Category / Health, Wellbeing & Society

Pedro Zamora, Sexuality and AIDS Education

Fusion

After researching the life of AIDS activist Pedro Zamora for some time (since my Phd in 2005 in fact), and having the opportunity more recently to work on an ‘educational biography’ of his life, partly funded by the Fusion Project a couple of years ago, I am delighted that the book is now coming out on 1 June, 2016.  Pedro’s life story is inspiring, he was an immigrant from Cuba arriving in the United States in 1980, aged 8.  He found out that he was HIV positive aged 17, and went on to become possibly the most well known HIV/AIDS educator who was able to reach youth audiences through his appearance on the reality television series The Real World: San Francisco in 1994.  He died not long after the series was broadcast at aged 22, but he reached so many people, and his message is still so relevant, when we consider that HIV/AIDS is more than ever a worldwide concern, devastating in many places.  Pedro’s message touches us deeply, and his message is not lost. I must sincerely thank not only John M Clum (Professor Emeritus of Theater Studies and English at Duke University) and Toni Tan at Cambria Press for commissioning the book, when I found it difficult to find anyone interested in an ‘educational biography’,  but also to Bill Nichols and Christine Holmlund for such endorsements of the book.

9781604979237front

Rewilding Dorset

conferences

A very successful meeting with 140 delegates from was held in May 2016 at Charlton Down Village Hall, near Dorchester to discuss and explore the application of rewilding concepts to Dorset co-hosted by Bournemouth University and the Dorset Wildlife Trust.

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In recent years, rewilding has become a major theme in conservation, stimulated by publications such as George Monbiot’s Feral and the launch of rewilding organisations both in the UK and at the European scale. While a number of rewilding initiatives have been launched in the UK, most of these are predominantly located in upland areas in the north and west of the country. Elsewhere in Europe, many rewilding initiatives are seeking to encourage ecological recovery on agricultural land that has been abandoned. This raises the question of whether rewilding concepts are applicable to intensive agricultural landscapes such as Dorset, and if so, how they might best be implemented.

We were delighted to be able to welcome a number of speakers who presented at the meeting, including leading researchers with expertise in rewilding, and practitioners with experience in implementing rewilding projects. The meeting also involved representatives from a number of conservation organisations in Dorset.

Speakers included:

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Dr Paul Jepson, Oxford University – “Rewilding policy: risk and opportunities”

 

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Dr Christopher Sandom, University of Sussex – “Putting rewilding into practice”

 

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Dr Matthew Heard, Centre for Ecology and Hydrology – “Ecological impacts of rewilding using extensive grazing: the case of Knepp Estate”

 

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Fiona Bowles, Poole Harbour Catchment Initiative – “Is there space for Dorset Rivers to run wild?”

 

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Helen Meech, Rewilding Britain – “Why Rewild Britain?”

 

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Professor Richard Brazier, Exeter University – “Quantifying the ecohydrological impacts of reintroducing Eurasian Beaver to intensively managed, lowland agricultural landscapes”

 

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Alison Turnock, Dorset AONB – “The Wild Purbeck Nature Improvement Area – towards bigger, better, more, joined”

 

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The day was rounded off with a lively and positive discussion with  Jonathan Spencer (Forestry Commission), Ian Alexander (Natural England), Mark Robbins (RSPB), David Brown (National Trust), Imogen Davenport (Dorset Wildlife Trust) and chaired by Prof. James Bullock (Centre for Ecology & Hydrology).

 

This meeting was held as part of the Modelling Natural Capital in Dorset Project (funded under the Higher Education Innovation Funding (HEIF) initiative). Any questions can be addressed to Research Assistant Arjan Gosal.

Horizon 2020 – Health – 7th & 8th July 2016, Brussels

conferences, Info Days

Health, Demographic Change & Wellbeing

Challenge in Horizon 2020

Do you intend to prepare a proposal for the 2017 call in Horizon 2020 for Health?

On the 8th of July 2016, the European Commission is organizing an Open Info Day dedicated to “Health, Demographic Change & Wellbeing (SC1)” challenge in Horizon 2020 and focusing on the 2017 call.

One day before, on the 7th of July 2016, Health NCP Net 2.0 and Fit for Health 2.0 are organizing a free of charge Partnering event meant to assist you in finding the right partners for the upcoming 2017 calls. The launch of the 2017 call is planned for the 29th of July 2016, having the first deadline on the 4th of October 2016, therefore this would be a good opportunity for your institution to identify the proper consortium partners.

Priority in participation, on 7th July, will be granted to entrepreneurs and research organizations with identified expertise profiles and project applications initiatives. As participation is limited to 2 persons representing the same department/organization, please contact RKEO so that we can co-ordinate registration on this event.

If you are attending both days, separate registration will be needed  As far as we are aware, there is no restriction on numbers from each organisation for the Info Day on 8/7/16.

BROKERAGE EVENT

M2M + Symposium

Find cooperation partners for the upcoming H2020 health calls.

PRESENT YOUR PROJECT

M2M + Symposium

Present your project in a 5 min flash presentation to a highly commited audience

7 July 2016 – Fit for Health 2.0 and Health-NCP-Net 2.0

Horizon 2020 Health Partnering Day

This Partnering event will be dedicated to consortium building. The main part of the day is dedicated to bilateral meetings between persons interested in the same call area.
A surrounding programme will provide information on support measures for Health projects and give researchers and entrepreneurs from the Health and ICT areas a platform to present their project ideas in 5-minute presentations.
Bilateral meetings will be arranged automatically by a sophisticated, user-friendly match-making tool following indication of interests in specific call areas by participants. Additionally, to bilateral meetings among potential project partners, participants will have the option to meet with representatives of support initiatives and members of the organizing projects for personalized support and information.

Focus

This Partnering event will target a wide spectrum of companies, universities and researchers from Europe and beyond interested in sharing new project ideas and finding collaboration partners and will be focused on the following challenge of the Horizon 2020 Health Call.

Main topics

  • Understanding health, well-being & disease
  • Preventing disease
  • Treating and managing diseases
  • Active ageing and self-management of health
  • Methods and data
  • Coordination activities
  • Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH) in health projects
  • Sustainable food security – health aspects

Why to participate

  • to facilitate the setup of Horizon 2020 project consortia
  • to present, discuss and develop new project ideas on Health at an international level
  • to initiate cross-border contacts

 

 

 

Lessons from Southern Health – leadership to support a culture of voice across complex integrated systems

iStock_000020671825Large

Dr Lee-Ann Fenge

Over the past few years there have been a number of reports which have highlighted concerns about failures of care and patient safety within a range of NHS settings raising serious concerns about the leadership of such organisations. Most recently The Care Quality Commission has identified “serious concerns” about the safety of mental health and learning disability patients at Southern Health NHS Trust. The concerns highlight the failures of leaders to deliver, monitor, assure, and safeguard a culture of safety, quality, and compassionate care and services.

This inspection took place following the publication of an independent review (the Mazars report  that described a number of concerns about the way the Trust reported and investigated deaths, particularly of people using its mental health and learning disabilities services, and a lack of leadership, concerning the reporting and investigation of unexpected deaths of mental health and learning disability service users.

So what leadership challenges are there in turning this situation around? Undoubtedly there have already been improvements in the care offered within the Trust, and the commitment of staff to provide high quality care is beyond doubt. However, the problems result from on-going senior leadership failures within the organisation. Leadership is the most influential factor in shaping organisational culture (Faculty for Medical Leadership and Management, 2015), and is essential to ensure high quality, safe and compassionate healthcare. A key failing identified in Southern Healthcare concerns a lack of robust governance arrangements to investigate incidents, resulting in a lost opportunity to learn from these incidents.

This highlights the importance of senior leadership in establishing and maintaining a culture which is open, responsive and able to learn. Such a culture includes a climate in which communication is valued as a two process which values critical upward communication. This requires a culture of ‘voice’ in which concerns raised by patients, carers and staff are listened to and responded to appropriately. This was sadly lacking at Southern Health and action was not taken to address known risks to the safety of patients, including a lack of response to previous concerns highlighted by the CQC in January 2014, October 2014 and August 2015.

The Trust also failed to respond appropriately to staff concerns about their abilities to discharge certain roles and duties. This perhaps illustrates the failure of senior managers to create a culture of ‘psychological safety’ for staff in which to identify, respond and learn from these problems. Psychological safety has been shown to be a crucial element in organizational efforts to detect and prevent problems (Edmondson et al. 2016). A culture which provides psychological safety for staff embraces ‘challenge’ as a pivotal learning mechanism, and this is supported by the work of McSherry and Pearce (2016) who suggest that safe, quality care requires leaders who can challenge and be challenged.

It is important to learn from the failings of Southern Health. Increasingly NHS leaders need to be able to respond to growing complexity across integrated systems of care. They need the ability to support a system of communication which values the ‘voice’ of all stakeholders to create innovative solutions to 21st century challenges. This requires system leadership that works in partnership across organisations ‘to construct the services that are needed’ (HSJ, 2015:4). It also requires a commitment to create a shared vision of care which values the voice and presence of patients, carers and staff as key stakeholders.

References

McSherry, R.and Pearce, P. (2016) ‘What are the effective ways to translate clinical leadership into healthcare quality improvement?’ Journal of Healthcare Leadership; 2016 (8): 11-17

Perspectives from an Early Career Researcher (ECR): Tips for Conference Engagement

PG research

Last week I attended the 20th European Congress of Physical and Rehabilitation Medicine (ESPRM) in Estoril, which covered topics from functional gait analysis-to-household ergonomics. By the morning coffee break of day one, it came back to me that engaging in a conference is an art-form. In this brief report I hope to share some tips, based on my own experiences in academia.

Beforehand, workload-dependent, leave all mobile technologies and laptops in your room. Emails can wait until the day’s end and social media will only serve to distract (Quentin Tarantino bans mobile phones from his film sets, so there).

Firstly, register early and familiarize yourself with the layout of the conference centre. Stop for a coffee; premium-grade typically dispensed by the sponsor’s kiosk.

Secondly, take the time to read the programme, and map your ‘conference schedule’ (i.e., what sessions you intend to attend). Breakfast presents a fine opportunity for planning, on a day-by-day basis. Schedule planning is important for larger meetings, which can deliver many parallel sessions. Attend a conference with an aim(s). Be strategic; balance topics specific to, and outside your research area. For example, I attended i) functional mobility in older adults (subject-specific), ii) Cochrane Review/PGR development (non-specific, CPD), iii) cognitive dual-tasking (semi-specific, interest), and iv) Nordic walking (personal interest) sessions. Specialist workshops, such as ECR sessions, are gold-dust as you gain insight from international perspectives and practices. I also recommend not studiously attending every single session; I did this in my first conference and burnt out post-coffee break on day two. Don’t feel guilty missing a session if you feel it holds no relevance to you (or your personal development), otherwise you risk losing concentration on the sessions you are interested in. Stop for a coffee.

Thirdly, relax, enjoy yourself and don’t be afraid to talk. You can often learn more (and establish links) during coffee breaks, than in the sessions. Yes, you are at work, and yes, you may be abroad, but don’t fall into wi-fi hunting. Ultimately, you will check, and respond to, emails. You can do this back home. Engage with the academic and local cultures. Remember wi-fi may be omnipresent, but it wasn’t until about 6 years ago.

Finally, ask constructive questions. If presenting, welcome questions as they reflect an interested audience, and may highlight areas that you haven’t yet considered. Do not view negative/antagonistic questions as a challenge, they may not agree with your perspective and/or may have misinterpreted you. Data rigour and quality control are imperative, but findings may be serendipitous.

If you can master these, please tell me how, as I’m still learning.

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Dr James Gavin

Lecturer (Exercise Physiology)

Department of Sport & Physical Activity

jgavin@bournemouth.ac.uk

New comparative paper India-Nepal

international, Publishing

India-NepalThis week saw the publication of a new paper co-written by BU staff in the Sociological Bulletin.  This is the first paper comparing Indian and Nepali Maoist rebels providing health services and health promotion to the communities under their influence.  It presents the key provisions either made by rebel health workers themselves or by putting political pressure on government health workers to deliver better services in the areas controlled by rebels. Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen’s co-authors are based in India and Nepal.  Prof. Gaurang R. Sahay is based at the Centre for Study of Developing Societies, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, India, whilst Bhimsen Devkota is Professor in Health Education, Tribhuvan University, Nepal.

This sociological paper is based on a mixed-method approach comprising 15 interviews and a questionnaire survey with 197 Nepalese Maoist health workers and a secondary analysis of policy documents and other published materials on the Maoist health services of India. The paper suggests that rebel health services in India and Nepal followed a fairly similar approach to what and how they offered health care services to local populations. Maoists becoming a government party changed the political landscape for the rebel health workers in Nepal. However, not incorporating the Maoist rebel health workers into the government health system was a missed opportunity. There are lessons that India and Nepal can learn from each other. Should the Maoist rebels and the Government of India come to an agreement, potential for rebel health workers to be integrated in the official health care system should at least be considered.

The paper benefitted from an earlier review through eBU: Online Journal.  The feedback from the eBU: Online Journal’s reviewers helped shape and polish the paper before submission to the Sociological Bulletin.services-ebu-logo

 

Edwin van Teijlingen

CMMPH

 

 

References:

  1. Sahay, G., Devkota, B., van Teijlingen, E.R. (2016) Rebel Health Services in South Asia: Comparing Maoist-led Conflicts in India & Nepal, Sociological Bulletin 65(1):19-39.

HRA Approval for NHS Research

Research Ethics

HRA Approval is the new process for the NHS in England that simplifies the approvals process for research, making it easier for research studies to be set up. It replaces the need for local checks of legal compliance and related matters by each participating organisation in England. This allows participating organisations to focus their resources on assessing, arranging and confirming their capacity and capability to deliver the study.

Laura Purandare, Research Monitor RBCH, has kindly agreed to run a seminar on 4th May at 2pm in BG14 to explain the changes.

The session will cover:

  • What HRA approval is
  • The implementation of changes
  • The difference it proposes to make to health research in England
  • What it means for our researchers
  • Key resources

The session will last approximately an hour, and Laura will be available for questions following the session. We hope to see you there.

Team-work on Team-based Learning Project : My experience as a URA

Centre for Excellence in Learning, conferences

Blog post by Jade Offer, Undergraduate Research Assistant (Innovative Pedagogy)

I applied to become an Undergraduate Research Assistant (URA) as I believed it would help me develop and learn new skills, and it did! As an accounting student, I enjoy working with numbers and that is why I initially applied. The field I choose was unrelated to my degree course and was something I knew little about: the teaching of pathophysiology to student nurses. Despite this I was fully immersed within the research and have really enjoyed my experience.

Fortunately enough I was chosen alongside a fellow student to work on a research project entitled: An Evaluation of Team-based Learning (TBL) in teaching Applied Pathophysiology to Student Nurses. Working with a fellow research assistant made the job even more fun, and was extremely helpful as we could talk and meet with each other to analyse the data, and to aid each other in inputting the data efficiently. We were welcomed into a team with the research leads; Dr Jonathan Branney and Dr Jacqueline Priego, both of whom provided amazing support for us both as we analysed and organised the research they had previously conducted. They both took time out of their schedules to teach us how to use the new research software we needed to use and made regular contact to assist us, which was greatly appreciated.

My involvement in the project

  • Attend regular meeting with the team to discuss next steps
  • Reading previous literature on TBL (relevant articles to our research)
  • Developing spread sheets to organise relevant exam results data
  • Using transcript software to analyse qualitative data
  • Using SPSS to carry out statistical analysis on the quantitative data collected
  • Communication Skills- Composing and delivering presentations

I also had the opportunity to be involved in SUREBU 2016, which is a showcase of research carried out by Bournemouth University students. We were both given the opportunity to present at national conferences, which we hope to attend, as it is an amazing opportunity and privilege. We have also been given the amazing opportunity to be involved in writing a professional research paper that our team hopes to get published, which is very exciting!

What I have gained

  • Presentation skills- delivering a verbal presentation of our findings and how the research was conducted
  • The importance of participant anonymity and the rules of handling important data
  • The important of research in making future changes and trialling new ideas
  • The development of a research project- from raw values to understandable statistics
  • A keen interest and knowledge of Team-based Learning
  • Knowledge in a new field which I would not have otherwise been exposed to

 I would highly recommend applying for a URA job, it has been such a beneficial experience for me; acquiring new skills, developing existing ones and meeting and working along side motivated and friendly individuals. Immerse yourself in the research job and you will find it an invaluable experience alongside your studies.

Jade Offer, BA (Hons) Accounting and Business student, year one

Dr. Jenny Hall on spirituality in midwifery: new publication

Publishing

Dr. Jenny Hall in CMMPH published her latest article ‘Facilitating learning of spirituality in midwifery’ in the academic journal Spiritual Care [1].   She highlights that there has been considerable discussion in the literature around spirituality at the end of life but little relating to childbirth. Perhaps because of this facilitation of learning around the subject is limited. The aim of this article is to raise awareness of these issues and promote future discussion and research.

Congratulations

 

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

CMMPH

 

Reference:

Hall, J. (2016) Facilitating learning of spirituality in midwifery, Spiritual Care 5(2): 81–88.  DOI: 10.1515/spircare-2016-0021,

Seminar, Prof Edwin van Teijlingen, ‘Maternal Mortality in Nepal’, Wed 20th April, Royal London House, R303, 13:00-13:50.

BU Challenges, Centre for Excellence in Learning, conferences, Fusion, Fusion Investment Fund, international, Knowledge Exchange, Knowledge Transfer, REF Subjects, Research assessment, Research Ethics, Research Integritiy, Research themes

Maternal Mortality in Nepal
Abstract: The session links various social and political factors that affect maternal mortality. Women dying in pregnancy and childbirth is very much a problem of and in low-income countries. This talk focuses on Nepal, one of the poorer countries of the world, to highlight a range of maternal health issues and wider influencing factors including globalisation and the influence of global organisations such as the World Health Organisation.

For further information regarding the Social Science seminar series, get in touch with Dr Mastoureh Fathi (mfathi@boutnemouth.ac.uk).