Latest research and knowledge exchange news at Bournemouth University
BURO, our institutional repository of research outputs, has changed its look. The new landing page looks more modern and it is easier to search.
This change should not affect the way you deposit your documents through BRIAN.
If you have any questions, please contact us on BURO@bournemouth.ac.uk
José López Blanco
HSS Faculty Librarian
Today saw the publication of a new paper from an international research team from the UK, Japan and Nepal. Our research article ‘Assessing knowledge and behavioural changes on maternal and newborn health among mothers following post-earthquake health promotion in Nepal’ has been published in the Open Access journal PLoS ONE [1].
The paper reminds us that natural disasters often disrupt health systems affecting the whole population, but especially vulnerable people such as pregnant women, new mothers and their babies. Despite the global progress in maternal, newborn and child health (MNCH) programmes over the years, emergency responses after a disaster are often poor. Post-disaster health promotion could play an important role in improving MNCH outcomes. However, evidence remains limited on the effect of post disaster health promotion activities in low-income countries such as Nepal.
The paper reports on an post-disaster intervention study aimed at women in Nepal following the 2015 earthquake. In total, 364 mothers were recruited in the pre-intervention group and 377 in the post-intervention group. The post-intervention group was more likely to have knowledge of at least three danger signs in pregnancy (AOR [Adjusted Odds Ratio] = 2.96, P<0.001), at least three danger signs in childbirth (AOR = 3.8, P<0.001), and at least five danger signs in newborns (AOR = 1.56, P<0.001) compared to the pre-intervention group. The mothers in the post-intervention group were also more likely to ever attend ANC (AOR = 7.18, P<0.001), attend a minimum of four ANC sessions (AOR = 5.09, P<0.001), and have institutional deliveries (AOR = 2.56, P<0.001).
Religious minority groups were less likely to have knowledge of all danger signs compared to the majority Hindu group. Mothers from poorer households were also less likely to attend four ANC sessions. Mothers with higher education were more likely to have knowledge of all the danger signs. Mothers whose husbands had achieved higher education were also more likely to have knowledge of danger signs and have institutional deliveries. The paper concludes that the health promotion intervention helped the disaster-affected mothers in improving the knowledge and behaviours related to MNCH. However, the authors also comment that vulnerable populations need more support to benefit from such intervention.
Reference:
Dhital R, Silwal RC, Simkhada P, van Teijlingen E, Jimba M (2019) Assessing knowledge and behavioural changes on maternal and newborn health among mothers following post-earthquake health promotion in Nepal. PLoS ONE 14(7): e0220191. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0220191
You will hopefully have seen numerous blog posts regarding the Health Research Authority’s (HRA) commitment to research transparency. This was prompted in response to the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee report last year on clinical trials transparency, which showed that nearly half of clinical trials fail to publish their results. In their report, the committee made a number of recommendations to the Health Research Authority in order to rectify the situation.
The HRA have recently launched a consultation on their new draft strategy for research transparency – #MakeItPublic. You can find out more about the campaign here on their website where there are also pages outlining their plans and visions for this area of improvement.
If you would like to have your say and be a part of the consultation, BU has an internal survey you can complete. The survey will close on Friday 16th August and replies will be combined to create an institutional response.
Congratulations to Dr. Rachel Arnold in the Centre for Midwifery, Maternal & Perinatal Health who had her first paper accepted since she started working at BU two months ago. Her paper ‘Villains or victims? An ethnography of Afghan maternity staff and the challenge of high quality respectful care’ is co-authored with her former PhD supervisors Professor Kath Ryan (BU Visiting Faculy), Professor Emerita Immy Holloway and CMMPH’s Professor Edwin van Teijlingen [1]. The paper is Open Access funded by Bournemouth University’s Open Access Fund which will help promote the visibility of the paper before REF 2021.
I was tempted to head this blog ‘Dr. Arnold only two months at BU and first paper published’, but I decide this would perhaps send the wrong message to other new BU staff. Rachel completed her PhD in CMMPH and this is paper is the third publication from her thesis. The other academic publications by Dr. Arnold on Afghanistan have been in BJOG and Social Science & Medicine [2-3].
References:
FHSS PhD student Alice Ladur has been awarded a small but very competitive grant by FfWG, the Funds for Women Graduates. FfWG is the trading name of the BFWG Charitable Foundation and the BFWG (British Federation of Women Graduates), which is affiliated to the International Federation of University Women.
Alice is based in the Centre for Midwifery, Maternal & Perinatal Health (CMMPH). Her PhD research in Uganda is supervised by Prof. Vanora Hundley and Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen. Her thesis research has already resulted in an academic paper published in the international journal BMC Pregnancy & Childbirth, which Open Access.
Bournemouth University’s most downloaded article since 2012 is Information Technology Applications in Hospitality and Tourism: A Review ofPublications from 2005 to 2007. According to IRUS, it has been downloaded 28322 times.
Scopus tells us that this article has been cited 134 times. However, the downloads statistics show that people are reading this article well beyond the 134 citations reported by Scopus.
This demonstrates the importance of Open Access repositories. Open Access is contributing toward the creation of what Guédon calls an Internet of the Mind.
José
HSS Faculty Librarian
A few times a month ResearchGate alerts me that another paper has reached a miles stone of so having been read some many times. Today the ResearchGate message is about 600 reads for our paper ‘Research Methods Coverage in Medical and Health Science Curricula in Nepal’. [1] This paper was a report on research methods teaching in health-related Higher Education (HE) courses in the health and medical field in Nepal. This paper originates from a DelPHE (Round 4), British Council award. Our study ‘Partnership on Improving Access to Research Literature for HE Institutions in Nepal’ (PARI Initiative) was a collaboration between the oldest university in Nepal, namely Tribhuvan University and two UK university of which BU was one. A further paper from the PARI Initiative was published a year later. [2] The lead author of both papers in BU Visiting Faculty Prof Padam Simkhada, who is Professor of International Public Health at the Public Health Institute at Liverpool John Moores University.
The Nepal Journal of Epidemiology is a full Open Access journal which means anybody across the globe can access it for free. The Nepal Journal of Epidemiology is part of Nepal Journals Online (NepJOL) a service established by INASP in 2007, which provides online publication of Nepali journals.
Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen
References:
You will hopefully have seen numerous blog posts regarding the Health Research Authority’s (HRA) commitment to research transparency. This was prompted in response to the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee report last year on clinical trials transparency, which showed that nearly half of clinical trials fail to publish their results. In their report, the committee made a number of recommendations to the Health Research Authority in order to rectify the situation.
The HRA have recently launched a consultation on their new draft strategy for research transparency – #MakeItPublic. You can find out more about the campaign here on their website where there are also pages outlining their plans and visions for this area of improvement.
If you would like to have your say and be a part of the consultation, you can book onto one of their face-to-face workshops, or via their online survey.
This week saw the publication of ‘Perceived barriers to accessing Female Community Health Volunteers’ (FCHV) services among ethnic minority women in Nepal: A qualitative study’ [1]. This article in the Open Access journal PLoS ONE highlights the key role volunteers play in delivering health services to minorities/the poorest people, especially in low-income countries like Nepal.
This paper studies community health workers in Nepal, who are known as Female Community Health Volunteers (FCHVs). To address this issue, we conducted a qualitative study to explore perceived barriers to accessing maternal and child healthcare services among ethnic minority groups in two different parts of Nepal with varying degrees of access to local healthcare centres. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with twenty FCHVs, 26 women service users and 11 paid local health workers. In addition, 15 FCHVs participated in four focus group discussions.
A thematic analysis of the data identified five major themes underlying barriers to accessing available maternal and child healthcare services by ethnic minority groups. These themes include: a) lack of knowledge among service users; b) lack of trust in volunteers; c) traditional beliefs and healthcare practices; d) low decision-making power of women; and e) perceived indignities experienced when using health centres. The paper concluded that community health programmes should focus on increasing awareness of healthcare services among ethnic minority groups, and the programmes should involve family members (husband and mothers-in-law) and traditional health practitioners. Both the FCHVs and local healthcare providers should be trained to communicate effectively in order to deliver respectful care among ethnic minorities if we want to achieve universal healthcare coverage for maternal and child health in low- and -middle income countries.
The paper is based on the PhD research conducted by Dr. Sarita Panday in ScHARR at the University of Sheffield. Dr. Panday is currently affiliated with the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Centre (APARC) at Stanford University in the USA. Her co-authors are Prof. Paul Bissell at the University of Huddersfield, FHSS’s Visiting Prof. Padam Simkhada at the Liverpool John Moores University and BU Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen. This is the second paper from Dr. Panday’s excellent thesis, the first paper was also published in an Open Access journal BMC Health Services Research [2].
References:
What happens with items uploaded to BURO? Do people look at them?
If you have ever wondered about this, IRUS-UK produces a wealth of data about UK repositories.
For example, it tells us that Bournemouth University was in 38th place in number of items downloaded from BURO during May, with a total of 43801 downloads.
Another interesting set of statistics gives us a graphic of downloads per country.
And there is more!
Remember that your faculty library teams are here to support you, don’t hesitate to contact us.
José
Faculty Librarian: HSS and Research Support
Today ResearchGate alerted us that our paper ‘Nepalese Trekking Guides: A Quantitative Study of Sexual Health Knowledge And Sexual Behaviour’ [1] has been cited 300 times. This paper links between Tourism and Public Health in the field of sexually transmitted infections in travellers and tourism workers. This article, in an Open Access journal, is co-authored by BU’s Dr. Pramod Regmi and Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen with BU Visiting Faculty Prof. Padam Simkhada and Psychology colleagues from the University of Southampton.
This study assessed sexual behaviour, knowledge and condom use among male trekking guides in Nepal. A questionnaire (n=324) was administered to Nepali men working as mountain trekking guides. Most respondents (59%) had initiated sex before the age of 18. Most (84 %) reported 
sexual relations with a woman other than their partner, 46% reported foreign partners, 43% had Nepalese partners, and 28% had concurrent foreign and Nepalese partners. Most (70 %) reported ever having sex with a foreign woman and two-thirds had had sexual intercourse with foreign women in the previous 12 months. Participants’ age, education status, age of first sex, smoking and drinking habits and English proficiency were significant predictors of having sex with foreign women. About 60% reported condom use during their most recent occasion of extra-marital sex. A similar proportion had used a condom during last sexual intercourse with a foreign woman.
The likelihood of condom use was associated with a guide’s age, educational level, ethnicity, age of first sex and work experience. Most trekking guides reported sexual relations with foreign women as well as irregular use of condoms. Although sexual health knowledge about among trekking guides is high, some misconceptions still result in unsafe sex. Hence there is an urgent need to revise the existing training for trekking guides and implement appropriate health promotion programmes.
Reference:
The article titled “The effects of 8 weeks of inspiratory muscle training on the balance of healthy older adults: a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study” has been published by Physiological Reports.
It is the first research to describe the effects of inspiratory muscle training (i.e. breathing exercises that improve the strength of inspiratory muscles) on static and dynamic balance (measured with the clinical tool mini-BEST) and functional mobility (such as Timed Up and Go and 5 sit to stand tasks) with community dwellers older adults (aged 65+).
The research is part of Francesco Ferraro PhD journey. Journey guided with the supervision of Professor Alison McConnell, Dr James Gavin and Tom Wainwright
The article is now fully available as open access here
https://doi.org/10.14814/phy2.14076
To examine the effects of 8‐week unsupervised, home‐based inspiratory muscle training (IMT) on the balance and physical performance of healthy older adults. Fifty‐nine participants (74 ± 6 years) were assigned randomly in a double‐blinded fashion to either IMT or sham‐IMT, using a pressure threshold loading device. The IMT group performed 30‐breath twice daily at ~50% of maximal inspiratory pressure (MIP). The sham‐IMT group performed 60‐breaths once daily at ~15% MIP; training was home‐based and unsupervised, with adherence self‐reported through training diaries. Respiratory outcomes were assessed pre‐ and postintervention, including forced vital capacity, forced expiratory volume, peak inspiratory flow rate (PIFR), MIP, and inspiratory peak power. Balance and physical performance outcomes were measured using the shortened version of the Balance Evaluation System test (mini‐BEST), Biodex® postural stability test, timed up and go, five sit‐to‐stand, isometric “sit‐up” and Biering–Sørensen tests. Between‐group effects were examined using two‐way repeated measures ANOVA, with Bonferroni correction. After 8‐week, the IMT group demonstrated greater improvements (P ≤ 0.05) in: PIFR (IMT = 0.9 ± 0.3 L sec−1; sham‐IMT = 0.3 L sec−1); mini‐BEST (IMT = 3.7 ± 1.3; sham‐IMT = 0.5 ± 0.9) and Biering–Sørensen (IMT = 62.9 ± 6.4 sec; sham‐IMT = 24.3 ± 1.4 sec) tests. The authors concluded that twice daily unsupervised, home‐based IMT is feasible and enhances inspiratory muscle function and balance for community‐dwelling older adults.
Yesterday ResearchGate announced that the paper ‘Academic authorship: who, why and in what order?’ [1] has been read 1000 times. The paper addresses two related issues in academic writing: (a) authorship; and (b) order of authors. The issue of authorship centres on the notion of who can be an author, who should be an author and who definitely should not be an author. The paper reminds the reader that this is partly discipline specific. The second issue, the order of authors, is usually dictated by the academic tradition from which the work comes. One can immediately envisage disagreements within a multi-disciplinary team of researchers where members of the team may have different approaches to authorship order. Prof. Vanora Hundley is the lead author and the paper is co-authored with Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen, both in the Centre for Midwifery, Maternal & Perinatal Health (CMMPH), and BU Visiting Professor Padam Simkhada. Padam is Professor of International Public Health in the Public Health Institute at Liverpool John Moores University.
Paper by Hundley et al. published 2013
This paper is part of a larger set of papers by academic in the Faculty of Health & Social Sciences addressing various aspects of academic writing and publishing. Many of these papers are in Open Access journals, hence easily available across the globe for anybody with an internet connection. The series has covered papers on selecting an appropriate title for an academic paper, the role of the journal editor, the publication process and many more [2-9].
References
Yesterday the Nepal Journal of Epidemiology published its latest issue which included the paper on ‘Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder among the Flood Affected Population in Indian Subcontinent’ [1]. This Short Communication is co-authored by Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen and two members of the Visiting Faculty in our Faculty of Health & Social Sciences, namely: Prof. Padam Simkhada and Dr. Brijesh Sathian. The Nepal Journal of Epidemiology is an Open Access journal hence this paper is freely available for anybody with internet access to read.
Reference:
The Health Research Authority (HRA) has formed the Research Transparency Strategy Group in response to the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee Report on clinical trials transparency.
You can read more about the first meeting of the expert group, including the minutes by clicking here
In relation to this, the HRA’s Director of Policy, Juliet Tizzard has released a blog post entitled What’s the point of research transparency? You can read the post here.
BU has access to the ClinicalTrials.gov system so get in touch if you would like access. This is a great opportunity to register your study and study results in the public domain. On ClinicalTrials.gov, it is free to do so.
Despite the name, the system may be used for other clinical research projects.
The article “Why suicide rate among pregnant women in Nepal is rising” written by BU academics was published in The Conversation last year. At the time this attracted Indian newspaper attention. Clearly it is still a relevant issue as it attracted national coverage in a Nepali newspaper this week.
Dr. Bibha Simkhada & Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen
With many institutions and funders now requiring researchers to publish and share data generated from research projects, data management is becoming an increasingly important part of the research process. To help colleagues learn more about how to manage and share their research data, Library and Learning Support will be running a workshop on the 27th of March 2-4pm.
The workshop will cover the following topics:
Details about how to book a place on this session can be found here
Over the past decades interdisciplinary or multidisciplinary research has grown in popularity. REF2021 promises that all types of research shall be assessed on a fair and equal basis, including interdisciplinary and collaborative research. New to REF 2021 compared to REF2014 is the Interdisciplinary Research Advisory Panel (IDAP) which has been established to advise the REF team and panel chairs on interdisciplinary research. Furthermore, REF2021 will: (1) appoint at least two members to specifically oversee the assessment of interdisciplinary research in each UoA (Unit of Assessment) to ensure equitable assessment; (2) allow universities to flag-up outputs in the submission system with an ‘interdisciplinary identifier’; and (3) require an discrete section in the environment template on the submitting UoA’s structures to support interdisciplinary research.
Many academics from all disciplines can at some point benefit from working with other scholars from other disciplines. Interdisciplinary research can bring new insights and understanding across disciplinary boundaries. Novel interdisciplinary research can transcend disciplinary boundaries to address sophisticated and so-called wicked problems in society. We would argue that some disciplines are more open to interdisciplinary approaches, and we would argue that the discipline of Public Health as a multi-faceted discipline is probably the most interdisciplinary of all.
Having decades of research experience between us we also recognize that there can be difficulties arising from researchers trained in different individual disciplines trying to work together. We have highlighted some of these issues which interdisciplinary research in Public Health needs to consider and, where necessary, address before they become barriers in an article published this month in Health Prospect [1]. In this Open Access article we remind the reader that doing interdisciplinary research is not an easy option. Interdisciplinary research may involve a mixed-methods approach and could be underpinned by conflicting, and according to some incommensurable, research philosophies.
We argue, for example that in an interdisciplinary team topic specialists face potentially challenging demands on their range of skills and knowledge. For example, sociologists are required to have a broad knowledge at hand to represent the social science perspective in a study of a disease they know little about, designed by clinicians with a health services research outcome in mind. We also suggest that Public Health researchers have to be versed in both qualitative and quantitative methods. Working multidisciplinary or interdisciplinary means that they have to be able to understand the methods of the epidemiologists (e.g. ‘interrupted -time series’ or ‘nested-case control studies’) and those of health service researchers (e.g. ‘double-blind randomised controlled trials’) and have the whole range of qualitative methods at your command to improve the quality of the overall study.
Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen, Dr. Pramod Regmi & Dr. Nirmal Aryal
(all based in the Faculty of Health & Social Sciences)
Dr. Pratik Adhikary &Prof. Padam Simkhada
(both BU Visiting Faculty)
Reference:
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New weight change BU paper
One week to go! | The 16th Annual Postgraduate Research Conference
Geography and Environmental Studies academics – would you like to get more involved in preparing our next REF submission?
Congratulations to three former BU staff
MSCA Staff Exchanges 2024 Call – internal deadline
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Horizon Europe – ERC CoG and MSCA SE webinars MSCA Staff Exchanges 2024 Call – internal deadline Horizon Europe – ERC CoG and MSCA SE webinars
MaGMap: Mass Grave Mapping
ERC grants – series of webinars Last reminder – MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships 2024 internal deadline next week
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