequencing to monitor wildlife in a non-invasive manner.
The work on eDNA at Bournemouth University is led by Dr Demetra Andreou and supported by Dr Kirthana Pillay (Life and Environmental Science Department-LES) Within LES, we have the capability to monitor and sequence vertebrate and invertebrate biodiversity. We have received funding through the Regional Development Fund to expand our eDNA work in Dorset. The project entitled ‘Transforming biodiversity monitoring in Dorset using citizen scientists and environmental DNA’ is a collaboration across multiple staff with LES and Dorset based charities and SMEs.
As part of this work, we have run a number of outreach events. We started our outreach at the Dorchester Science Festival where we demonstrated eDNA water filtering techniques to children. Our booth received over 60 participants and they enjoyed engaging with us.
eDNA booth at Dorchester Science Festival
Following that we delivered an outreach workshop to students at Kingston Mauward College. The workshop attended by 20 students and staff consisted of a seminar, DNA sampling in the surrounding grounds of the college and ended with an introduction to data analysis. We were successful at sampling the pond, lake and freshwater streams.
Countryside Restoration Trust
Our most recent outreach programme was delivered to staff and volunteers at the Countryside Restoration Trust (CRT). The workshop took place at Bere Marsh Farm in Blandford, an old dairy farm that is currently undergoing regeneration. The session started with a seminar explaining introductory concepts of environmental DNA, which was followed with a field sampling session. We collected some water samples from the river Stour that runs through their property and soil samples from the water meadows that will be seeded with wildflowers. It was a great information exchange session and we aim to continue such outreach sessions to strengthen relationships between local communities and Bournemouth University.
If you’d like to explore how environmental DNA can support your research or conservation project please get in touch with Dr Demetra Andreou at dandreou@bournemouth.ac.uk
Access to safe and sufficient drinking Water, Sanitation, and good Hygiene (WASH) facilities in schools play a crucial role in preventing numerous diseases, improving the learning environment in schools, and creating resilient communities living in a healthy environment. This study in Nepal explored the impact of combining WASH facilities on students’ health status, school attendance, and educational achievements [1].
A total of 24 participants, 16 students, and eight teachers were interviewed; data were audio recorded and analyzed thematically. Some of the results suggest that school-WASH facilities have a significant impact on students’ health and well‐being. Poor school‐WASH facilities hindered students’ school attendance, particularly for menstruating girls. School without separate toilets for girls, including menstruation hygiene facilities, lack of water and soap, sanitary pad, and secure toilet’s door often have higher rates of absenteeism among girls. It is important to note that inadequate WASH facilities affect not only students, but also teachers in the same school. The latest paper conclude that a lack of safe and sufficient drinking water, unimproved sanitation, and poor hygiene facilities were seen by students and teachers as reducing their health and well‐being, school attendance, and academic performance. Schools needs to provide better WASH facilities for the benefit of students’ health, attendance, and educational proficiency.
This is a follow-up from an earlier paper on the effect on educational achievement in the same population [2].
Sharma, M., Adhikari, R., van Teijlingen, E., Devkota, B., Khanal, S. (2024) Improved Water, Sanitation and Hygiene Facilities at School and their Effect on Educational Achievement in Basic Level Students in Nepal, International Journal of Health Promotion & Education (accepted). https://doi.org/10.1080/14635240.2024.2314459.
Today we saw the publication of our latest paper about FCHVs (Female Community Health Volunteers) in Nepal [1]. This paper is Open Access and hence freely available worldwide, to anyone with an internet access. The FCHV programme is one of the most successful parts of the health system of Nepal. This programme covers over fifty thousand FCHVs distributed across the country. These women provide unparalleled services to help across communities to improve outcomes in communicable and non-communicable diseases (NCDs) and aid health promotion and education.
Previous papers focusing on FCHVs included the recently accepted paper in PLOS Global Public Health [2], as well as two previous papers based on the Ph.D. study by Dr. Sarita Panday on FCHVs [3-4]. The latest paper is co-authored with Sankalpa Bhattarai is is working with our long-term collaborating agency Green Tara Nepal.
Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen
Centre for Midwifery & Women’s Health
References:
Bhattarai, S., & van Teijlingen, E. (2024). Nepal Needs A Two-Pronged Approach to Secure Future of Its Female Community Health Volunteers (FCHVs). Journal of Manmohan Memorial Institute of Health Sciences, 9(1), 43–48. https://doi.org/10.3126/jmmihs.v9i1.68640
Panday, S., Barnes, A., van Teijlingen, E. (2024) Exploring the motivations of female community health volunteers in primary healthcare provision in rural Nepal: a qualitative study, PLOS Global Public Health (forthcoming).
Panday, S., Bissell, P., van Teijlingen, E., Simkhada, P. (2017) The contribution of female community health volunteers (FCHVs) to maternity care in Nepal: a qualitative study, BMC Health Services Research17:623 be/vz9C
Panday, S., Bissell, P., van Teijlingen, E., Simkhada, P. (2019) Perceived barriers to accessing female community health volunteers’ services amongst ethnic minority women in Nepal: a qualitative study, PLoS ONE14(6): e0217070 https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0217070
NERC Pushing the Frontiers Call – internal competition
NERC introduced demand management measures in 2012. These were revised in 2015 to reduce the number and size of applications from research organisations for NERC’s discovery science standard grant scheme. As the standard grant scheme has been superseded, demand management measures will be applied to the Pushing the Frontiers scheme only. Full details can be found in the BU policy document for NERC demand management measures.
BU has been capped at one application per Pushing the Frontiers round. An application counts towards an organisation, where the organisation is applying as the grant holding organisation (of the lead or component grant). This will be the organisation of the Principal Investigator of the lead or component grant.
BU process
BU has a process for determining which application will be submitted to each NERC Pushing the Frontiers round. This takes the form of an internal competition, which will include peer review. The next available round is estimated to be in January 2025. The deadline for internal Expressions of Interest (EoI) which will be used to determine which application will be submitted is 27 September 2024. The EoI form, BU policy for NERC Demand Management Measures and process for selecting an application can be found here: I:\RDS\Public\NERC Demand Management.
Following the internal competition, the Principal Investigator will have access to support from RDS and will work closely with Research Facilitators and Funding Development Officers to develop the application. Applicants will be expected to make use of External Application Reviewers.
RDS Contacts
Please contact Kate Percival, RDS Research Facilitator – kpercival@bournemouth.ac.uk if you wish to submit an expression of interest.
Between the 2nd- 4th July, staff from the Nutrition team in the Department of Rehabilitation and Sport Sciences travelled to Belfast to present their research and attend the international Nutrition Society Congress.
Staff showcased and presented a wide range of nutrition and health sciences research which was exceptionally well received by the audience members across the three days in Belfast.
Dr Joanne Holmes, Deputy Head of Department presented work entitled Sensory appeal and acceptance of a novel food intervention programme for older adults living with dysphagia.
Dr Fotini Tsofliou, Principal Academic and Programme Lead MSc Nutrition and Behaviour alongside two postgraduate researchers (PGRs) James Brooks (PhD) and Lee Chester (MRes) presented three research projects (1x randomised cross-over study and 2x systematic reviews) on healthy diet patterns towards a mediterranean style diet and effects on mood and mental wellbeing in middle aged adults.
Dr Reena Vijayakumaran, Senior Lecturer presented work entitled Exploring Food Insecurity & Sustainable Food in Rural India: Collaborative Learning through Student Mobility Programme
Dr Sarah Hillier, Senior Lecturer and Programme Lead BSc Nutrition presented work entitled Women’s dietary changes before and during pregnancy: a systematic review update. A project working in collaboration with her colleague Dr Ellinor Olander from City University.
Prof Jane Murphy, Deputy Dean presented work entitled A co-designed food intervention to promote healthy ageing in ethnic minorities (TANGERINE | Bournemouth University)
The Nutrition Society Congress gave the team an opportunity to collaborate and network with individuals across higher education, industry, and policy makers in the field of nutrition sciences.
The Congress was also an opportunity for staff members to engage in some team bonding, and they took the opportunity to learn about the history of Belfast, as well as sampling some of the local cuisine and beverages!
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In partnership with the University of the West of England (UWE) and regional organisations, we have received £1.4m to deliver the INSIGHT programme for the South West Central region.
Paper on Nepal reaching 5,000 readers
First paper by PhD student
Update: ESRC Festival Info Session Rescheduled to Wednesday 23 April 11am-12pm
Prof. Jonathan Parker on social welfare
MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships 2025
Horizon Europe info days 2025
Update on UKRO services
European research project exploring use of ‘virtual twins’ to better manage metabolic associated fatty liver disease
BU Professor has been invited to a series of plenary and invited lectures.