Latest research and knowledge exchange news at Bournemouth University
Last Sunday ResearchGate informed us that the paper ‘Health facility preparedness of maternal and neonatal health services: a survey in Jumla, Nepal‘ [1] published in the international journal BMC Health Services Research had been read 10,000 times. In this paper, which is in an Open Access journal, Pasang reports on a cross-sectional study conducted in 2019 covering all 31 state health facilities in a district of Nepal to assess the availability of maternal and neonatal health services including appropriate workforce and access to essential medicines. 
Tests of association between demographic factors and the probability of a facility experiencing a shortage of essential medicine within the last 3 months were also conducted as exploratory procedures. Overall health facilities reported better availability of staff than of drugs. The authors concluded that health facilities in Nepals should be supported to meet required minimal standards such as availability of essential medicines and the provision of emergency ambulance transport for women and newborns. This paper was part of Dr. Pasang Tamang’s Ph.D. project at the University of Huddersfield, which resulted in four other related publications [2-5]. Pasang is currently working as a Lecturer in Public Health in the School of Human Sciences at the University of Greenwich.
Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen
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Twenty reads may not look a lot, but this paper on kidney disease in Nepalese migrant workers was only published in the second half of last month. Our paper ‘Exploring lifestyles, work environment and health care experience of Nepalese returnee labour migrants diagnosed with kidney-related problems’ [1] resulted from a study funded by UK-based charity The Colt Foundation.
One of the problems with kidney disease is that damage might be inflicted over a long period before people experience serious symptoms, as they might not show until the kidneys are working on less than half their capacity and long-term permanent damage has been done. This study indicates that Nepalese migrant workers 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.
The paper is Open Access, and hence freely available to everybody with internet access. Our faculty of Health & Social Sciences team (Dr. Nirmal Aryal, Dr. Pramod Remi & Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen) has written many scientific papers (as well as a few Viewpoint articles) on a wide-range of aspects related to the health and well-being of migrant workers [2-33], our co-authors include former BU staff members Dr. Preeti Mahato, Dr. Bibha Simkhada, Dr. Shovita Adhikari Dhakal, Dr. Steve Trenoweth, Dr. Steve Keen, Dr. Zoe Sheppard and former BU PhD student Pratik Adhikary.
Dr. Pramod Regmi, Dr. Nirmal Aryal & Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen
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A few days ago we published the editorial for the latest issues of the Nepal Journal of Epidemiology. This editorial under the title ‘Urgent need for better quality control, standards and regulation for the Large Language Models used in healthcare domain‘ [1] comments that current methodologies for ensuring AI (Artificial Intelligence) technology’s safety and efficacy may be adequate for earlier AI iterations predating generative artificial intelligence (GAI). However, better clinical gouvernance GAI may necessitate the development of novel regulatory frameworks. As AI technology advances, researchers, academic institutions, funding bodies, and publishers should continue to examine its impact on scientific inquiry and revise their understanding, ethical guidelines, and regulations accordingly.
The co-authors include two Bournemouth University Visiting Faculty, Prof. Padam Simkhada (based at the University of Huddersfield) and Dr. Brijesh Sathian (based at Rumailah Hospital, Qatar).
Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen
CMWH
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Last week colleagues from our Sonamoni project co-hosted a workshop with TGI Australia (The George Institute for Global Health) at the 15th World Conference on Injury Prevention and Safety Promotion (Safety 2024) which was held in New Delhi (India). Focusing on the strengths of the Human-Centred Design (HCD) approach, this workshop first introduced the design principles to participants and demonstrated how they can be employed to reduce risks and prevent accidents. These design principles have been applied for many years in designing consumer products and, more recently, in the fields of health and social systems. 
In this well-attended workshop researchers presented case studies from Bangladesh (including the Sonamoni project) and Tanzania to illustrate how the process is employed with communities to co-develop interventions aimed at reducing the risk of drowning among fishing folk and vulnerable children. 
The team proposed a framework which integrates HCD methodology and traditional research methodologies, creating a more user-centred and multidimensional approach to intervention design. Outputs of the process included user risk journeys, stakeholder mapping and systems diagrams that can be used with communities and wider stakeholders to visualise the problem and bring to life the environment in which interventions are to be designed. These outputs can also be support advocacy and donor engagement.
The proposed framework provides a mechanism for closer collaboration between researchers, practitioners, and communities to work together to co-design context-specific solutions that are culturally and environmentally appropriate. Workshop participants were asked for their expert opinion on the proposed framework, to help us refine the framework and inform future practice.
Our Sonamoni project recently had its own video recording on YouTube. 
Sonamoni is a public health project is funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) through its Research and Innovation for Global Health Transformation programme. For more information, visit the NIHR website. 
Sonamoni is coordinated by Bournemouth University in collaboration with Centre for Injury Prevention and Research, Bangladesh (CIPRB), the University of the West of England, Bristol, the University of Southampton, the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI), and design Without Borders (DWB) Africa.
Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen
Centre for Midwifery & Women’s Health
This week Notan Dutta, from our collaborating research organisation CIPRB (Centre for Injury Prevention and Research Bangladesh) presented a poster on ‘Identifying the strengths and challenges from the perspective of primary caregivers of drowning prevention interventions in Bangladesh’ at the 15th World Conference on Injury Prevention & Safety Promotion (Safety 2024). One of the co-authors of this poster presentation is Bournemouth University’s PhD student Md. Shafkat Hossain. Shafkat also attended the conference in India. Shafkat was in Delhi funded by Bloomberg Philanthropies as part of its Emerging Leaders in Drowning Prevention programme. 
This initiative brings together a cohort of younger leaders to join national and international efforts to raise awareness and strengthen solutions and political commitment towards drowning.
Our research into drowning prevention of under two-year old children in rural Bangladesh is funded by 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 collaborative research in Bangladesh, please see the NIHR website. This is an interdisciplinary project between Bournemouth University, CIPRB, the RNLI (Royal National Lifeboat Institute), the University of the West of England, the University of the West of England, and Design Without Borders (DWB) in Uganda.
Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen & Dr. Mavis Bengtsson
Centre for Midwifery & Women’s Health
Last night ResearchGate informed us that our paper ‘Understanding health education, health promotion and public health‘ had reached 6,000 reads [1]. This reflective paper in an Open Access journal tries to bring a little more clarity in the confusion around the difference between the concepts of health education, health promotion and public health. We argue that such confusion does not limit itself to the individual terms but also to how these terms relate to each other. Some authors and public health practitioners use terms such as health education and health promotion interchangeably; others see them clearly as different concepts. 
In this theoretical overview paper, we have first of all outlined our understanding of these individual terms. We suggest how the five principles of health promotion as outlined by the World Health Organization (WHO) fit into Andrew Tannahill’s model from 2009 [2] of three overlapping areas: (a) health education; (b) prevention of ill health; and (c) health protection. Our schematic overview places health education within health promotion and health promotion itself in the center of the overarching disciplines of education and public health. We hope our representation helps reduce confusion among all those interested in our discipline, including students, educators, journalists, practitioners, policymakers, politicians, and researchers.
The paper is co-authored by a primary school teacher based in Dorset, and four professors who have a combined experience in the wider public health field of over a century.
Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen
Centre for Midwifery & Women’s Health
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The University of Huddersfield recently hosted the 2nd annual meeting for the Global Consortium for Public Health Research (GCPHR), with the theme ‘Research Priority in Nepal’. A lovely write-up of the even just appeared online (click here to read this). Among its invited international delegates were Dr. Pramod Regmi (Centre for Wellbeing & Long-Term Health) and Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen (Centre for Midwifery & Women’s Health). GCPHR is led by Prof Padam Simkhada, Professor of Global Health and Associate Dean (International) of the School of Human & Health Sciences at the University of Huddersfield as well as Visiting Professor in the Faculty of Health & Social Sciences at Bournemouth University. This interdisciplinary event was funded by funded by the University of Huddersfield’s PVC International’s International collaborative fund (ICF).
After the event BU’s Dr. Pramod Regmi reminded us that: “It is important to meet up in person, especially for larger international and interdisciplinary research projects. There is only so much you can do online in meeting.” There is a great advantage of online meetings by Zoom, Teams or Google Meet, especially when working with countries like Nepal. Not least of course in reducing our global carbon footprint. Of course, such meeting help academics to build and maintain research contacts across the globe, but it is not the same as sitting in the same room with someone and share ideas over coffee.
The paper ‘Health and well-being of Nepalese migrant workers abroad’ [1], which was part of the PhD work of Dr. Pratik Adhikary has been cited forty times. This is one of the many recent Bournemouth University papers focusing on the health and well-being of migrant workers from Nepal. The purpose of this paper was to assess the health and mental well-being of Nepalese construction and factory workers employed in Malaysia, Qatar and Saudi Arabia. We used a structured questionnaire administered, in and around Nepal’s international airport. In total 403 migrants who had worked for over six months in their host countries. Logistic regression was used to investigate factors associated with self-reported health status and mental health symptoms.
Pratik’s PhD was supervised by Dr. Zoe Sheppard, Dr. Steve Keen and Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen. This research has been financially supported by a PhD studentship at Bournemouth University and funding from the Open Society Foundation (OSF). BU supported Pratik to travel to Nepal, and the OSF provided subsistence funds. Pratik has written several further papers based on his PhD study [2-5].
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Today BMJ Global Health posted a blog (read it here!) about our recently publish paper ‘Socio-economic experiences of female community health volunteers matter: insights from Nepal’ which appeared last month in the Open Access journal PLOS Global Public Health [1]. In Nepal, about 50,000 Female Community Health Volunteers (FCHVs) are a vital human resource for both government and non-government agencies delivering primary healthcare at community level. Their contribution to maternal and child health is recognised globally. Being an active volunteer brought some interesting issues for the FCHCs. For example, the social experience of working in one’s own village was not the same for all. While community recognition of volunteers’ work was seen as a motivator, most volunteers thought they were not given due respect by fellow community members. Too often community members mistook volunteers as paid health workers often due to their involvement in medicine distribution, a rare bi-annual activity. 
Our recent paper in BMJ Global Health was highlighted in an earlier BU Research Blog (to read this click here!). This latest paper is the third one based on Dr. Sarita Panday’s PhD research conducted at the University of Sheffield [2-3]. It is the fourth Bournemouth University paper on FCHVs with last weeks publication in the Journal of Manmohan memorial Institute of Health Sciences [4]
Professor Edwin van Teijlingen
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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.
Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen
CMWH
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.
Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen & Dr. Mavis Bengtsson
Centre for Midwifery & Women’s Health
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:
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].
Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen
Centre for Midwifery & Women’s Health (CMWH)
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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
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Our paper ‘Midwives’ views towards women using mHealth and eHealth to self-monitor their pregnancy: A systematic review of the literature’ [1] reached 4,000 reads on ResearchGate today. Obviously, there is a growing interest in the use of mobile apps as well as the more general application of mHealth and eHealth in the UK and elsewhere.
Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen
Centre for Midwifery & Women’s Health
Reference:
This week our collaborators on the Sonamoni project traveled from Bangladesh and Uganda to Dorset for a set of research planning meetings. The visitors represented CIPRB (The Centre for Injury Prevention and Research, Bangladesh) and DWB (Design without Borders). They were hosted by colleagues from Bournemouth University, the RNLI (Royal National Lifeboat Institute) and from the University of Southampton. Since Monday we managed to have an intensive week of design workshops, reviewing and incorporating local-community prioritised interventions for child drowning prevention (aged <2years) in Bangladesh. I say ‘we managed’, but I have been at home all week with COVID-19. The past few days I was beginning to feel quite well again, so I was unpleasantly surprised that I was still positive when I tested yesterday, and even more so this morning. Consequently, missing the whole week working with our visiting collaborators.
The Sonamoni project recently presented its own video recording on YouTube,which you can watch here!
Sonamoni is a public health project is funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) through its Research and Innovation for Global Health Transformation programme. For more information, visit the NIHR website.
Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen
Centre for Midwifery & Women’s Health (CMWH)
All the members of the Sonamoni team would like to congratulate Dr. Aminur Rahman, the Co-PI of our project for his award this week from HRH Prince Michael of Kent. Dr. Rahman from CIPRB (Centre for Injury Prevention and Research, Bangladesh) was awarded the HRH Prince Michael of Kent Certificate of Merit for services rendered to water safety. Dr. Rahman is visiting Bournemouth this week as part of a planning meeting for our project. This Sonamoni 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, visit the NIHR website.
In Bangladesh, drowning is the leading cause of death in children between one and two years old. This low-income country has one of the highest rates of drowning, especially among children, in the world.
Congratulations!
Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen
Centre for Midwifery & Women’s Health
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