Category / Health, Wellbeing & Society

eBU: Online Journal

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

Following on from my last post ‘Developing a Working Paper at BU’ in January of this year, we are now within sight of having an exciting new online journal at BU. eBU will provide both an internal and external forum for the development of research papers by undergraduate to Professor around the eight BU research themes:

 

–          Creative & Digital Economies

–          Culture & Society

–          Entrepreneurship & Economic Growth

–          Environmental Change & Biodiversity

–          Green Economy & Sustainability  

–          Health, Wellbeing & Ageing 

–          Leisure & Recreation

–          Technology & Design

Submissions will be open to immediate publication (in a safe internal environment) and open peer review by 2 appropriate BU academics. Authors will be encouraged to act upon these reviews by either reworking papers for submission to an external journal or by opting for publication on the external eBU site.

For BU academics this is a great opportunity to get critical appraisal on your research papers or ideas from colleagues. For academics it also an opportunity to encourage the submission of high quality student output, and possibly to facilitate the co-creation and co-production of publishable material to an external journal or to publish externally with eBU. For students, this is a fantastic opportunity to turn high quality essays or dissertations into scholarly outputs, which will be attractive to employers across many sectors and industries.

It is anticipated that author guidelines will be circulated in the coming weeks, and staff and students alike should begin to think about how they could submit to eBU.

If you have any questions or would like to become involved in this exciting venture, please get in touch with me via email aharding@bournemouth.ac.uk or by telephone 01202 963025

Bournemouth University Clinical Research Unit (BUCRU) Annual Report

BU research, Research news

At the Bournemouth University Clinical Research Unit (BUCRU) we think it is important to review our activities on a regular basis, to document our achievements and to outline our plans for the future. We have decided that the best way to do this is to prepare an Annual Report. It was completed some months ago and now we would like to share it more widely with our colleagues in the University. It can be found on our microsite at http://microsites.bournemouth.ac.uk/bucru/news/ we hope it is of interest.

The support and collaborations we offer are available to staff within the University, and to staff in the NHS. In the next year we will be particularly trying to develop new collaborations between University and health service staff that will lead to high quality grant applications.

If you would like further information please contact Louise Ward (wardl@bournemouth.ac.uk Tel: 01202 961939)

http://microsites.bournemouth.ac.uk/bucru/ 

Yawning in France

Awarded & submitted bids, BU research, EU, Funding opportunities, Post-award, Research news, Uncategorized

My recent visit to Paris via the Erasmus Teaching Mobility scheme has been most useful, not only as it continues to strengthen the links I have made with like-minded researchers and clinicians, but also because it exposes you to raw student talent. This is important to help you keep up to date with current views and research with the assistance of an eager and interrogative French audience! Such visits are quite intellectually challenging, partly because my level of French is constantly under scrutiny! The collaborative research links I have made are invaluable and I hope to submit some reasrch bids in the area of Multiple Sclerosis and yawning soon.

Presentation from Paula Kersten ‘Supporting strategies for self-management of rehabilitation in the home: a feasibility study’

BU research, Research news

You are cordially invited to a lunchtime presentation being delivered by Paula Kersten the Associate Professor of Rehabilitation at Auckland University of Technology and Visiting Professor with HSC. This is an hour long presentation entitled ‘Supporting strategies for self-management of rehabilitation in the home: a feasibility study’.  This talk would be of interest to health professionals working in health and rehabilitation.  We very much hope you will be able to attend this informative presentation.

For Paula Kersten’s Biography, please follow link below:

http://www.aut.ac.nz/profiles/paula-kersten

Thursday 16th May 2013

‘Supporting strategies for self-management of rehabilitation in the home: a feasibility study’

Presentation by Paula Kersten, Associate Professor Rehabilitation, Auckland University of Technology

12.00-1.00pm

BG11, Bournemouth House, Lansdowne Campus, BH1 3LH

 

Hosted by Clinical Research Unit

Health, Wellbeing & Ageing workshop on 10 May – US perspective on the care of older people

BU research

On 10 May, Prof Phil Clark from the University of Rhode Island in the US will be running a workshop for our Health, Wellbeing and Ageing theme from 10-12pm (a short Bio is pasted below) in R207. Lunch will be provided. Please email Julia Hastings Taylor if you would like to attend.

Phil will offer us his perspective on the care of older people in the US and particularly the importance of interprofessional collaboration for older adults from the US perspective.

He will then work with us to explore opportunities for publishing for US audiences in this field as well as opportunities for making collaborative research and education links between BU and the University of Rhode Island and other US institutions especially in the field of interagency, interprofessional education and practice as well as Ageing.

Phil is on sabbatical with us from 6-25 May.  He has offered to give guest lectures on subjects to students related to Working Together in the Care of Older Adults and Interprofessional Teamwork in the US.  If this is something you would like to offer your students between these dates please contact Sarah Hean.

Dr Phillip G. Clark is Professor and Director of both the Program in Gerontology and the Rhode Island Geriatric Education Center at the University of Rhode Island in the US, where he has been on the faculty since 1981. He was awarded a Doctorate in Public Health from Harvard University in 1979. He has served as Visiting Professor at the Universities of Guelph and Toronto in Canada (1988-89), and was a Fulbright Scholar at Buskerud University College in Norway (2007). His experience includes teaching health care teamwork, developing interprofessional health care research and demonstration projects, and consulting on interprofessional educational program development and evaluation. He is co-author of Health Care Teamwork: Interdisciplinary Practice and Teaching (Auburn House/Greenwood, 2000); his work has been published in The Gerontologist, Canadian Journal on Aging, Journal of Aging and Health, Ageing and Society, Educational Gerontology, Gerontology and Geriatrics Education, and the Journal of Interprofessional Care. Dr. Clark is a Fellow of the Gerontological Society of America and the Association for Gerontology in Higher Education.  He is Visiting Professor at the School of Health and Social Care, Bournemouth University and on the leadership group of the Special Interest Group IN-2-THEORY (Interprofessional scholarship, education and practice).

Finding (and defining) Friendly in New York City

Fusion, Research themes, Uncategorized

‘Dementia Friendly’ is a sound bite used frequently at the moment in my field. This is in part due to the Prime Ministers 2012 Dementia Challenge which has a particular component aspiring to the creation of 20 dementia friendly towns/cities by 2015. But what does dementia friendly actually mean? and how do we know when we have an example of something that is dementia friendly? A colleague and I spent a week in New York City earlier this month and we were truly ‘wowed’ by the dementia friendly initiatives we witnessed. The first was at MOMA where they have an established programme for people with dementia that we were lucky enough to be able to join one afternoon. What made this programme dementia friendly? Three things in my view; first the educators (their term) made no attempt to ‘dumb down’ their offering to those with dementia (too often people with dementia are treated as less able without first having tested the waters to see if  just because the label of ‘dementia’ applied means that the person is unable to participate in various everyday activites ‘as usual’ or if it needs modified in some way, in this case participating in an arts appreciation programme). Two it was extremely difficult to tell who might have dementia and who were the accompanying family members and finally the contributions from the group reflected the individual perspective different people have on what is ‘art’, what they like, or in the case of one man what was ‘trash’ (every piece we stopped at!). We were also invited to join a choir rehearsing in a cathedral (an extremely modern building that we walked by twice before realising this was the cathedral, another story…) for the final time before performing at MOMA the following week (we didn’t get to see the real performance as back at BU by then). This choir group, known as ‘The Unforgettables’, was amazing, the two directors created an unbelievable energy in the room, there was laughter, fun, serious points made about music/signing. Individuals who could barely walk took their turn to stand by the piano and sing heart rending solos which brought a tear to the eye, a lump to the throat. By contrast, other couples sang humourous duets. This was an inspiring group to witness. The choir directors had again made a conscious decision not to ‘dumb down’ their approach but to encourage and challenge, in the same way that they would any other choral group. The results were incredible. We were offered hospitality by the group members, the only tell tale sign that one particular man had dementia was his bringing us 5 cups of iced tea and numerous plates of fruit/cake/biscuits as he didn’t remember that he had already been up to the table and brought us over some goodies. We also visited the Metropolitan Museum, again with long established groups for people with dementia. Some involve art making, others art appreciation, others tours of different parts of the museum. Again the underpinning philosophy is one of ability to engage, to promote intellectual stimulation, social interaction and also the programmes encourage a degree of physical activity by choosing exhibits at various places throughout the building (mental, physical and social stimulation being key to reducing risk of developing dementia, but also to maintaining well-being once diagnosed).

We went to New York because we had heard about the programmes and wanted to see if possible to learn and implement back here in Dorset but also to meet with academic colleagues, present at NYU, meet with the US Alzheimer Association (which has really made us think about donations and fund raising to support our work) and these were also very productive parts of the trip and reinforced that the approach we are taking at BU Dementia Institute is one that we should continue (mainly that engagement and collaboration with the range of stakeholders that has been guiding our work should continue). But what stands out for me is the energy and enthusiasm of those running groups for people with dementia and the huge engagement and enjoyment this approach created. The US might not have a ‘dementia friendly agenda’ being driven at a national policy level,  and New York might not immediately spring to mind as a place where one could live well with dementia, but the initiatives we saw clearly demonstrate the possibility to create dementia friendly environments even in places where sign posting might not be clear, transport busy and where the assumption that services ‘cost’ can be challenged (all the programmes we joined are free to those with dementia).

State of Yawning – Santander Travel Scholarship awarded to Dr Simon Thompson

Awarded & submitted bids, BU research, Featured academics, Fusion

Studying yawning has the potentially benefit of identifying underlying neurological disorders. Strong evidence of a link between yawning and fatigue, and with multiple sclerosis, is known. Mechanisms involved in excessive yawning are not understood and my work has shown a definitive link between yawning and cortisol levels in normal people. However, since people with multiple sclerosis often yawn excessively, it is important to establish whether or not their cortisol levels rise as with normal people since prolonged rises in cortisol levels indicate stress and may also indicate adverse neurological symptomatology. My work has generated a new hypothesis to explain the occurrence of excessive yawning and is complementary to Dr Gallup’s theories on thermoregulation in multiple sclerosis, which is pioneering. I am meeting Dr Gallup (Princeton University) in New York to discuss further studies in order to stay ahead of research progress. This is an excellent opportunity for kudos for Bournemouth University in being the first to carry out such research.

Want a challenge? short term secondment opportunity @ the Bournemouth University Dementia Institute

The BU Dementia Institute is growing fast with staff or students involved in various ways from all BU schools. We have a short term secondment opportunity (3 months) to work with us as Project manager to help develop our profile, income streams and to work on selected existing projects. Interested? Take a look at http://www.bournemouth.ac.uk/jobs/hsc184.html and drop me an email if you would like to discuss ainnes@bournemouth.ac.uk

BU academics to look at access to maternity services in Nepal with Fellowship grant

BU research, Featured academics

A team from Bournemouth University will look at why women in Nepal don’t use health services when giving birth, after receiving the first International Fellowship for Midwives. The Fellowship is awarded by the charity Wellbeing of Women, in association with the Royal College of Midwives, for research into maternity services and women’s health from an international perspective. The team from BU will use the £20,000 Fellowship grant to look at the real and perceived barriers to women in Nepal giving birth within a health facility with a skilled birth attendant.

“There is evidence that access to skilled birth attendant is likely to lead to a better outcome for the mother and baby,” said Lesley Milne, senior lecturer in Midwifery at Bournemouth University, who will lead the project. “If they don’t, it is more likely to end in a maternal mortality, and we are trying to determine why women in Nepal don’t access health services.”

Lesley will be supported by Vanora Hundley, Professor in Midwifery at BU, Edwin van Teijlingen, Professor of Reproductive Health Research at BU, and Dr Padam Simkhada, from the University of Sheffield. The year-long project will start on April 1 and the money received as part of the Fellowship will enable Lesley to go to Nepal for three weeks in September to undertake the research. She said: “This would not be possible if we had not been awarded this money. It’s fantastic to have received this grant and we are really pleased about it.” She added: “There is an under-utilisation of health services in Nepal. It is about getting women to use the services available and trying to find out why many of them currently don’t. I will be going out to Nepal to observe and also undertake some interviews of health personnel of both a rural hospital and a hospital in Kathmandu, to try to see what they think is preventing women from accessing services.” Lesley added that possible reasons for women not accessing health services could include having to travel a long way, having had poor previous experiences or their cultural beliefs.

Bournemouth University has been building links with Nepal across a number of areas and academic schools, including the School of Health and Social Care, and both Lesley and fellow researcher Professor Edwin van Teijlingen have experience in the surrounding area. Lesley said that she hoped the research could be a springboard for future study. “I hope that we may have a great insight into why women aren’t accessing services and hopefully will be able to address that in the future,” she said.

Face Blindness Public Awareness Campaign Gets Underway!

BU research, Featured, Featured academics

Research from BU’s Centre for Face Processing Disorders was featured in a CBBC documentary today.  The film was entitled ‘My life: Who are you?’ and followed the journey of Hannah, a teenager with face blindness, as she participated in one of our training programmes and discusses the difficulties of everyday life.  The documentary also featured Hannah meeting another girl with face blindness for the first time, and her encounter with Duncan Bannatyne who also has the condition.

We are so pleased with the documentary, and felt the producers did an excellent job in portraying the condition with scientific accuracy, and in demonstrating the difficulties associated with face blindness.  Despite Hannah’s struggles she still maintains a positive attitude to life and the film does an excellent job of presenting her as the remarkable young lady that she is, who was so keen to make the film in order to raise public awareness of the condition.  Hannah’s story illustrates how life can be affected by brain injury, but her remarkable positivity shines through as the programme follows her journey.

If you missed the programme you can watch it here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/cbbc/episode/b01rlyc9/My_Life_Who_Are_You/

We recently launched an e-petition that aims to promote public and professional awareness of prosopagnosia by campaigning for its discussion in the House of Commons.  We need to gain 100,000 signatures to make this happen, so if you were moved by the documentary, please do add your signature:

http://www.prosopagnosiaresearch.org/awareness/e-petition

Our public awareness campaign has only just taken off so watch this space for more activities!

Realities of fieldwork: Sheetal Sharma, HSC PhD student on fieldwork in rural Nepal.

BU research, PG research

(c) Sheetal Sharma

Open air focus group in rural Nepal, (c) Sheetal Sharma 2013.


Roosters crowing, cows mooing, bleating goats, birds chirping, mobile phones ringing, children screaming, laughing and running around while women, breastfeeding, talk over one another excitedly in the sun as they need to leave us soon to drop the children off to school and/or head to the field to cultivate the season’s crop this spring it is wheat, last summer, rice. Women do this work as most of their husbands are away in the capital, Kathmandu or in the Arab Gulf. This is the reality of conducting focus groups in rural Nepal.

Although we, as researchers, spend considerable time to perfect the ideal ‘tool’ of the interview schedule and imagine the transcription clear and the background; a researcher must be prepared for every eventuality. Noise, din and interruptions: Today a dog nibbled on a nearby goat and a few men kept creeping to listen in why was this videshi (foreigner) recording conversations and making notes. The women shooed them away as today was a discussion on contraception; also that the discussion of the focus groups should be in ‘controlled environment’, safe, quiet; and in Nepal where women are not the main decision-maker for their reproductive health, it should mean a lieu women should be able to discuss freely these issues. In this Green Tara’s (www.greentaratrust.com) intervention area, which my PhD, supervised at HSC BU by Catherine Angell, Vanora Hundley, Edwin van Teijlingen and University of Sheffield’s Padam Simkhada, aims to evaluate both quantitatively and qualitatively, shows one the decision-making outcomes improved: increased the use of contraception in the Pharping area from 4.3% (2008) to 24.6% (2012) after 5 years of health promotion conducted by two auxiliary nurse-midwives.
40 minutes later recording (with 2 digital recorders) and once the demographic data and recording is double-checked and any last questions answered we set off walking 2 hours downhill visiting a tea-shop on the way for a cup of chai.

Edwin van Teijlingen and Emma Pitchforth, Qualitative Research: Focus group research in family planning and reproductive health care J Fam Plann Reprod Health Care 2006;32:1 30-32doi:10.1783/147118906775275299
http://jfprhc.bmj.com/content/32/1/30.citation

Interested in eHealth? Join the Psychology Research Centre for an informal forum!

BU research

On Wednesday 27th March, 2013 the Psychology Research Centre will be holding an informal forum for anyone who is currently doing, or interested in doing, research related to eHealth (e.g. research interests may include understanding how people (e.g. potential patients, patients, health professionals) use the internet for health information and/or intervention). We are informally calling this forum CHIRP which stands for Centre for eHealth Internet Research and Practice and it is open to any staff or postgraduate students at BU who would like to meet up to discuss research plans, ideas and potential collaborations.

The topic of eHealth fits well into the BU research themes of ‘Health, Wellbeing & Ageing’ and ‘Technology & Design’ and we are currently aware of members in DEC and HSC who are currently conducting research in this area.

The aim of this meeting will be to get together and understand common research interests therefore we would ask you to come prepared to talk for around 3 minutes about the current work you are doing (feel free to send a powerpoint slide with details of you interest too).

The forum will be held at 3pm in room P405 at Poole House and Tea, coffee and biscuits will be provided. Please contact Sarah Williams in Psychology by early next week if you are interesting in attending.