Category / Fusion themes

The Impact of the Cost-of-Living Crisis on Carers

On 5th June, the first day of carers week 2023, six carers from Dorset met for the first time and shared experiences of the effect of the cost-of-living crisis on their caring role. During the previous two weeks, each carer had taken photographs to capture the impact the cost-of living crisis was having on them, and their caring role.

A huge thank you to Moonmoon, Kim, Aiden,Jason, Katya, and Lesley for all your most generous contributions to this project so far, and for sharing your important experience, insight, and expertise.

Using the qualitative research method of photovoice and working in partnership with the carers, this Bournemouth University project in collaboration with Bournemouth University PIER (Public Involvement in Education and Research) Partnership will translate these experiences of caring during the cost-of-living crisis into actionable knowledge, a call for change and to identify future research priorities.

At the workshop, facilitated by Professor Lee-Ann Fenge (Professor of Social Care) and Dr Kate Jupp (PIER Officer), and supported by co-researchers Pete Atkins (PIER Officer) and Angela Skeparovska (student research assistant) each carer shared the story and meaning behind each of their five chosen photographs; the photographs being the catalyst for the stories that emerged.

The workshop was incredibly powerful, and the images, and the experiences, thoughts, and feelings they represented were both hard to hear and important to share.  Experience of homelessness, insolvency, losing the family home, using foodbanks, soup kitchens, community pantry and searching through bins for food were all shared. The hidden costs of health appointments, additional energy use for laundry and cooking to meet special dietary requirements were highlighted. Each of the carers shared how the current guidance to reduce energy consumption in the home was often in conflict with meeting the needs of the person being cared for. Underlying all these experiences was the personal cost of, and personal losses associated with caring. The carers articulated clearly and repeatedly the amplifying effect the cost-of-living crisis was having on their own well-being and the quality of life they were able provide for the person they were caring for.

The carers reported how important it was for them to share their stories and to be amongst others who understood. One carer reported “feeling lighter” when they left, and another said they “felt the session was rewarding and (they were) glad to have shared some insight of our support of loved ones”. All six expressed the wish to continue with this project.

The following images were taken from the 30 images shared during the workshop.

The first images captured the feelings and experience of being “completely overwhelmed” whilst falling further and further into debt:

This image is of food salvaged from a private dustbin on a driveway. The carer went on to explain the choice they subsequently faced, whether or not to toast the cheese, using energy on the grill, in an attempt to reduce the risk of food poisoning.

 

Dr Kate Jupp, PIER Officer: kejupp@bournemouth.ac.uk
Public Involvement in Education and Research (PIER) Partnership: www.bournemouth.ac.uk/pier

BU and University of Cambridge Collaboration on Traffic Prediction

Bournemouth University (BU) has collaborated with the University of Cambridge on network wide road traffic prediction. The work, led by Dr. Wei Koong Chai in BU, address the problem of traffic prediction on large-scale road networks and propose a novel deep learning model, Virtual Dynamic Graph Convolution Neural Network and Transformer with Gate and Attention mechanisms (VDGCNeT), to comprehensively extract complex, dynamic and hidden spatial dependencies of road networks for achieving high prediction accuracy. The work advocates the use of a virtual dynamic road graph that captures the dynamic and hidden spatial dependencies of road segments in real road networks instead of purely relying on the physical road connectivity.

The team designed a novel framework based on Graph Convolution Neural Network (GCN) and Transformer to analyse dynamic and hidden spatial–temporal features. The gate mechanism is utilised for concatenating learned spatial and temporal features from Spatial and Temporal Transformers, respectively, while the Attention-based Similarity is used to update dynamic road graph.

Two real-world traffic datasets from large-scale road networks with different properties are used for training and testing the model. VDGCNeT is pitted against nine other well-known models in the literature. The results demonstrate that the proposed VDGCNeT is capable of achieving highly accurate predictions – on average 96.77% and 91.68% accuracy on PEMS-BAY and METR-LA datasets respectively. Overall, our VDGCNeT performs the best when compared against other existing models.

Reference:

G. Zheng, W. K. Chai, J. Zhang and V. Katos, “VDGCNeT: A novel network-wide Virtual Dynamic Graph Convolution Neural network and Transformer-based traffic prediction model,” Knowledge-based Systems, 110676, June 2023. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.knosys.2023.110676.

Using participatory asset mapping and PhotoVoice in Nepalese alcohol study

This week we received an email from the editorial office of  Perspectives in Public Health with congratulations on the acceptance of your paper ‘Participatory asset mapping and photovoice interviews to scope cultural and community resources to reduce alcohol harm in Chitwan, Nepal’ [1]The lead researcher on this public health alcohol research project in Nepal is Dr. Ranjita Dhital, Lecturer in Interdisciplinary Health Studies in the Arts and Sciences Department at UCL (University College London).

The World Health Organization (WHO) suggests that in low and middle-income countries (LMICs) like Nepal, morbidity and mortality risks are greater per litre of pure alcohol consumed than in higher-income countries. This is largely due to poverty, poor nutrition, adverse living conditions, and poor access to care. These inequities are made worse by the dearth of understanding of the most appropriate and cost-effective approaches to reduce alcohol-related harm in LMICs.  Our study aims to stimulate new thinking on how cultural and community assets could be integrated to co-designed alcohol interventions for future evaluation in LMICs, through scoping the breadth of cultural and community assets in relation to alcohol use and to exploring attitudes towards alcohol and people experiences with it.

The journal Perspectives in Public Health is published by SAGE and the paper will be Open Access when it appears online.  My previous alcohol studies have focused on students [2], Nepalese migrants living in the UK [3], and Public Health measures to reduced alcohol misuse in Scotland [4].

 

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

Centre for Midwifery & Women’s Health

 

Reference:

 

  1. Dhital, R., Yoeli, H., Adhikari, A., Luitel, N.P., Nadkarni, A., van Teijlingen, E., Sin, J. (2023) Participatory asset mapping and photovoice interviews to scope cultural and community resources to reduce alcohol harm in Chitwan, Nepal, Perspectives in Public Health (accepted).  DOI: 10.1177/17579139231180744).
  2. Engs, R.C, van Teijlingen E (1997) Correlates of alcohol, tobacco & marijuana use among Scottish post-secondary helping profession students, Journal of Alcohol Studies, 58:435-44.
  3. van Teijlingen E, Simkhada, P., Adhikary, P. (2009) Alcohol use among the Nepalese in the UK BMJ Rapid Response: bmj.com/cgi/eletters/339/oct20_1/b4028#223451
  4. Ludbrook A, Godfrey C, Wyness L, Parrott S, Haw S, Napper M, van Teijlingen E. (2002) Effective & Cost-Effective Measures to Reduce Alcohol Misuse in Scotland: Lit Review, ISBN: 0755932803 www.alcoholinformation.isdscotland.org/alcohol_misuse/files/MeasureReduce_Full.pdf

 

BU Workshop on Health Systems in Nepal

You are invited to a two-hour ‘Workshop on Health Systems in Nepal’ at Bournemouth University (BU) on Thursday 25th May in the Bournemouth Gateway Building (BGB room 315) starting at 14.00, aiming to finish at 16.00.  We have the pleasure of welcoming three academic visitors from Manmohan Memorial Institute of Health Sciences (MMIHS) in Kathmandu who are at BU on an Erasmus+ exchange.

‘Prof. Sujan Marahatta, Dr. Sujata Sapkota and Dr. Sujan Gautam from MMIHS are part of an international project examining the consequences for the health system of Nepal’s move to a federal government structure.  This project, launched in 2020 at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, is led by the University of Sheffield, in collaboration with BU, the University of Huddersfield, PHASE Nepal and MMIHS.  This nearly four-year project is UK-funded by the MRC (Medical Research Council), the Wellcome Trust and DFID (now called Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office [FCDO]) under the Health Systems Research Initiative.

The project has resulted in several publications, all in Open Access journals.  The first of three papers introduced the research project ‘The impact of federalisation on Nepal’s health system: a longitudinal analysis’ [1], the second focused on COVID-19 when examining the effects of changing Nepal’s constitution towards a federal republic on its health system [2], and the third one highlighted  Public Health approaches around the ongoing federalisation of the state of Nepal and the associated decentralisation processes in its health system [3].

 

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

Centre for Midwifery & Women’s Health (formerly CMMPH)

 

References:

  1. Sapkota, S., Panday, S., Wasti, S.P., Lee, A., Balen, J., van Teijlingen, E., Rushton, S., Subedi, M., Gautam, S., Karki, J., Adhikary, P., Marahatta, S., Simkhada, P. for the Nepal Federal Health System Team (2022) Health System Strengthening: The Role of Public Health in Federal Nepal, Journal of Nepal Public Health Association 7 (1): 36-42.
  2. Rushton, S., Pandey, S., van Teijlingen, E., Subedi, M., Balen, J., Karki, J., Simkhada, P. on behalf of the Nepal Federal Health System Team (2021) An Investigation into the Impact of Decentralization on the Health System of Nepal. Journal of Manmohan Memorial Institute of Health Sciences7(1): 3–14. https://doi.org/10.3126/jmmihs.v7i1.43146
  3. Adhikary, P., Balen, J., Gautam, S., Ghimire S., Karki J.K., Lee A.C., Marahatta S.B., Pandey S., Pohl G., Ruston S., Sapkota S., Simkhada P.P., Subedi M., van Teijlingen E.R., on behalf of the NFHS Team (2020) The COVID-19 pandemic in Nepal: Emerging evidence on the effectiveness of action by, and cooperation between, different levels of government in a federal systemJournal of Karnali Academy of Health Sciences 3(3)

Knowledge Exchange BU Workshop Supporting refugees, asylum seekers and migrants in Dorset

On May 19, BU researchers in the Centre for Comparative Politics and Media Research | Bournemouth University, Alina Dolea, Tabitha Baker and Dawid Pekalski, are organizing an interactive knowledge exchange workshop with local stakeholders to facilitate sharing of experiences and best practices in supporting refugees, asylum seekers and migrants in Dorset.

Academics researching issues of displacement and forced migration across BU will be joined by representatives from Dorset Council, BCP Council, Citizen advice, Public Health Dorset, International Care Network, British Red Cross, Migrant Help UK, Dorset Race Equality Council, as well as other local groups and stakeholders.

One objective of the workshop is to understand the dimensions of displacement and migration in the BCP and Dorset area, mapping the programs run, but also the issues faced by the councils and the different organisations in their work with refugees, asylum seekers and other migrant communities. Another objective is to understand, also from the beneficiaries’ perspective, their needs, gaps and current issues they are facing. Together we aim to get to know more about each other’s work, discuss and reflect on the national and local policies, programs, networks of support and integration that are in place.

Our overall goal for the day is to identify areas of collaborations so that we as academics and researchers can help and actively contribute to the current infrastructure of support and integration. The collaboration can range from volunteering and exploring placement opportunities for our students, co-creating projects, and organizing joint events, to delivering applied workshops and trainings, as well as providing research insights to inform policy making.

More details about the workshop are available here: Supporting refugees, asylum seekers and migrants in Dorset Tickets, Fri 19 May 2023 at 10:00 | Eventbrite

BU hosting British Society of Criminology’s Hate Crime Network’s annual conference in June

Dr. Jane Healy, Principal Academic in BU’s Department of Social Science and Social Work is organising a national conference on behalf of the British Society of Criminology’s Hate Crime Network. The conference ‘TRANSforming the Narrative: Challenging Transphobic Hate Crime’ will be held on June 22.  The conference is free, and its aims and mission statement, as well as booking information, can be found on the link: click here!
The British Society of Criminology’s Hate Crime Network’s annual conference will take place at Bournemouth University in 2023. This will be an opportunity to consider the extent of transphobic hate crimes, the experiences of victims, and the responses by criminal justice and voluntary agencies. The conference is free to attend though registration in mandatory!