Tagged / BU research

New online booking service for IRAS – goes live Tuesday 19th May

NHS, Research Ethics

Please see below for an update from the Health Research Authority with regard to the new system for booking in applications.

Any queries please get in touch with Suzy Wignall, Clinical Governance Advisor.

A new online booking service will be rolled out for IRAS studies on Tuesday 19 May – replacing the current Central Booking Service (CBS) telephone line. This is part of our ongoing Research Systems programme of work to improve our services for applicants.

Applicants submitting research projects through IRAS will no longer need to call the Central Booking Service to book a Research Ethics Committee, or to enable IRAS Form submission. Instead applicants will access the new online booking service via IRAS to book their application for review. The service is quick and easy to use and, unlike the current Central Booking Service, will be available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, making it easier for research applicants. If you need help and support with the new system you can call 0207 104 8008 between 8.30am and 4.30pm Monday to Friday.

In order to make use of this new functionality, applicants will be directed to a new part of IRAS which hosts the online booking service. A separate login will be required, but support will be provided. You will need to set up a new login and password for this area unless you already have a login for a NIHR system or as part of the Combined Ways of Working pilot (CWoW) pilot. In this case you can use your existing log in details.

Applicants will need to answer a series of questions online before being able to book a slot. This directs the applicant to the appropriate REC. The questions will be familiar to anyone who has used the CBS. Once you have completed your online REC booking, you will still need to electronically submit your application in IRAS using the normal process.

Applicants making contact about fast-track COVID-19 studies, should continue to follow our current guidance or email fast.track@hra.nhs.uk, DO NOT use the online booking service. 

The work to build the online booking service began before the current COVID-19 pandemic. It is being rolled out now so that the system can support research applicants with non-COVID-19 studies.

Training and guidance will be available via the IRAS website. You can also watch a short video to see how to use the online booking service.

 

New BU publication on birth centres in Nepal

international, open access, PG research, Publishing, student research, writing

Congratulations to Dr. Preeti Mahato in the Centre for Midwifery, Maternal & Perintal Helath (CMMPH) on the acceptance of the  paper ‘ Evaluation of a health promotion intervention associated with birthing centres in rural Nepal’.   This paper is part of Dr. Mahato’s PhD work and will appear soon in the international journal PLOS ONE.   The journal is Open Access so anyone across the world may copy, distribute, or reuse these articles, as long as the author and original source are properly cited.

The research in this thesis used a longitudinal study design where pre-intervention survey was conducted by Green Tara Nepal a local non-governmental organisation (NGO) in year 2012.  The health promotion intervention was conducted by the same NGO in the period 2014 to 2016 and the post-intervention survey was conducted by Dr Mahato in the year 2017.

The intervention was financially supported by a London-based Buddhist charity called Green Tara Trust.   The results of the pre- and post-intervention surveys were compared to identify statistically significant changes that might have occurred due to the intervention and also to determine the factors affecting place of birth.   This study is co-authored by Professors Edwin van Teijlingen and Vanora Hundley and Dr Catherine Angell from CMMPH and FHSS Visiting Professor Padam Simkhada (based at the University of Huddersfield).

 

 

NERC Workshop: Identifying Challenges for a Sustainable Digital Society

innovation

Deadline for Expressions of Interest: 14 May 2020 at 16:00

The EPSRC Digital Economy Theme welcomes Expressions of Interest for a one-day virtual workshop to explore how research can tackle the challenges in establishing a Sustainable Digital Society.

It is intended that the outputs of the workshop will be used to scope a Digital Economy Theme call to be funded by EPSRC for up to £5m.

The virtual workshop will be held on Thursday 11 June 2020.

For more information, see the NERC website.

British Academy: Special COVID 19 Call

Funding opportunities

As you are aware the British Academy launched their Special Research Grants: COVID-19 call. The deadline for applications is 5pm (UK time) on Wednesday 27 May 2020 and outcomes will be notified by 30 June 2020.

Due to the expected high demand, we ask that if you are interested in applying to this call then please send your intention to bid form to your Funding Development Officer by 11thMay 2020, after this date no new applications will be accepted.

The British Academy has provided guidance on the Special Research Grants – BA scheme notes for applicants and BA FAQs . They have asked that all applicants read the documentation carefully before starting their application.

Timeline

The call closes at 5pm on Wednesday 27th May 2020.

 

Date Action
11th May 2020 Intention to bid forms to be submitted to your faculty funding development officer
20th May 2020 Your final application must be submitted on FlexiGrant  by this date at the latest
21st – 27th May 2020 Institutional checks to take place by RDS.
27th May 2020 Submission

Any queries please contact Alexandra Pekalski 

 

New BU breastfeeding research paper

international, NHS, Publishing, writing

Congratulations to Dr. Alison Taylor  in the Centre for Midwifery, Maternal & Perinatal Health (CMMPH) the publication two days ago of her paper ‘Commercialisation and commodification of breastfeeding: video diaries by first-time mothers’ in the International Breastfeeding Journal [1].   Alison is Deputy Head of Department Midwifery and Health Sciences as well as Infant Feeding Lead.   This paper is the third paper from her excellent PhD study It’s a relief to talk…”: Mothers’ experiences of breastfeeding recorded in video diaries.  The first and second paper we published in 2019 also with Alison supervisors Professors Jo Alexander, Kath Ryan and Edwin van Teijlingen [2-3].  This third paper focuses on how many of aspects of our lives became increasingly commercialised. Although breastfeeding is perhaps a late comer to this process in recent years, it too has seen significant commercialisation facilitated by social media and our obsession with celebrity culture. This paper explores how the commercialisation and commodification of breastfeeding impacts mothers’ experiences of breastfeeding.

This qualitative research is based on five new mothers in the United Kingdom recorded their real-time breastfeeding experiences in video diaries. The purposive sample of five participants recorded 294 video entries lasting 43 h and 51 min, thus providing abundance of rich data. using a multi-modal method of analysis, incorporating both visual and audio data, a thematic approach was applied.  The study found that women preparing for breastfeeding are exposed to increasing commercialisation. When things do not go to plan, women are even more exposed to commercial solutions. Under the influence of online marketing strategies the need for paraphernalia grew.  Women’s dependence on such items became important aspects of their parenting and breastfeeding experiences.  Alison and her co-authors conclude that the audio-visual data demonstrated the extent to which “essential” paraphernalia was used.  The paper offers new insights into how advertising influenced mothers’ need for specialist equipment and services. Observing mothers in their video diaries, provided valuable insights into their parenting styles and how this affected their breastfeeding experience.

References:

  1. Taylor, A.M., van Teijlingen, E., Alexander, J., Ryan, K. (2020) Commercialisation and commodification of breastfeeding: video diaries by first-time mothers, International Breastfeeding Journal 15:33   https://doi.org/10.1186/s13006-020-00264-1
  2. Taylor A, van Teijlingen, E.,Ryan K, Alexander J (2019) ‘Scrutinised, judged & sabotaged’: A qualitative video diary study of first-time breastfeeding mothers, Midwifery 75: 16-23.
  3. Taylor, A.M., van Teijlingen, E., Alexander, J., Ryan, K. (2019) The therapeutic role of video diaries: A qualitative study involving breastfeeding mothers, Women & Birth 32(3):276-83. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1871519218300064

BU academics at Virtual International Day of the Midwife

conferences, international, PG research, Publishing, writing

Five FHSS academics have presentations and/or posters at this year’s Virtual International Day of the Midwife (IVDM) conference.  Dr. Luisa Cescutti-Butler  (Senior Midwifery Lecturer in  the Centre for Midwifery, Maternal & Perinatal Health (CMMPH) and Dr. Humaira  Hussain have an online presentation ‘on the topic of Making discoveries through research: midwifery student’s perceptions of their role when caring for pregnant women who misuse substances: neonatal simulators as creative pedagogy’.

BU Midwifery Lecturer Denyse King also in CMMPH has been interviewed by the VIDM her poster on her PhD research around Virtual Reality Learning Environments (VRLE), which can be offered as a computer-generated virtual simulation of a clinical workspace.

Whilst Dr. Luisa Cescutti-Butler,  Dr. Jacqui Hewitt-Taylor and Prof. Ann Hemingway have a poster  ‘Powerless responsibility: A feminist study of women’s experiences of caring for their late preterm babies’ based on Luisa’s PhD research.  Last, but not least, FHSS Visiting Faculty and holder of a BU Honorary  Doctorate Sheena Byrom is key note speaker at the week’s IVDM conference!

Congratulations!

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

CMMPH

Free Project Management Training

PG research, Post-award, Training

A new set of free videos is now available on the Fistral website, helping to ‘demystify’ project management.

There are 12 videos currently available, with more to come on other topics linked to Time Management, Agile, 3rd sector projects and more… So if you want to know the best way to plan a project, create a Work Breakdown Structure, the easy way to make a Gantt Chart, understand network diagrams, how to identify and schedule tasks, or how to allocate resources to a project – see Fistral’s free PM videos.

For their full range of video and online resources see:  https://www.fistraltraining.com/fistral-online-resources/

Free online course! – Improving Healthcare Through Clinical Research

NHS, Research Ethics, Training

Interested in clinical research and what’s involved? Are you contemplating a career in healthcare or the life sciences, or, do you want to find out more about the role of clinical research in improving healthcare?

If you’ve answered yes to any of the above questions, then why not sign up to FutureLearn’s Improving Healthcare Through Clinical Research course?

The course has been developed by the University of Leeds and is be available now, via this link.

It is completely free and all online, lasting 4 weeks.

This course has been certified by the CPD Certification Service as conforming to continuing professional development principles. By completing the course you will have achieved 16 hours of CPD time.

Remember – support is on offer at BU if you are thinking of introducing your research ideas into the NHS – email the Research Ethics mailbox, and take a look at the Clinical Governance blog.

BU Academic Targeted Research Scheme – closing date 10 May

In recognition of the important contribution that early career academics play in driving research for the future, we are delighted to continue the BU Academic Targeted Research scheme to attract and recruit talented individuals in targeted research areas. Following the successful recruitment of five new posts, we will employ one other new Senior Lecturer with significant postdoctoral expertise (or of comparable experience) with outstanding potential in alignment with the targeted research areas:

  • Health and Science Communication

We wish to recruit a diverse cohort of individuals with the motivation to become future academic leaders in their field. As an academic at BU, successful candidates will develop their career in exciting work environments, be provided with a high level of dedicated time to drive research activity and build capacity, and have the freedom to develop their research interests within the targeted areas. BU is committed to Fusion and as such successful candidates will also have the opportunity to contribute to the education and professional practice activities within their Department.

To support these roles and accelerate their careers, BU will provide three years of full-time salary (or part-time equivalent) and reasonable costs directly related to the proposed programme of research activities (up to £10k per year). The standard Academic Application Form must be completed and in all cases accompanied by the BU Academic Targeted Research scheme application form, which will propose the research activities and request funding.

To find out more about these exciting opportunities, please read the scheme guidance and visit the BU website.

The deadline for applications for the final post is Sunday 10 May 2020.

Any enquiries should be directed to researchfellowships@bournemouth.ac.uk .

Conversation article: Clean eaters tend to have difficulty managing their emotions

What do you do when you feel anxious about an upcoming interview or angry about a friend’s unfair comment on your behaviour? You might take a few deep breaths and try to view the situation from a different perspective: it’s just an interview, not a matter of life and death. And, on calmer reflection, your friend may be right – you did react a bit strongly.

Alternatively, you may bury your feelings in a tub of ice cream. The latter is called emotional eating and some people use it to regulate their emotions.

But not everyone turns to unhealthy eating to regulate unpleasant emotions. Our latest research, published in the Journal of Eating Disorders, suggests that some people actually eat healthily to do so. You might wonder what’s wrong with drinking a GM-free raw vegetable smoothie. Surely it can’t harm you? And for most people, it is harmless. But eating healthy food can become an unhealthy obsession called orthorexia nervosa.

Pathological obsession

Orthorexia nervosa is a term coined by Steven Bratman in 1997, from the Ancient Greek “ortho” meaning right and “orexia” meaning appetite, to describe a fixation on healthy eating. As such, orthorexia nervosa has also been referred to as “clean eating”, although the term orthorexia nervosa suggests a pathological obsession, rather than yet another fad diet.

Because healthy eating and healthy lifestyles are generally considered desirable, it can be difficult to spot when healthy eating becomes an unhealthy obsession. But an obsession with healthy eating can be hard for your physical and mental health as well your relationships. It can cause arguments with family or friends over food choices and lead to social isolation.

While orthorexia nervosa is not yet a recognised diagnosis, it shares some similarities with other eating disorders, particularly anorexia nervosa. Research shows that people with eating disorders have trouble recognising and regulating their emotions, but this had never been shown in people with orthorexic tendencies, so this was the focus of our study.

Out of control

We recruited 196 people with an interest in healthy eating through Facebook (including 167 women in the UK with an average age of 28). We found that difficulties identifying and regulating emotions were associated with orthorexic tendencies. In particular, people with orthorexic tendencies were found to feel out of control when upset and to have difficulty knowing how to regulate their emotions. The participants in our study with orthorexic tendencies also had trouble identifying and accepting their emotional reactions.

People with orthorexic tendencies often struggled to regulate their emotions.
GaudiLab/Shutterstock

Similar to a recently published study that looked at bloggers’ experiences of orthorexia nervosa, our findings suggest that people with orthorexic tendencies may use restrictive dietary rules around healthy eating to feel perfect and in control. They also use it to cope with difficult feelings, potentially because they feel they don’t have other ways to make themselves feel better.

While not everyone who eats healthily will have orthorexic tendencies, people who use obsessive and restrictive dietary rules to regulate unpleasant feelings may be at risk of developing orthorexia nervosa.

With around half of people on Instagram using it to share food experiences, the increased prevalence of fad diets, mixed information around what we should and should not eat, health guidelines, and even climate change, more and more people may decide to eat more healthily and control what they are eating. While this may all be for a good cause, we recommend people to be conscious of when their healthy obsession may become unhealthy.The Conversation

Laura Renshaw-Vuillier, Senior Lecturer, Psychology, Bournemouth University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

External guides for managing remote research

Guidance, Research Ethics

Given current Government guidance on the pandemic response, a number of research projects will need to be conducted remotely. Below are a number of external help guides/guidance articles that aim to assist researchers with this new way of working.

The UK Data Service’s guidance on online data collection

Warwick University’s article on using Skype to collect data

Guidance on conducting telephone interviews –
Article one
Article two

The resource ‘Fieldwork during the pandemic’

The UK Research Integrity Office’s ‘Internet-mediated research’ guide

Research should remain within the ethics approval that has been granted – if you need to make any changes as a result of COVID 19 (for example moving from face-to-face to remote interviewing) please email researchethics@bournemouth.ac.uk if a member of staff or your supervisor if a student.

Congratulation to BU nutritionists

international, Publishing, writing

This week Elsevier  Publishers sent the proofs for a book chapter written by two Bournemouth University nutrition researchers: Fotini Tsofliou and Iro Arvanitidou in collaboration with an academic colleague from Greece: Xenophon Theodoridis.  The chapter ‘Toward a Mediterranean-style diet outside the Mediterranean countries: Evidence of implementation and adherence’​ will appear in 2021 in the second edition of the book  The Mediterranean diet edited by Victor R. Preedy and Ronald R. Watson

Congratulations!

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

Centre for Midwifery, Maternal & Perinatal Health (CMMPH)

BU Academic Targeted Research Scheme

In recognition of the important contribution that early career academics play in driving research for the future, we are delighted to continue the BU Academic Targeted Research scheme to attract and recruit talented individuals in targeted research areas. Following the successful recruitment of five new posts, we will employ one other new Senior Lecturer with significant postdoctoral expertise (or of comparable experience) with outstanding potential in alignment with the targeted research areas:

  • Health and Science Communication

We wish to recruit a diverse cohort of individuals with the motivation to become future academic leaders in their field. As an academic at BU, successful candidates will develop their career in exciting work environments, be provided with a high level of dedicated time to drive research activity and build capacity, and have the freedom to develop their research interests within the targeted areas. BU is committed to Fusion and as such successful candidates will also have the opportunity to contribute to the education and professional practice activities within their Department.

To support these roles and accelerate their careers, BU will provide three years of full-time salary (or part-time equivalent) and reasonable costs directly related to the proposed programme of research activities (up to £10k per year). The standard Academic Application Form must be completed and in all cases accompanied by the BU Academic Targeted Research scheme application form, which will propose the research activities and request funding.

To find out more about these exciting opportunities, please read the scheme guidance and visit the BU website.

The deadline for applications is Sunday 10 May 2020.

Any enquiries should be directed to researchfellowships@bournemouth.ac.uk .

BU midwifery paper cited in WHO report

international, Knowledge Exchange, Publishing, writing

Last week the Regional Office for South East Asia of the WHO (World Health Organization) published its strategy for strengthening midwifery [1].  The report highlights how Bangladesh, India and Nepal have recently introduced midwifery education. They joined DPR Korea, Myanmar, Sri Lanka and TimorLeste in establishing midwives as an independent cadre of the health workforce.

This report cited our 2015 paper on midwifery developments in Nepal which appeared in the Journal of Asian Midwives [2].  The lead author Jillian Ireland is a Visiting Faculty in the Centre for Midwifery, Maternal & Perinatal Health (CMMPH) and Professional Midwifery Advocate at Poole Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, my other co-author, Joy Kemp, is Global Professional Adviser at the Royal College of Midwives (RCM).  The paper reflects on the RCM Global Midwifery Twinning Project in Nepal.  The paper argues that the presence of a strong professional association of midwives in a country yields double benefits. On one side, the association provides inputs into framing policies and developing standards of care, and on the other, it ensures quality services by continuously updating its members with information and evidence for practice.

Bournemouth University’s work in Nepal is ongoing with a project run by CMMPH helping to develop midwifery education and training the trainers funded by the German aid organisation GIZ (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit).

 

References:

  1. World Health Organization. Regional Office for South-East Asia (2020) Regional Strategic Directions for strengthening Midwifery in the South-East Asia Region 2020–2024, Delhi: World Health Organization. Regional Office for South-East Asia.
  2. Ireland, J., van Teijlingen, E, Kemp J. (2015) Twinning in Nepal: the Royal College of Midwives UK and the Midwifery Society of Nepal working in partnership, Journal of Asian Midwives 2 (1): 26-33. http://ecommons.aku.edu/jam/vol2/iss1/5/

 

Coming soon – POST’s Parliamentary Academic Fellowship Scheme – Open Call

 

Advance notice that the Parliamentary Academic Fellowship Scheme Open Call will be launching in June 2020, when expressions of interest will be sought.

Securing a prestigious fellowship with POST provides researchers with unique access to Parliament as well as direct potential for impact. It’s open to all employed academics with a PhD, and applicants propose their own project for Parliament to conduct. Click here for the complete timeline for applications, full details and testimonials from previous fellows.

If you’re interested,  you will need to inform your Faculty Dean/Deputy Dean, to discuss potential sources of funding, and also let the policy team and your faculty impact officer know, so applications can be tracked, and support and guidance provided.

Look out for a post next week on this blog, with details of specific points to consider if you would like to take up this opportunity.