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Open Call for International Evaluators in all Scientific Areas!

EU

The Ministry of Science, Education and Sports of the Republic of Croatia (MSES) are seeking international experts in all scientific areas to evaluate project proposals under NEWFELPRO project to individually, remotely review project proposals covering a wide range of studies in their specific disciplines.

 This is a fantasic opportunity not only to gain reviewing experiencing but also to meet potential collaborators! To apply, send your CV to newfelpro@mzos.hr with “Evaluator application” in the subject line of the email message. The deadline to apply is 18 September 2013.

How do I submit to eBU?

BU research, PG research, Publishing, Research news, Research themes

eBU: Online Journal is the new journal for the BU community. It works on the basis of immediate publication (after an initial quality check) and open peer review in a safe internal environment. Authors then have two options – either publish on the external arm of eBU or publish their paper in an external journal.

Author guidelines and editorial policies are on the eBU site, and submitting manuscripts could not be easier. Follow these simple steps:

1. Access the eBU site by following this link (or when on campus type ‘ebu’ into your web browser address bar) – http://ebu.bournemouth.ac.uk

2. Use your BU credentials to log in to eBU. Click on the ‘Login’ tab on the eBU site, or alternatively follow this link – http://ebu.bournemouth.ac.uk/index.php/ebu/login

3. Logging in as an author with your BU credentials will take you to your ‘Author Submission’ homepage. To submit a manuscript, follow the instructions under ‘Start A New Submission’ (below).

 

 

 

 

 

 

4. Follow the 5 steps to complete manuscript submission.

 

eBU is now live with papers for comment!

BU research, PG research, Publishing, Research news, Research themes, Uncategorized

 

eBU can now be accessed

I am delighted to announce that eBU, the online BU journal that operates on the basis of immediate publication and open peer review, is now live with two papers ready for comment.

Jane Murphy (HSC), Louise Worswick (HSC), Andy Pullman, Grainne Ford (Royal Bournemouth Hospital) and Jaana Jeffery (HSC PhD student) suggest that e-learning is a great way to deliver nutririon education and training for health care staff who are involved in the care pathway for cancer survivors. The abstract can be found below:

Health care professionals are in a prime position to provide diet and lifestyle advice, but there are gaps in their own knowledge and education highlighting the need for improvements in teaching and learning approaches. This paper presents the rationale for the design, implementation and evaluation of an e-learning resource to deliver nutrition education and training for health care staff who are involved in the care pathway for cancer survivors. The findings of the evaluation are discussed and the importance of the resource in terms of its impact upon the provision of nutrition, diet and lifestyle advice in practice for the delivery of care and support of cancer survivors.

This paper can be accessed here –

http://ebu.bournemouth.ac.uk/index.php/ebu/article/view/9

Dorothy Fox (ST) uses original research to discuss the dynamics of doctoral supervision and provides recommendations for improving supervisory practice. The abstract can be found below:

Abstract:

This article reports an exploratory study of the professional relationships between supervisors who co-supervise management doctoral students in England. It draws on the concept and theoretical framework of emotional geographies (Hargreaves 2001) to understand the affective elements of these relationships. Team supervision has become mandatory in many Western universities and whilst the advantages and disadvantages of this development have been identified, the relationship between supervisors has not received the same attention. This is despite the evidence from students that positive or negative relationships within the supervisory team are of critical relevance to a successful outcome. Data from 13 in-depth interviews with supervisors was analysed and the emotional geographies are revealed. Further analysis showed that differences within the relationship are resolved in ways that are either ‘autocratic’, ‘overtly democratic’ or ‘covertly democratic’. With the aim of improving the quality of supervisory practice, the implications for doctoral supervision are discussed.

This paper can be accessed here –

http://ebu.bournemouth.ac.uk/index.php/ebu/article/view/8

BFX – The Competition update.

Awarded & submitted bids, Fusion

The BFX Competition is on now!
Following our Fusion-funded trips across the country to publicise the event we now have ten teams (54 individuals) are living on campus as they work on producing a 30 second animated or VFX sequence. The teams, which were shortlisted from an original list of 23 are being mentored by professionals from top Soho studios; MPC, The Mill, Framestore, Double Negative, Cinesite and Hibbert Ralph Animation. The work being produced by the teams covers a range of styles and uses many different production techniques, including live action, green screen, 2D animation, 3D CGI, particle effects, real world simulation and everything in between!
For the competitors, the interaction with people from other HE institutions and the Soho studios has made everyone raise their game and focus on genuine professional practice. We are now just about halfway through; all the work looks amazing and is way beyond everyone’s expectations – which means that the screening in September at the BFX Festival should be a huge success!

http://www.bfxfestival.com/competition/

http://www.facebook.com/groups/bfxcompetition/

Burdett Trust for Nursing Grant: Humanising Services: A new transferable leadership strategy for improving ‘what matters to older people’ to enhance dignity in care

Awarded & submitted bids, Featured academics

In collaboration with Bournemouth University, Professor Kathleen Galvin of the Faculty of Health and Social Care, University of Hull has been successful in attracting a grant from the Burdett Trust for Nursing to apply a new theoretical framework for the purpose of ‘humanising services’ in two clinical settings. The experience of dignity is linked to what makes people ‘feel human’. Conversely, what leads to dehumanisation and therefore loss of dignity needs to be understood and acted upon in meaningful service improvement. (Patients Association, 2009; 2012). Using a lifeworld orientation and grounded in phenomenological philosophy eight key considerations that are relevant to the challenge to improve peoples’ experiences of the human dimensions of services have been defined (Todres et al., 2009; Galvin & Todres, 2012). These are not detailed lists of ‘do’s’ and ‘don’ts’ or abstract generalities such as the need for more ‘user /customer focus’ or ‘choice’. Rather, they are eight dimensions about what makes a person feel human, which could help nurses, with service providers, to effectively focus their leadership when improving services to enhance dignity in care.  The team from University of Hull, Professor Steven Ersser, Dr Fiona Cowdell, Professor Roger Watson, Jane Wray, Kathleen Galvin and the team from Bournemouth University, Professor Les Todres and Dr Caroline Ellis-Hill are interested in what older people with long term skin conditions (being treated at a dermatology outpatient clinic) and people who have had a stroke (being cared for in a stroke rehabilitation unit with outreach service) point to that would make human perspectives more central in treatment. Our key practice partners include: Dr. Shernaz Walton, Consultant Dermatologist, Hull and East Yorkshire, NHS Trust and Dr Damien Jenkinson, National Stroke Lead, Royal Bournemouth Hospital Trust. Within these two settings, dermatology clinic and a stroke rehabilitation unit, a tripartite humanising improvement team group comprising older service users, nurses, and academics will engage in a robust ‘humanising improvement’ process that will be evaluated.

Galvin, K.T. &  Todres, L (2012) Caring and Well-being: A lifeworld approach. London: Routledge

The Patients’ Association (2009) Patients…not numbers, People…not statistics.

 The Patients’ Association (2012) Stories from the present, lessons for the future.

Todres, L., Galvin, K. and Holloway, I. (2009) The humanisation of healthcare: a value framework for qualitative research.  International Journal of Qualitative Studies on Health and Well-being, 4, 68-77.

Latest Major Funding Opportunities

BU research, Funding opportunities, Research news

The following opportunities have been announced. Please follow the links for more information:

  • The BBSRC David Phillips Fellowship supports scientists who have demonstrated high potential and who wish to establish themselves as independent researchers. Closing date: 23/10/13
  • BBSRC / FSA have announced a joint call for Early Career Research Fellowships. Closing date 23/10/13
  • ELRHA call – The Research for Health in Humanitarian Crises (R2HC) aims to improve health outcomes by strengthening the evidence base for public health interventions in humanitarian crises. Seed funding up to £10,000. Closing date: 10/09/13 for Expressions of Interest
  • The EPSRC Digital Economy Theme wishes to encourage user-driven research in the emerging area of Internet of Things. Closing date: 24/10/13
  • There is call for Expressions of Interests for the EPSRC / Jaguar Land Rover Programme for Simulation Innovation. Maximum award £1m. Closing date: 27/08/13
  • The EPSRC, through the RCUK Digital Economy Theme (DET),  invites academics to enter the Telling Tales of Engagement competition. Maximum award £10,000. Closing date: 10/10/13
  • ESRC has announced the third call for proposals for their early careers scheme, Future Research Leaders which supports outstanding early career researchers to carry out excellent research and to develop all aspects of their research and knowledge exchange skills. Maximum award £312,500. Closing date: 24/10/13
  • Nesta is supporting arts projects across Wales with its Digital Research and Development Fund. Closing date: 09/09/13
  • NERC invites proposals for its call for NERC PURE associates to transfer knowledge in the field of Probability, Uncertainty & Risk in the Environment. Closing date: 30/09/13
  • People Awards and Society Awards from The Wellcome Trust, support projects that enable the public to explore biomedical science, its impact on society and culture, its historical roots and the ethical questions that it raises. Closing date 04/10/13
  •  The Wellcome Trust has a scheme for postdoctoral scientists who have recently decided to recommence a scientific research career after a continuous break of at least two years. The Career Re-entry Fellowships are particularly suitable for applicants wishing to return to research after a break for family commitments. Closing date: 27/09/13
  • The Wellcome Trust Sir Henry Wellcome Fellowship provides a unique opportunity for the most promising newly qualified postdoctoral researchers to make an early start in developing their independent research careers, working in the best laboratories in the UK and overseas. Maximum award £250,000. Closing date: 27/10/13

Please note that some funders specifiy a time for submission as well as a date. Please confirm this with your RKE Support Officer.

You can set up your own personalised alerts on ResearchProfessional. If you need help setting these up, just ask your School’s RKE Officer in RKE Operations or see the recent post on this topic.

Dutch student builds on Rufus Stone with project on LGBT teens

BU research

A student from the Netherlands, Coco Sips, has spent time recently in Bournemouth and Dorset learning about LGBT teens and particularly those isolated in rural settings. Her study had resonance with the film, Rufus Stone, and so Coco sought the advice Executive Producer and Lead of the Gay and Pleasant Land? Project, Dr Kip Jones, when planning her study. Jones commented: ‘Although the main characters in Rufus Stone are in their seventies at the end of our film, the consequences of their youth are very much the driving forces of their lifetimes and the film. We hope to continue to explore LGBT youth through community connections and issues of social inclusion in a follow-up study now under consideration’.

Sips also sought advice from Intercom Trust, a organisation for LGBT people in the south west penisula, that was central to the earlier Gay and Pleasant Land? Project on isolated older lesbians and gay men in rural south west England. Coco then worked closely with a local LGBT Space Youth Project‘s organisers and teens to produce her report and a short video, Into SPACE.

A participant in the video, "Into SPACE"

In the film, young LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender) youth tell their story about feelings of acceptance and/or social exclusion living in the rural area of Dorset, Southwest of England. The film was produced by Coco Sips as a part of her thesis project, “Social Exclusion amongst young LGBT people living in Rural Dorset” and performed on behalf of Space Youth Project, a non-governmental organization in Dorset.

The film Into SPACE  can be viewed here.

 

MRC to deliver talk at BU on Healthcare funding in Horizon 2020!

EU

I am thrilled that the MRC will be making a special trip to BU to inform us of what will be released under the Health programme in Horizon 2020 on October 7th!

The session (10- 12:30) will provide you with the opportunity to hear the latest developments in Horizon 2020 and complementary funding programmes which are most relevant for healthcare researchers, businesses and SMEs, together with a landscape of the UK based support systems and networks for SMEs and industrial engagement.

As the programme is looking for specific academia-SME collaboration we have also invited a number of SMEs to this event. A networking lunch will be followed by several 30min one-to-one sessions (from 1:30)with the MRC representative.

Places are limited – you can reserve your space and book a one-to-one by emailing Dianne Goodman before October 1st.

CEMP Research and Innovation Bulletin

BU research, Funding opportunities, PG research, REF Subjects, Research news, Research themes

The updated CEMP bulletin is here.

CEMP Cluster bulletin and agenda 25.7.13

Whilst there is no cluster meeting to review this, due to annual leave colleagues are encouraged to have a look since there are a number of good ‘leads’ here and several imminent deadlines for calls people have identified for applications.

Next academic year, we’d like to encourage colleagues to approach CEMP to provide support for developing research ideas into projects or matching proposals to funding, as well as responding to the bulletin items.

 

 

AHRC- New funding awarded

Awarded & submitted bids

The Centre for Intellectual Property Policy & Management (CIPPM) received a grant from AHRC to carry out a two-year research project on “Evolution in music publishing: economic strategies, business models and copyright”. A team of researchers coordinated by Professor Ruth Towse (Co-Director of CIPPM) will analyse the strategies of the music publishing industry over a long period of time as it adapted its business models to new technologies and legislative changes. The analysis is expected to provide new perspectives into the challenges faced by the UK creative industries in relation to digital technologies and the Internet. The research project is a partnership between CIPPM and Birkbeck College, University of London, and will be carried out in close collaboration with CREATe, the Centre for Creativity, Regulation, Enterprise and Technology at the University of Glasgow.

Mike Baker Doctoral Programme is now open!

Funding opportunities

The Mike Baker Doctoral Programme is now open and has a deadline of 23 September 2013.

Funding is avaiable for the full costs of one PhD studentship (or 50% of the costs of two PhD studentships) to develop research and an evidence-base in higher education practice and policy, with an impact across the sector. The proposed project should be discipline-specific learning and teaching research or interdisciplinary/generic pedagogical research and should have a clear benefit to either practice or to policy on practice. Details of HEA disciplines can be found from the discipline based web pages. The supervisor should have a successful track record in the relevant area demonstrated through publications and broader dissemination efforts. Find out more about the call and how to apply on the HEA call webpage.

Canada-UK Collaboration Development Award (CDA) Programme Funding Available

BU research

The 2013 Canada-UK Collaboration Development Award (CDA) Programme is open for applications  to academic and industrial science and innovation experts in the UK and Canada. Ideal outcomes include joint publications; joint or complementary funding applications; student / researcher exchange programmes; sharing of equipment, materials and facilities; knowledge exchange of skills and techniques; institutional linkages; technology transfer; and industry sponsorship. Please do not be limited by these ideas – we strongly encourage the development of innovative models for collaboration. Initial outcomes should be delivered over the first 6 to 12 months following the visit and lead to the development of long-term relationships.m Funding is available for up to £1250 to support the applicant’s travel and subsistence either to or from the UK and the deadline is September 1st.

Congratulations and Good Luck

BU research, News from the PVC

June saw a slight increase in activity for bids being submitted and awarded with congratulations due to Schools for winning research grants, consultancy contracts and organising Short Courses.

For ApSci, congratulations are due to Jonathan Monteith for his consultancy with Distributed General Ltd, and to John Gale for his contract with Heritage Lottery Fund.  Good luck to Jonathan Monteith for his consultancy with Merryfield Park Partnership, and to Kathy Hodder for her consultancy with Fieldwork Ecological Service Ltd.

For the Business School, congratulations to Ruth Towse and Maurizio Borghi for their AHRC research project in Music Publishing.  Good luck to Tim Ford and Mark Painter for their consultancy to RBS Group, to Lois Farquharson, Fabian Homberg, Roger Palmer and Dean Patton for their consultancy to Wiltshire Probation Trust.

Good luck to DEC, for Bob Eves KTP project with Consoler, to Sarah Williams for her application to MQ: Transforming Mental Health, to Christos Gatzidis for his application to Leverhulme, to Bogdan Gabrys and Marcin Budka for their submission to ITaaU Network, to Chang Liu, Sarah Bate, Angela Gosling and Nicola Gregory for their application to the Royal Society to research the cultural influence on typical and atypical development of face perception.

For HSC, congratulations are due to Keith Brown for his short courses with Powys County Council, to Lee-Ann Fenge, Keith Brown and Lynne Rutter for their contract with Hampshire County Council.  Good luck to Peter Thomas and Zoe Sheppard for their application to the National Institute for Health Research, to Anthea Innes, Michele Board and Sarah Hambridge from HSC, together with Sam Nyman and Jan Wiener from DEC, for their application to the ESRC Festival of Social Science, to Jonathan Parker and Sara Crabtree for their contract to IASSW, to Andrew Harding, Sue Baron, Di Galpin, Edwin van Teijlingen and Cate Wood for their contract to the Royal College of General Practitioners, to Lee-Ann Fenge, Maggie Hutchings, Jen Leamon and Anne Quinney who have also applied to the ESRC Festival of Social Science, to Keith Brown for his short course for Worcestershire County Council.

Congratulations to the Media School for Bronwen Thomas and Julia Round’s AHRC project for Research Networking Researching Readers Online, to Zhidong Xiao for his consultancy with the University of Bedfordshire, and to Stephanie Farmer for her consultancy to Nuffield Health, Chichester.  Good luck to Liam Toms for his consultancy to Doppelganger Productions, to Zhidong Xiao for his short course with Wuhan Vocational College of Software and Engineering, to Carrie Hodges of the Media School, Lee-Ann Fenge and Wendy Cutts from HSC for their application to ESRC, and to Julian McDougall of the Media School and Dinusha Mendes of the Business School for their application to the European Commission.

For School of Tourism, good luck to Heather Hartwell for her European application to COST on shaping consumer behaviour and food choice, and her application, together with Sean Beer and Jeff Bray, to the Institute for Small Business and Entrepreneurship, and to Katherine King and Alessandro Inversini for their application to European Commission.

Latest Major Funding Opportunities

BU research, Funding opportunities, Research news

The following opportunities have been announced. Please follow the links for more information:

  • The Academy of Medical Sciences is supporting starter grants for clinical lecturers up to £30,000. Closing date 11/09/13
  • The AHRC is inviting proposals for projects to explore Big Data from an Arts and Humanities perspective. Funding for either smaller projects of up to £100k, or larger projects of up to £600k is available on a fEC basis, with the AHRC meeting around 80% of the fEC.  Closing date: 12/09/13
  • BBSRC has a call for the Support for development of bioinformatics tools and computational approaches to the biosciences. It is anticipated that successful grants will not exceed £150k. Closing date: 10/09/13
  • Nominations for BBSRC-funded researchers are now open. Closing date: 06/11/13
  • BBSRC is supporting professional internships for PhD students. Closing date: 05/08/13
  • BBSRC Policy Internships for BBSRC and NERC funded PhD students are available. Closing date: 09/09/13
  • Big Data consortium call from The Digital R&D Fund for the Arts. Applications invited for no more than £300k. Closing date:  13/09/13
  • Digital R&D Fund for the Arts Research+ call  provides an opportunity for existing projects, or projects that are due to start very soon, that are NOT funded through the Digital R&D Fund for the Arts, to apply for a grant to support a researcher to work on the project. Applications are invited up to a limit of £50,000. Rolling closing date to end December 2013
  • EPSRC – high-voltage direct current (HVDC) networks for offshore grid. Closing date: 24/09/13
  • Manufacturing the Future Challenge call from the EPSRC – up to £5m allocated and no closing date
  • ESRC – invites expressions of interest for the establishment of its Social Science of the Nexus network plus. Town meeting – 02/09/13 then deadline for Expression of Interest – 03/10/13
  • ESRC – appointment of a DEGRP research strategy group. Closing date: 05/09/13
  •  The Urgency Grants Mechanism is a pilot launched by ESRC, on behalf of RCUK, is to enable a response to urgent or unforeseen events (for example the August 2011 UK riots), where there is a strong case for immediate research. Provide grants for up to 24 months of work, to a maximum amount of £200,000 (100% fEC) of ESRC funding. Closing date: Not given.
  • IC Tomorrow has launched the Digital Innovation Contest – Sport. Awards up to £25,000. Closing date: 14/08/13
  • JPI Agriculture, Food Security and Climate Change and the Belmont Forum are inviting  proposals for their food security and land use change call. Funding of up to 3m Euros. Closing date: 30/09/13
  • MRC-funded senior clinical fellowship at Harwell. Closing date: 09/04/14
  • The National Science Foundation has a call – ecology and evolution of infectious diseases programme. Award amount not given. Closing date: 20/11/13
  • NERC invites applications for its postgraduate skills development awards. Total budget for the scheme is £1m. Closing date:  30/08/13
  • NERC invites applications for its Arctic research station programme. Closing date: 31/03/14
  • The Royal Society invites applications for its research professorships. The scheme provides salary costs, a one-off start-up grant and research expenses. Appointments are usually made for up to 10 years. Closing date: 13/03/14
  • The Technology Strategy Board is to invest up to £10m in highly innovative collaborative R&D projects in the field of low carbon vehicles, closely aligned with the aims of the newly announced Advanced Propulsion Centre (APC) and the joint government and industry automotive sector industrial strategy. Registration closing date: 06/11/13 and submission closing date: 13/11/13
  • The Technology Strategy Board is to invest up to £1.5m in collaborative research and development (CR&D) to encourage companies to rethink the design of products, components and/or services, with the potential to reduce their environmental impact by a factor of four in the Design Challenges for a Circular Economy call. Closing date: 04/09/13
  • The Technology Strategy Board is to invest up to £2.5m in feasibility and collaborative R&D projects to encourage the development and commercialisation of innovative processes that will generate high-value chemical products through industrial biotechnology and bio-refining through its Sustainable High-value Chemical Manufacture through Industrial Biotechnology 2 – Technical Feasibility call. Closing date: 16/10/13
  • The Wellcome Trust invites proposals for its cross-disciplinary Sustaining Health call. This call supports small awards in the order of £250,000 (exceptionally up to £500,000) for up to two years. Closing date for concept notes: 27/08/13
  • The Wellcome Trust is also supporting the Senior Investigator Awards. Awards are worth up to £425k per year and for any duration of up to seven years. Closing date: 22/11/13 (future rounds are available)
  • The Wellcome Trust – Strategic Awards. These provide flexible forms of support to excellent research groups with outstanding track records in their field. The support available can be tailored to the needs of individual groups with agreement from the Trust and might be justified in terms of the added value they will provide. Closing date: rolling deadline
  • The Wellcome Trust invites proposals for its intermediate fellowships for researchers in India. The total award for an Intermediate Fellowship typically amounts to INR 3.5 Crores. Preliminary application deadline: 26/8/13 and invited full application deadline: November/December 2013
  • The Wellcome Trust is providing support for new investigator awards in biomedical science. An award can be worth anything up to £425k per year and for any duration up to a maximum of seven years. Closing date: 22/11/13
  • Wellcome Trust–Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Postdoctoral Fellowships. Closing date 22/11/13

Please note that some funders specifiy a time for submission as well as a date. Please confirm this with your RKE Support Officer.

You can set up your own personalised alerts on ResearchProfessional. If you need help setting these up, just ask your School’s RKE Officer in RKE Operations or see the recent post on this topic.

A royal birth? Lucky Kate

BU research, PG research

With the Queen’s Jubilee, the Olympics and Andy Murray winning at SW1 Wimbledon (again) it seems Britain is still riding a wave of optimism with the birth of a male heir to the throne; the Prince of Cambridge. The baby was delivered on 22 July 2013 at St Mary’s Hospital in Paddington, west London, weighing 8lb 6oz. The document said: “Her Royal Highness, the Duchess of Cambridge was safely delivered of a son at 4.24pm today. He and the duchess will remain in the hospital overnight. A bulletin signed by the Queen’s gynaecologist Marcus Setchell, who led the medical team that delivered the baby – was taken by a royal aide from St Mary’s to the palace under police escort.

The implications are wide -reaching, in multi-cultural Britain the royal baby is unusual for London in having a mother originally from the UK and most babies delivered in the capital these days (57%) are to mothers born overseas and nearly half of all babies (48%) are born outwith marriage. With midwifery cuts and the further medicalisation of birth where the “cascade of interventions” often occurs when birth is induced.  For instance, in the USA which spends more money on healthcare than any country in the world and yet the maternal mortality rate is among the highest of any industrialised country.

And on July 19, 2013, the USA the House State-Foreign Operations Appropriations Subcommittee today approved a steep cutback in international family planning assistance for fiscal year 2014. Rejecting President’s Obama’s 2014 budget request of $635.4 million, the Subcommittee capped appropriations for international family planning and reproductive health programs at $461 million, $174 million less than the President’s request, and $137 million (23% below the current funding level).  The cuts, if approved by the full Congress, would have a devastating impact: Several million women in the developing world would lose access to contraceptives services, resulting in more unplanned pregnancies and deaths from unsafe abortions. Each pregnancy multiplies a woman’s chance of dying from complications of pregnancy or childbirth. Maternal mortality rates are particularly high for young and poor women, those who have least access to contraceptive services. It is estimated that one in three deaths related to pregnancy and childbirth could be avoided if all women had access to contraceptive services.

Not so lucky, therefore, are Kate’s counterparts in the South – Frightening statistics include that daily, approximately 800 women die from preventable causes related to pregnancy and childbirth. In our study site, Nepal every year, 4,500 Nepali women die in childbirth due to lack of medical care. In low-income countries, most maternal deaths are avoidable, as the health-care solutions to prevent or manage complications are well known. All women need is access to antenatal care in pregnancy, skilled care during childbirth, and care and support in the weeks after childbirth.

To make every birth worldwide as joyful an event as the royal birth in London we need is: a) more and better midwifery services; and b) improved access to care for pregnant women globally.

Sheetal Sharma is a HSC PhD student and currently a visiting researcher in Barcelona, supervised by Dr. Elisa Sicuri at CRESIB on an evaluation of a health promotion programme in rural Nepal aiming to improve access to care; in which socio-economic and cultural barriers exist.

Thanks to Edwin & Elisa for their input in this piece.

References:

http://www.populationinstitute.org/newsroom/press/view/57/

http://midwifeinternational.org/how-to-become-midwife/business-of-baby/

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-23408377

http://www.unfpa.org/public/home/mothers/pid/4382

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-23403391