Tagged / Child Health

Promoting Human-Centred Design in Drowning Prevention

international, Knowledge Exchange, student research

The Department of Design and Engineering at Bournemouth University has a reputation for its Human-Centred Design (HCD) work.  In our interdisciplinary Sonamoni project we have HCD at its centre.  The Sonamoni project is coordinated by Bournemouth University in collaboration with the University of the West of England (Bristol), the University of Southampton, and the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI), Design Without Border (DWB) in Uganda and Centre for Injury Prevention and Research, Bangladesh (CIPRB). The interdisciplinary team at Bournemouth University covers three faculties and six academics: Dr. Mavis Bengtsson, Dr. Kyungjoo Cha, Dr. Mehdi Chowdhury, Dr. Yong Hun Lim, Mr. John Powell, and Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen.

Last month two staff from CIPRB, Notan Chandra Dutta and Mirza Shibat Rowshan visited DBW in Uganda, as part of so-called South-South learning. Their objective was to share (1) knowledge and experience of using HCD techniques and (2) best practices of drowning prevention in both countries. Utilizing HCD techniques, Sonamoni is working to identify and prioritize potential solutions, develop prototypes, and assess the acceptability of the interventions to reduce drowning deaths among old children under two in Bangladesh.

During the visit, Notan and Shibat participated a four-day ideation workshop with the fisher community near Lake Victoria, organized by DWB. In the workshop, different HCD tools were used along with other group activities to generate and refine ideas for the solutions. The generated ideas were recorded by visualization tools. Notan and Shibat also attended a session on the principles of creative facilitation of HCD, including the need to understand the problem, role of the facilitator and other stakeholders.  Various visualization tools were discussed, e.g.  ‘journey maps’, ‘stakeholder map’, ‘context map’ and different types of sketches.  Notan shared CIPRB’s experiences of managing the best drowning prevention practices and its challenges from Bangladesh context.

This international project funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) through their Research and Innovation for Global Health Transformation programme, also includes a BU-based PhD student, Mr. Md. Shafkat Hossein.  Last week Shafkat presented our Sonamoni project in lecture to BU Engineering students at Talbot campus.

 

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

Centre for Midwifery & Women’s Health

Professor Julie Turner-Cobb wins the British Psychological Society Book Award!

The textbook winner for the British Psychological Society Book Award 2017 is Child Health Psychology: A Biopsychosocial Perspective by Professor Julie Turner-Cobb. It is the first textbook to focus specifically on child health psychology, taking an interdisciplinary and life-course perspective and drawing on theories and models within.

The Society’s Book Award recognises excellent published work in psychology. Professor Julie Turner-Cobb said she was absolutely delighted to win the award and thrilled that her book has received great recognition and positive reception as a result. She was first nominated for the award by one of her PhD students based at the University of Bath: “They are a big supporter of the book and were inspired to do their PhD as a result of an issue raised in the chapter that addresses the experience of being a young carer. It was a nice surprise and a huge compliment to be nominated.”

Child Health Psychology: A Biopsychosocial Perspective is primarily targeted at postgraduate students on MSc Health Psychology programmes but is also relevant to students taking final year undergraduate units in health psychology and related areas. Beyond this, the textbook is also relevant across a number of health disciplines outside of psychology where a biopsychosocial perspective on child health is being considered.

“There was no textbook devoted to health psychology as applied to children. I wanted to bring it together to highlight it and provide a child health focus for health psychology as a discipline.”

The first part of the book covers topics related to events and circumstances that can influence a child’s health during childhood and adolescence including the prenatal environment; whilst the second part examines how children cope when they are ill, how they deal with pain, the experience of parental ill health and bereavement.

“It takes a strong biological stance in many respects, but also gives attention to psychosocial issues in relation to context and individual differences,” Professor Turner-Cobb said, “There is also a chapter in the first part of the book that examines methodological and ethical issues in child health psychology, that includes assessment using endocrine and immune biomarkers of stress but also discusses the utility of using a range of different paradigms and settings.”

Professor Turner-Cobb was inspired to write Child Health Psychology as she wanted to draw attention to the scope of work on psychological factors associated with child health. “There are a number of excellent textbooks on health psychology that have aspects covering child health and there are many textbooks devoted to developmental psychology, but there was no textbook devoted to health psychology as applied to children. I wanted to bring it together to highlight it and provide a child health focus for health psychology as a discipline.”

For more information about the book, please email Professor Julie Turner-Cobb (jturnercobb@bournemouth.ac.uk).