Tagged / collaborative research

New CMMPH publication on health promotion in post-earthquake Nepal

international, open access, Publishing, writing

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

STEM for Britain 2020 – Call for Posters

STEM for Britain, hosted by the Parliamentary and Scientific Committee, is a poster competition for early-career researchers, and will take place in the Houses of Parliament on Monday 9th March 2020.

Applications for posters will open on Monday 23rd September 2019 to early career research scientists, engineers, technologists and mathematicians to exhibit posters in one of the following five areas:

  • Biological and Biomedical Sciences
  • Chemistry
  • Engineering
  • Mathematical Sciences
  • Physics

Prizes will be awarded for the posters presented in each discipline which best communicate high level science, engineering or mathematics to a lay audience.

BU is inviting expressions of interest from those who would like to apply by Thursday 12th September. Please email Lisa Andrews, RDS Research Facilitator with two sentences on what your poster would cover. Applicants will be shortlisted on Monday 16th September. Those chosen to apply, will be supported to do so ahead of the Parliamentary and Scientific Committee’s external deadline of 2nd December.

Full details of the competition and exhibition, including the application form will be made available on www.stemforbritain.org.uk from 23rd September.

Health Research Authority #MakeItPublic Campaign – internal survey

NHS, open access, Research Ethics

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.

Training opportunity – completing and submitting your IRAS application

NHS, Research Ethics, Research Integritiy, Training

Are you currently in the process of designing, setting up or planning your research study, and would like to extend your project into the NHS?

Yes? Then you may want to take advantage of this training opportunity.

Oliver Hopper (Research & Development Coordinator, Royal Bournemouth and Christchurch Hospital) and Suzy Wignall (Clinical Governance Advisor, RDS)  will be running a training session on how to use, and complete your own application within the IRAS system.

IRAS (Integrated Research Application System) is the system used to gain approvals from the NHS Research Ethics Committee and Health Research Authority, before rolling out your study to NHS Trusts. To support this, the session will include the background to research ethics and the approvals required for NHS research.

The session will also be interactive, and so as participants, you will have the opportunity to go through the form itself and complete the sections, with guidance on what the reviewers are expecting to see in your answers, and tips on how to best use the system.

The training will take place in Studland House – Lansdowne Campus, room 103 Tuesday 20th August at 09:30am – 12:30pm.

Get in touch with Research Ethics if you would like to register your interest and book a place.

Good Clinical Practice refresher – Wednesday 14th August 2019

NHS, Research Ethics, Training

Are you currently undertaking research within the NHS, and your Good Clinical Practice (GCP) training is due to expire? Or has it expired recently?

GCP certification lasts for two years, so if your training is due to expire, has expired, or you want to validate your learning, then take advantage of the upcoming refresher half day session, taking place at Dorset County Hospital, Dorchester on Wednesday 14th August, 9am – 12:30pm.

Spaces are still remaining, so if you’d like to enrol, get in touch with Research Ethics.

New collaborative paper BU-NHS colleagues

NHS, Publishing, writing

The month saw the publication of the latest collaborative paper between FHSS academics, BU Visiting Faculty and NHS clinicians.  Our paper ‘Design errors in vital sign charts used in consultant-led maternity units in the United Kingdom’ [1] is available for a free download from Elsevier until August 28, 2019. Till then no sign up, registration or fees are required, click here.

The authors, as part of the Modified Obstetric Warning Score (MObs) Research Group, lead by BU Visiting Faculty Richard Isaac, argue that obstetric observation charts in the UK contain poor design features. These charts have common errors such as an inappropriate use of colour, poor alignment and axes labelling.  Consequently, these design errors render charts difficult to use and could compromise patient safety. The article calls for an evidence-based, standardised obstetric observation chart, which should integrate ‘human factors’ and user experience.

This research team, earlier published ‘Vital signs and other observations used to detect deterioration in pregnant women: Analysis of vital sign charts in consultant-led maternity units’. [2]

References:

  1. Isaacs, R., Smith, G., Gale-Andrews, L., Wee, M., van Teijlingen, E., Bick, D.E., Hundley, V. on behalf of the Modified Obstetric Warning Score (MObs) Research Group. (2019) Design errors in vital sign charts used in consultant-led maternity units in the United Kingdom, International Journal of Obstetric Anesthesia 39:60-67.
  2. Smith, G., Isaacs, R., Gale-Andrews, L., Wee, M., van Teijlingen, E., Bick, D., Hundley, V. (2017) Vital signs and other observations used to detect deterioration in pregnant women: Analysis of vital sign charts in consultant-led maternity units. International Journal of Obstetric Anesthesia 30: 44-51.

 

Good Clinical Practice refresher – Wednesday 14th August 2019

NHS, Research Ethics, Training

Are you currently undertaking research within the NHS, and your Good Clinical Practice (GCP) training is due to expire? Or has it expired recently?

GCP certification lasts for two years, so if your training is due to expire, has expired, or you want to validate your learning, then take advantage of the upcoming refresher half day session, taking place at Dorset County Hospital, Dorchester on Wednesday 14th August, 9am – 12:30pm.

Spaces are still remaining, so if you’d like to enrol, get in touch with Research Ethics.

An epidemic of invitations

international, Knowledge Exchange, Publishing, Research Integritiy, writing

Once you have submitted you manuscript to a scientific journal, the editor has a (quick) look at it and sends it out for review.  As I remind students and colleagues in training sessions on academic writing and publishing, the editor and the peer reviewers are academics like me and my colleagues who do both the editing and the reviewing, for free and over and above the day job.  Being an editor and a reviewer are part of being any academic’s so-called scholarly activity.  We are expected to do this as part of the wider scientific community for the benefit of our academic discipline(s).

When an academic receives an invitation to peer review, the journal will send you a copy of the paper’s abstract.  On reading this abstract you then decide whether you wish to do the review.  If the paper sounds interesting and it is in your field and you have the time you may volunteer to conduct a review.  Once you have agreed you will get the full paper (or more likely you are send a link to the publisher’s website).  The requirements of the review report varies between disciplines and often between journals. Some follow an informal structure, but others have a more formal approach, sometimes with scoring systems for sections of the paper.

Unfortunately, academics across the globe are experiencing an ‘epidemic’ of invitations to review for scientific journals.  And I am not talking about so-called predatory publishers, i.e. journals and publishers that are only in it for the monetary gain, no I am talking about legitimate journals sending out invitations to review for them.   Especially scholars with a few decent publications receive several emails a week from often high quality scientific journals.  The photo of my email inbox shows three invitations in a row I received in the space of two hours last week (10th July), two are even from different Associate Editors for the same journal!

I would like to stress that doing peer reviews is very important.  It is the backbone of academic publishing.  Reviewing is part of our overall scholarly responsibility so we all do it, although some more than others.  We all have are favourite journals to review for, perhaps because the journal is high quality, or we like to publish in it ourselves, because we know the editor, or our reviewing is recognised on websites like KUDOS.  I would like to urge colleagues who don’t manage to review at least once a month to step up and agree to review a wee bit more often.

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

Centre for Midwifery, Maternal & Perinatal Health

New BU cross-faculty publication

international, NHS, Publishing, writing

This week Evidence-Based Midwifery published the latest article from the BU team working on the portrayal of midwifery and maternity in the media.  This qualitative paper ‘Changing the narrative around childbirth: whose responsibility is it?’ is co-authored by a multidisciplinary team including the disciplines of Midwifery, Sociology and Media.[1]  The lead author is Prof. Vanora Hundley in the Centre for Midwifery, Maternal & Perinatal Health (CMMPH), one of longest established centres at BU, her co-authors are Dr. Ann Luce in the Faculty of Media & Communication, Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen director of CMMPH and Sophie Edlund, who was based at BU at the time of the research but who is now at Malmö University in Sweden.

The paper addresses societal’s interest in all aspects of childbirth, which is reflected in both social and traditional media. Stories often focus on dramatic, risky and mostly unrealistic events; misrepresenting childbirth and maternity care professionals. The authors raised the question: “Whose responsibility is it to ensure accurate representations of childbirth?”   Using semi-structured in-depth interviews with ten midwives working in the UK some working in the NHS, some in Higher Education or independent practice, the authors distilled four separate but inter-related themes:

(1) not my responsibility;

(2) fear of retribution;

(3) power balance; and

(4) social media.

The themes sat within two wider societal issues that reflect the current challenges for midwifery, these were (a) the ongoing battle between the social and the medical models of childbirth and (b) the impact of gender.  Finding that midwives fear the media resonates with experiences from a number of countries and professional groups. There is a need to change media discourse in both fictional and factual representations of childbirth and midwives have a critical role to play in this, but to do this they need to equip themselves with the skills necessary to engage with the media. Guidelines on responsible media reporting could ensure that media producers portray pregnancy, midwifery and maternity care as naturally as possible.

This paper is paper of a growing body of interdisciplinary research at BU across faculties, which had already resulted in six earlier publications. [2-7]  In addition last month Dr Chapleo from the Faculty of Management submitted a grant application to the ESRC under the title ‘Rebranding childbirth: understanding the role of marketing in influencing uptake of health services’, a joint application with CMMPH staff (Profs. Hundley & van Teijlingen) and the Media School (Dr. Luce).

 

References:

  1. Hundley, V., Luce, A., van Teijlingen, E., Edlund, S. (2019) Changing the narrative around childbirth: whose responsibility is it? Evidence-based Midwifery 17(2): 47-52.
  2. Luce, A., Cash, M., Hundley, V., Cheyne, H., van Teijlingen, E., Angell, C. (2016) “Is it realistic?” the portrayal of pregnancy and childbirth in the media BMC Pregnancy & Childbirth 16: 40 http://bmcpregnancychildbirth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12884-016-0827-x
  3. van Teijlingen, E., Simkhada, P., Luce, A., Hundley, V. (2016) Media, Health & Health Promotion in Nepal, Journal of Manmohan Memorial Institute of Health Sciences 2(1): 70-75. http://www.nepjol.info/index.php/JMMIHS/article/view/15799/12744
  4. Luce, A., Hundley, V., van Teijlingen, E. (Eds.) (2017) Midwifery, Childbirth and the Media, London: Palgrave Macmillan.
  5. Hundley, V., Duff, E., Dewberry, J., Luce, A., van Teijlingen, E. (2014) Fear in childbirth: are the media responsible? MIDIRS Midwifery Digest 24(4): 444-447.
  6. Hundley, V., Luce, A., van Teijlingen, E. (2015) Do midwives need to be more media savvy? MIDIRS Midwifery Digest 25(1):5-10.
  7. van Teijlingen, E., De Vries, R., Luce, A., Hundley, V. (2017) Meer bemoeien met media (In Dutch: more engagement with media). Tijdschrift voor Verloskundigen (in Dutch: Journal for Midwives), 41 (6):28-29.

Challenging paper by Prof. Pritchard and colleagues

Publishing, writing

Congratulations to Bournemouth University’s Professor Colin Pritchard, Honorary Doctor of Science Anne Silk and their Southampton colleague Lars Hansen who recently published the paper ‘Are rises in Electro-Magnetic Field in the human environment, interacting with multiple environmental pollutions, the tripping point for increases in neurological deaths in the Western World?’  This paper in Medical Hypotheses (published by Elsevier) is a worrying analysis of the effects of (recent) technological progress on our health.  If this paper does not make you worry , at least remember one message: “No mobile phones in trouser pockets or under your pillow as you’re being bathed in 450Mhz.”

Well done!

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

CMMPH

 

Reference:

Pritchard, C., Silk, A., Hansen, L. (2019) Are rises in Electro-Magnetic Field in the human environment, interacting with multiple environmental pollutions, the tripping point for increases in neurological deaths in the Western World? Medical Hypotheses 127: 76-83.

 

Health Research Authority #MakeItPublic Campaign

NHS, open access, Research Ethics

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.

Key role of volunteers in the health system

international, open access, Publishing, writing

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:

  1. Panday S, Bissell P, van Teijlingen E, Simkhada P (2019) Perceived barriers to accessing Female Community Health Volunteers’ (FCHV) services among ethnic minority women in Nepal: A qualitative study. PLoS ONE 14(6): e0217070.
  2. Panday S, Bissell P, van Teijlingen E, Simkhada P (2017) The contribution of female community health volunteers (FCHVs) to maternity care in Nepal: a qualitative study. BMC Health Services Research 17(1):623.

Setting up clinical research – the ‘Organisation Information Document’

NHS, Research Ethics

If you are currently conducting research within the NHS or Health & Social Care (HSC), then please bear in mind the following update if you wish/plan to add new NHS/HSC research sites to your study.

As of 5th June, the set-up procedure for clinical research projects involving NHS or HSC organisations changed (see blog post) –

  • If you applying for HRA/NHS REC approval you will be required to follow the new procedure using the Organisation Information Document (OID), as referenced in the above post;
  • If you are already conducting a study with HRA/NHS REC approval, in NHS/HSC organisations, and wish to involve new sites, then please be aware that the OID should be used, even if existing sites were set-up using the previous document, the Statement of Activities.

Further help and guidance

Guidance on the use of the new UK Local Information Pack has now been published in the Site Specific page of IRAS Help to help applicants with the change.

If you have any queries regarding any of the information provided above, information in the referenced blog post, or would like some guidance with regard to implementing your research in a healthcare setting – please get in touch with BU’s Research Ethics team.

You can also take a look at the Clinical Governance blog for documents, links and training opportunities.