Category / Sociology & Social Policy

Bringing FUSION to Nepal

Fusion, innovation, international, Knowledge Transfer, Publishing, Research Integritiy, student research, Training

FUSION abroad 2016We have written in many previous BU blogs about progress of our THET-funded project in southern Nepal (e.g. here AND here ). Today’s blog reflects on the use on BU’s unique FUSION approach in our project ‘Mental Health Training for Maternity Care Providers in Nepal‘.

DSC_0151Our BU-led project brings highly experienced health professionals, such as midwives, health visitors or mental health nurses, to Nepal to work as volunteer trainers. The training is aimed at community-based maternity care practitioners and addresses key mental health issues relevant to pregnancy and for new mothers and offers the required communication skills. These health professionals will bring their experience as health care providers as well as trainers in the field of mental health and maternity care/midwifery, mental ill-health prevention and health promotion. They volunteer for two to three weeks at a time to design and deliver training in southern Nepal.

logo THETThe Centre for Midwifery & Maternal Health (CMMPH) collaborates in this project with Liverpool John Moores University (LJMU), the Department of Health, and Physical & Population Education at Nepal’s oldest university Tribhuvan University’s (TU). The project is supported in the field by a local charity called Green Tara Nepal. Our project is part of the Health Partnership such as Nepal. HPS itself is funded by the UK Department for International Development and managed by THET (Tropical and Health Education Trust).

Fusion Diagram Our maternal mental health project is a good example of BU’s FUSION approach as it combines EDUCATION (through the training of Auxiliary Nurse-Midwives in Nepal) by UK volunteers (representing PRACTICE) through an intervention which is properly evaluated (representing RESEARCH) is a perfect example of BU’s FUSION in action. Moreover, the project will be partly evaluated by FHSS’s Preeti Mahato as part of her PhD thesis research. This PhD project is supervised by Dr. Catherine Angell (CEL & CMMPH), BU Visiting Professor Padam Simkhada (based at LJMU) and CMMPH’s Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen.BU’s focus on the FUSION of research, education and professional practice is a unique variant of the way UK universities (and many abroad) blend academic teaching, research and scholarship. FUSION is a key concept derived from BU’s strategic Vision & Values).

 

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

CMMPH

Public Health in Nepal: Vitamine A

international, open access, Publishing

Vit AThis week we published an editorial in the Journal of Biomedical Sciences on the question: “Is early diagnose for Vitamin A deficiency better than the current supplementation programme of Nepal?”
The editorial concludes that prevention is still better than cure, but instead of a mass Vitamin A supplementation in Nepal, we need a health promotion intervention aiming to increase the intake of relatively cheap vegetables and fruit (containing β carotene). In addition we need better surveillance and help to identify children with Vitamin A Deficiency and provide them with Vitamin A supplements. The primary focus should be on adopting sustainable food based approaches to combat vitamin A deficiency. In Public Health terms: rather than a blanket coverage of Vitamin A supplementation to whole population we should consider a targeted intervention aimed at those who need it most.

Reference:
Simkhada P, Sathian B, Adhikari S, van Teijlingen E, Roy B. (2015) Is early diagnose for Vitamin A deficiency better than the current supplementation programme of Nepal?. J Biomed Sci. 2(4):28-30.
http://www.nepjol.info/index.php/JBS/index

Fieldwork preparation in Nepal

international, PG research

If you have a number of research projects running in the same location it pays to combine some of the preparation.  Thus as part of five different studies and one PhD project, I’m currently in Kathmandu.  The projects are (1) the THET-funded intervention in Nawalparasi; (2) the CEL-funded qualitative research led by Dr. Catherine Angell on CPD (Continuous Professional Development); (3) the FHSS-funded project on transgender which is led by Dr. Pramod Regmi; (4) the FHSS-funded project with Pourakhi which supports Nepali women returning home after having been abroad as migrant workers;  and (5) the Green Tara Trust funded project on improving maternal health care in Dhading and Nawalparasi, and the FHSS PhD project is that of Mrs. Preeti Mahato.  Two of the project and the PhD topcic are closely related as all three cover maternity care in one for or another in Nawalparasi.  The planning meetings we are having in Nepal involve planning training sessions and workshops, resource allocation and research preparation.DSCN0026

Fortunately, it is not all work.  Today I enjoyed Kheer (Achar and Chana) for lunch in the Green Tara flat in Kathmandu a lovely rice pudding with slightly sour green vegetables and chick peas (see photo).  The actual meal is traditionally health tomorrow but as this is the weekend the staff brought it one day forward so that I could join in too.

Finally, I like to thank colleagues who gave me mobile phones and a camera.  One of the mobile phones is already in use by one of the Nepali charity workers in Kathmandu. I bought a new battery and memory card for camera in the UK and it is working fine, the photo with this blog has been taken with the donated camera!

 

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen (writing from Nepal).

Centre for Midwifery, Maternal & Perinatal Health Research

 

New Harding and Pritchard paper in international health policy journal

Publishing

InternationalMapAndrew Harding and Colin Pritchard have recently had a paper published in the International Journal of Health Policy and Management.

The paper, titled ‘UK and Twenty Comparable Countries GDP-Expenditure on-Health 1980 2013: The Historic and Continued Low Priority of UK Health Related Expenditure, uses GDPEH data to outline the low proportional commitment that the UK makes to healthcare expenditure. It is well established in the health and social policy world that the UK prioritises less of its wealth to health than almost any comparable country. However, the authors use an innovative and novel means of exploring proportional differences in commitment.

The key finding is that since 1980, in order to meet the mean average European health spend, the UK would have needed to have made an additional commitment of one-fifth. For the final period, between 2010-2013 the authors show that the UK has prioritised 12% less in proportional terms (as a % of GDP) than the European average.

The paper ends with the following quote, “Echoing others who have recently contributed to discussion in this area, if other comparable countries can make a larger proportional commitment and deem it affordable, in light of aforementioned challenges, why cannot the United Kingdom prioritise accordingly?”

New HSS PhD paper!

BRIAN, PG research, Publishing, student research

SPSHSS PhD student Andrew Harding and fellow authors  Jonathan Parker, Sarah Hean and Ann Hemingway have recently had a paper accepted for publication in Social Policy & Society, the sister publication to the Journal of Social Policy and run by the Social Policy Association.

A critical yet under-researched area, the paper presents a comprehensive literature review that critiques current research on the outcome/impact of information and advice on welfare. A realist evaluation approach is then proposed as being capable to address critical weaknesses in existing research.

Among other areas that are covered, the paper provides an overview of the importance of information and advice in the context of the marketisation of UK welfare provision and a new ‘efficacy framework’ is developed which can be used to assess the scope of research.

A final draft post-refereeing version of the paper will be uploaded to BRIAN in due course.

Seminar today: Dr Marcellus Mbah,R301, 13:00-14:00

Awarded & submitted bids, BRIAN, Centre for Excellence in Learning, Coffee Morning, conferences, Fusion, HEIF, Knowledge Exchange, PG research, Research Ethics, staff profile pages, student research

All welcome to the seminar happening today. Room R301 (Royal London House), 13:00-14:00. Feel free to bring your lunch with you.

 

An exploration into the dynamics of being an international student and the complexities surrounding their placement and employability prospects

Abstract

The experience of students gaining work placement has become an integral part of the United Kingdom (UK) Higher Education (HE) system in an attempt to help prepare students for the world of work. Whilst much has been written about this subject, the majority of the research centres on the UK domicile learner. Considering the importance of the HE internationalisation agenda, the drive to increase the recruitment numbers of international students (IS) and the fact that the need to gain work experience extends to include IS, there is little published literature which explores the work placement experiences from an international student perspective. This presentation reports on an instrumental case study which explored the experiences of IS with a view to understanding the challenges they face identifying, securing and successfully completing a work placement. Findings suggest substantial challenges exist and a framework is proposed to help the university improve the international students’ placement experience and employability prospects.

 

Marcellus is Research Fellow in the Centre for Excellence in Learning at Bournemouth University. His involvement in the Centre touches on some of the key areas in the discipline of Education such as University Community Engagement, Graduate Employability and Education for Sustainable Development.

If you have any queries about Social Science Seminar Series, please get in touch with Dr Mastoureh Fathi (mfathi@bournemouth.ac.uk).