BU Research Blog

10 May 2015

BU students support Nepal earthquake disaster appeal

PG research, student research Edwin van Teijlingen

Posted on behalf of BU students!

Appeal for helping Nepal earthquake survivors

Nepal was stuck by earthquake of 7.8 RS magnitude at 11:56 am local time on 25th April 2015. There have been more than one hundred aftershocks since. Many people are traumatised and lack proper care in the aftermath of the earthquake. This natural disaster has created havoc on a massive scale. To make conditions worse there was rain pouring down in parts of Nepal and there now is a risk of the spread of epidemic diseases, thefts, and other crime. Until now the death toll has reached almost 8,000 and thousands have been rendered homeless and destitute. According to the Prime Minister of Nepal Sushil Koirala, the death toll could rise as high as 10,000. We are planning to raise fund for the immediate relief and rebuilding process of Nepal.

The UK Nepal Friendship Society and students from BU are organising a fund-raising event for earthquake victims of Nepal on 12th May, Tuesday from 4pm until 7 pm in Bournemouth Square (western side). Please spread this information to all interested! Ask them to visit us on Tuesday and help Nepal at this time of crisis. Your donations will help to rebuild the nation and help to provide necessary amenities to people who have lost their home and family. Any amount will be greatly appreciated, but please give as much as you can. Nepal has been awaiting this disaster for many years now, and according to the cycle of major earthquakes in the country the national catastrophe that has taken place could have happened sooner (the last took place in 1934). Your donation via the UKNFS will be provided to disaster victims through official/reliable Government of Nepal and Embassy of Nepal in London recommendedchannels.

Please support Nepal at this time of national tragedy!

–xx–

BU has several undergraduate and postgraduate students from Nepal. Moreover, several BU students conduct studies or do their electives in Nepal.

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

CMMPH

9 May 2015

Nepal earthquake follow-up

Public engagement, Research Integritiy Edwin van Teijlingen

Shortly after the earthquake in Nepal I posted on the BU Research blog as we have a long-standing presence in Nepal. We have been working there for nearly ten years, conducting research largely around community-based interventions. Several Bournemouth University colleagues (and many based elsewhere) have indicated that they have donated (or will do so) to our intervention partner, the UK-based Buddhist charity Green Tara Trust. Thank you everyone for this generous support. It has brought tents and food to rural communities in an area where we have been working for eight years. The support also has had an incredible effect on our Nepalese team, raising their spirit and encouraging them in their relief efforts.

Donations to Green Tara Trust from individuals have just reached £35,000. As there is always the question how best to support victims in such disasters, I would like to show how supporting a small existing local organisations has direct benefits. Green Tara staff in Nepal supplied medicines, blankets and basic food supplies such as rice, lentils and cooking oil for a period of one month to 130 of the poorest families in in the hills in and around Pharping within days after the earthquake when the after-shocks were still going on. Please, note the guys carrying huge sacks of rice up the mountain at the left hand side of the lorry bringing the Green Tara relief. Loads of places in the affected rural areas can only be reached by foot making the relief effort more difficult.

As we have been working with women’s groups in the community for years Green Tara staff know who the poorest people and where to find them. In addition, they provided tents to 200 families who have lost their homes. One very local solution (rather than flying in tents from the UK) was purchasing the tents elsewhere in Nepal. As we have a second field site in a part that is hardly affected by the earthquake near the Indian border, staff there bought hundreds of tents covers, put them on a bus to Kathmandu where local Green Tara staff picked them up and took them rural areas in the hills near Pharping.

Government-controlled health posts in rural Nepal often run out of medical supplies even before the earthquake. Therefore, Green Tara Nepal donated several boxes of essential medicines to two health posts in the area in case of outbreaks of infections, such as diarrhea or respiratory tract infections. Most of the time I would complain about the fact that you can buy just about any kind of medicine under sun over the counter in pharmacies shops in Nepal, but on this occasion is was very helpful.

Thank you again for keeping those affected by the earthquake in your thoughts. You can donate to Green Tara!

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

CMMPH

5 May 2015

International Day of the Midwife, Edinburgh 2015

Public engagement Edwin van Teijlingen

The Royal College of Midwives (RCM) has organised a conference today to celebrate the International Day of the Midwife in Edinburgh. The conference ‘Midwives for a Better Tomorrow’ has a very international focus. Speakers include: Frances Day-Stirk, president of the International Confederation of Midwives, Mary Renfrew, who led The Lancet series on midwifery, and Frances McConville from the World Health Organization. The conference also reported on the RCM Global Midwifery Twinning Project, which was funded by THET and included three low-income countries: Nepal, Cambodia & Uganda. In attandance was BU Visiting Faculty (and Poole midwife) Ms. Jillian Ireland, who was one of the volunteers who went out to Nepal.

This year’s International Day of the Midwife conference co-incides with the centenary of the 1915 Midwives (Scotland) Act. This celebration reminds us of the importance to have government recognition and regulation for the profession of midwifery. The latter is still lacking in many low-income countries, such as Nepal. There is a large body of evidence which supports that skilled midwifery care has the potential to significantly reduce maternal and child mortality and increase wellbeing.

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

CMMPH

28 April 2015

NIHR Panels and Boards are Recruiting

Funding opportunities Dianne Goodman

NIHR research programme boards and panels select the most important research questions to commission, and make funding recommendations on project applications.

They are looking for additional expertise for the boards or panels of the following programmes:

Efficacy and Mechanism Evaluation (EME) Programme
NIHR Health Services and Delivery Research (HS&DR) Programme
NIHR Health Technology Assessment (HTA) Programme

For more information please see: Opportunities to influence Health Research

26 April 2015

We regret to inform you ….

PG research, Publishing, Research Integritiy, student research Edwin van Teijlingen

It is always disappointing for an academic author to receive a rejection letter. Today I received yet another one from Midwifery (published by Elsevier). Sometimes I think academic publishing in good journal is not getting any easier over time. Neither does the experience of having over two hundred peer-reviewed academic papers make a rejection easier to deal with. This was my third paper in a row that got rejected by Midwifery. All three papers were rejected on resubmission, so a lot of extra work had gone into these papers after the initial peer review and the editor’s feedback. These three papers where led by three different postgraduate students (Sharma, Baral & Burton) as first authors, and in each case co-authored by myself and different BU academics and/or from other universities.

Midwifery is the journal in which I have published more papers than any other journal (see top blue piece of pie in ‘Documents by source’) as reported on SCOPUS today (26 April 2015). Moreover, I am co-author of one of the top five most downloaded papers in Midwifery for 2014 (see recent BU Research Blog), and this paper is also the most cited Midwifery paper since 2010! Still I manage to have three papers rejected in a row.

What is does show to me is that the journal’s peer review system is robust (i.e. blind and impartial) because I am also a member of Midwifery’s editorial committee. I think it is back to the drawing board and discuss with each set of authors what the next step should be for our papers. To be fair we had a paper published already this year in Midwifery, namely: Grylka-Baeschlin, S., van Teijlingen, E.R., Stoll, K., Gross, M.M. (2015) Translation and validation of the German version of the Mother-Generated Index and its application during the postnatal period. Midwifery 31(1): 47–53.

As an editorial board we try continuously to maintain a high quality of papers to be published in our journal, and we would like to encourage potential authors to keep submitting their papers to Midwifery.

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

CMMPH

26 April 2015

Major earthquake in Nepal: Help needed

Public engagement, Publishing Edwin van Teijlingen

Yesterday’s earthquake, with a magnitude of 7.9 on the Richter Scale, killed thousands of people. It is now 9 AM on Sunday morning and just had a report from friends in Nepal about a major after shock whilst the number of reported deaths is increasing by the hour. The number of causalities in rural areas will only become known over the next few weeks, because of the remoteness of some of the affected areas and the damage to infrastructure (roads, power cables, telephone, and internet links). We know from previous disasters in low-income countries like Nepal that help will be slower to reach rural areas.

The Government of Nepal has asked for international aid and the first aid arrived yesterday from neighbouring India. Yesterday the United States has made one million US$ available for the most immediate aid according to USAID, whilst the Belgian government activated its so-called B-Fast team (Belgian First Aid & Support Team). Like many countries, the UK has offered support. These big relief efforts are vital, especially for the immediate support in finding people under the rubble, and bringing in clean water, blankets, food, medicine and other supplies.

Only last month we published an editorial arguing that Nepal needs a greater focus on health protection to tackle emerging public health hazards.¹ In this editorial we observed that “whilst Nepal has made some head way in disaster planning, much of this seems to be focused mainly around earthquake disaster planning only.” The coming weeks and months we teach us to what extent this earthquake disaster management has been effective.

Researchers at BU have been working in Nepal for over ten years and in that period, have come to know many people and made lots of friends. We are worried about those we know personally, friends across Nepal, especially in our field sites, former and current Green Tara Nepal staff, the shop keepers next door to the Green Tara office, former and current students, and so on. Like so many people our first reaction was that we need to do something, starting with collecting money for the people of Nepal. We have decided that unlike a general appeal for help, like many friends of Nepal will set up over the next few days across the globe, we would stick to what we are good at: (a) improving maternity care in rural Nepal; and (b) stimulating health promotion. The former because women will continue to become pregnant and babies will continue to be born, the latter because the risk is that any disaster relief will focus on the here and now. Moreover, we want our disaster relief to be based on the same principles as outlined in Table 1 as the rest of our work.²

Table 1: Underlying philosophy of the Green Tara programme

The desired intervention or programme needs to be:

Community-based.
Culturally appropriate.
Women-centred, including working with those affecting women’s access to improved health (e.g. mothers in law, husbands).
Small-scale.
Sustainable.
Making best use of existing resources, both from the government and others in the locality.
Low cost.
Involve stakeholders at all stages to increase ownership and maximise chances of sustainability.

Donations can be made to Green Tara Trust (London) through the official donation web page:

https://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/fundraiser-web/donate/makeDonationForCharityDisplay.action?charityId=1008396

This money will be used to implement sustainable low-cost, health intervention projects, working in close collaboration with local communities. There need to be projects on the ground now which are focusing immediately on the long-term preventative approach.

Please give generously!

Karunamati (Green Tara Trust, UK)

Padma Dharini (Green Tara Trust, UK)

Padam Simkhada (Liverpool John Moores University & Green Tara Nepal)

Edwin van Teijlingen (Bournemouth University, UK)

References:

Simkhada, P., Lee, A., van Teijlingen, E., Karki, P., Neupane C.H. (2015) Need and importance of health protection training in Nepal, Nepal Journal of Epidemiology (editorial) 5(1): 441-443.
van Teijlingen, E., Simkhada, P., Stephen, J., Simkhada, B., Woodes Rogers, S., Sharma, S. (2012) Making the best use of all resources: developing a health promotion intervention in rural Nepal. Health Renaissance 10(3): 229-235.

15 April 2015

BU presence at BNAC conference

PG research, Public engagement Edwin van Teijlingen

BU Visiting Fellow Prof. Padam Simkhada (based at Liverpool John Moores University) and BU Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen will be presenting the paper ‘Health and Welfare of Nepali Female Returnees from Gulf Countries: A Mixed-Methods Study’ in collaboration with two Nepal-based co-authors at the latest BNAC conference. The paper is based on over 0ne thousand records of Nepali women who have returned from work in countries on the Arabian sub-continent. The records have been collected by a charity based in Kathmandu called Pourakhi that supports female migrant workers. The 13th Annual Nepal Study Days will be held at SOAS (University of London) on Thursday 16th April and Friday 17th April, and the programme can be found here.

Whilst new BU PhD student Ms. Preeti Mahato has been assigned Dr. Ben Campbell as ‘Study day tutor’ at this BNAC conference to help her focus her thesis research question and methods and any issues and queries she may have. We think this opportunity will be very helpful to her.

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

CMMPH

Faculty of Health & Social Sciences

9 April 2015

Social Science Baha lecture series Nepal

Public engagement, Publishing Edwin van Teijlingen

Earlier this week Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen presented at Social Science Baha on the topic of research capacity building in Nepal. Together with many colleagues in Nepal and the UK Edwin has been working on a DFID and British Council funded project under the title PARI (which stands for ‘Partnership on improving Access to Research Literature for Higher Education Institutions in Nepal’). The invited presentation has been recorded by Social Science Baha and is now available online here.

The slides used on Monday are available too.

Presentation April 2015 Soc Sci Baha

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

CMMPH

7 April 2015

Writing workshop in Kathmandu

Knowledge Transfer, Publishing Edwin van Teijlingen

We regularly conduct workshops and training sessions on academic writing at home and abroad. Yesterday afternoon I did one in Kathmandu for staff at Social Science Baha and Green Tara Nepal. There were the usual comments and queries about authorship, references, length of papers or sections of papers, how to target the ‘best’ journalfor my article, etc. One interesting question I had not been asked before was: “How did you feel when you had your first paper published?”, followed by the question: “Who did you tell about it?” I thought that was a very nice question, and also reminded me why we do these kind of workshops for those who haven’t had the pleasure yet of getting a paper in print.

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

CMMPH

5 April 2015

Invited talk Easter Monday

Publishing Edwin van Teijlingen

On 6th April, Easter Monday, professor Edwin van Teijlingen will present the process and selected findings of research capacity building work conducted in Nepal. The invited lecture at Social Science Baha in Kathmandu was originally planned for early January, but unfortunately had to be cancelled at the last moment due to a national strike in Nepal.

PARI (Partnership on improving Access to Research Literature for Higher Education Institutions in Nepal) refers to a project to support and enhance health research in Nepal; a partnership between Tribhuvan University, three UK universities (including Bournemouth University), and the Development Resource Centre (Nepal). The British Council and DFID (UK) funded PARI to help build research capacity over a three-year period.

Nepal has limited capacity in health research, which restricts ability to implement evidence-based health care. PARI aimed to move university lecturers away from textbook teaching and make them more critical of the academic literature available on the Internet.

PARI workshops delivered to Nepal universities introduce the foundations of evidence-based practice and outline key electronic databases of health care and health service literature available to Nepalese academics. These workshops were informed by: (1) a curriculum review of all health-related courses at the major universities in Nepal; and (2) a needs assessment with lecturers, librarians and students of the major universities.

Key message included that We need to move away from textbook teaching in health care and teach health-care discipline students how to find the most appropriate evidence-based treatment for each patient.

The PARI team:

Ram Sharan Pathak,Tribhuvan University,Nepal

Padam Simkhada, Liverpool John Moores University, UK.

Bhimsen Devkota, Development ResourceCentre,Nepal

Edwin van Teijlingen,Bournemouth University,UK

Julie Bruce,University of Warwick, UK

Pramod Regmi, Development Resource Centre, Nepal

Amudha Poobalan, University of Aberdeen, UK

Trilochan Pokharel, Nepal Administrative Staff College, Kathmandu Nepal

The work has resulted in two academic publications:

Simkhada, P., van Teijlingen, E., Devkota, B., Pathak, R.S., Sathian, B. (2014) Accessing research literature: A mixed-method study of academics in Higher Education Institutions in Nepal, Nepal Journal of Epidemiology 4(4): 405-14. http://www.nepjol.info/index.php/NJE/article/view/11375
Simkhada, P., van Teijlingen, E., Pokharel, T., Devkota, B., Pathak, R.S. (2013) Research Methods Coverage in Medical & Health Science Curricula in Nepal, Nepal Journal Epidemiology 3(3): 253-258. www.nepjol.info/index.php/NJE/article/view/9185

4 April 2015

New paper on obesity research

Publishing Edwin van Teijlingen

Colleagues associated with the Health Economics Research Unit (HERU), Health Services Research Unit (HSRU) and the Rowett Institute of Nutrition and Health (all based at the University of Aberdeen), the Nursing, Midwifery & Allied Health Professional Research Unit (University of Stirling), the Scottish Collaboration for Public Health Research & Policy (SCPHRP) based at the University of Edinburgh and the Centre for Midwifery, Maternal and Perinatal Health (CMMPH) at Bournemouth University published their latest paper on obesity research. The paper ‘A systematic review of the cost-effectiveness of non-surgical obesity interventions in men’ is published in the journal: Obesity Research & Clinical Practice. This systematic review summarises the literature reporting the cost-effectiveness of non-surgical weight-management interventions for men. Studies were quality assessed against a checklist for appraising decision modelling studies. This research is part of the larger ROMEO study.

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

Faculty of Health & Social Sciences

Reference:

Boyers, D., Avenell, A., Stewart, F., Robertson, C., Archibald, D., Douglas, F., Hoddinott, P., van Teijlingen, E., A systematic review of the cost-effectiveness of non-surgical obesity interventions in men, Obesity Research & Clinical Practice (online first)

2 April 2015

Publishing an academic book in a low-income country

Publishing Edwin van Teijlingen

Earlier this year our book ‘The Dynamics of Health in Nepal’ was published by Himal Books for Social Science Baha in Kathmandu.¹It is an edited collection covering a range of current health topics in Nepal, including issues such as maternal health, HIV/AIDS, sexual health, road traffic accidents, non-communicable diseases and the role of the media and migration.

One of us had published several books, with for example international publishers such as Elsevier, Routledge (part of Taylor Francis) and Oxford University Press.^2-4All editors authors are UK PhD graduates from the universities of Aberdeen (van Teijlingen), Southampton (Simkhada) and Sheffield (Wasti) respectively. All three of us were based in the UK at the time of conception of the book. Padam Simkhada was Senior Lecturer in International Health at the University of Sheffield, Edwin van Teijlingen still is professor at Bournemouth University and Sharada Prasad Wasti was a PhD student at ScHARR (University of Sheffield). So it made sense to talk to publishers in the UK, which is what we did. However, it rapidly became clear that we could get a deal for an expensive hardback book, a book which would sell way above what the average academic in Nepal could afford. After some soul searching we decided to look into getting the book published in Nepal.

One of the advantages of publishing Nepal is the same most outsourcing to low income-countries, namely it keeps the production costs down. Rather than increasing our profit margins by keeping the low production costs, as it the typical case in the global market, we used this to keep the retail price low. The book retails for 800NR (about £5.50) in Nepal which means it is affordable to academics and postgraduate students in Nepal. Similar books from international publishers sell for at least £20!

We had some trepidation about the potentially quality of the book before we signed the contract with Social Science Baha. These low expectations were based on the quality of printed text books we had seen for sale on small stalls outside the Kittipur Campus of Tribhuvan University. One of these shoddy looking books was based on lecturers given by our Nepalese colleague Prof. Dr. Bhimsen Devkota. When we passed one of these stalls many years ago he pointed at a particular book and said: “See that book, a student who had attended my lectures two years in a row, copied all I said, and the materials I handed out, all of it word for word. That student then got it published as a book.”

However, our expectations were wrong. From the outset the publishing process was impressive. Social Science Baha employed a very professional proof-reader/copy-editor who picked up a lot of minor style and language issues even after we had most of the chapters professionally proof-read in the UK. The classic example of the thoroughness of his checking was the name of one for the chapter contributors ‘Sally Woodes Rogers’, he came back to us and said, “But her name on the web pages of the University of Aberdeen is ‘Sarah’ not ‘Sally’, are you sure?” At which point we had to assure him that ‘Sarah’ was her correct birth name but that she wanted herself to be known as ‘Sally’.

The final version of our book looks very good. The cover is beautifully printed; the font, chapter lay-out and overall style are of a very high quality. Our book has the feel of a typical academic book published in Europe or North America. There is really nothing about it that says this book is published in a low-income country.

The book has been well received at its launch in Kathmandu in January 2015. The first published book review was also very complementary.⁵ Last but not least, having produced a great looking book, for us the final feel-good factor is that we agreed to donate all profits from the sale of the book to the charity Green Tara Nepal.

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

Prof. Padam Simkhada

Dr. Sharada P. Wasti

References:

Wasti, S.P., Simkhada, P.P., van Teijlingen, E.(eds.) (2015)The Dynamics of Health in Nepal,Kathmandu, Nepal: Social Science Baha&Himal Books
DeVries, R., Benoit, C., Teijlingen van, E., Wrede, S. (eds.) (2001) Birth by Design: Pregnancy, Midwifery Care and Midwifery in North America and Europe,New York: Routledge.
Taylor R., Smith, B.,Teijlingen van, E. (eds.) (2003) Health & Illness in the Community: an Oxford Core Text, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Alder, B. Abraham, C., van Teijlingen, E., Porter, M. (eds.) (2009) Psychology & Sociology Applied to Medicine: An Illustrated Colour Text (third edn), Edinburgh: Elsevier Science.
Pradhan S. (2015) Book review The Dynamics of Health in Nepal, Public Health Perspective 5(2) on line journal: http://www.phpnepal.org/index.php?listId=943

19 March 2015

Policy brief on Obesity

Knowledge Transfer, Public engagement, Publishing Edwin van Teijlingen

Today my colleagues at the University of Aberdeen’s Health Economics Research Unit (HERU) published their latest HERU Policy Brief on ‘Gaining pounds by losing pounds: research finds financial incentives could help reduce obesity’. The policy brief is now available on line. These policy briefs are concise summaries of the findings of research projects, presented with a focus on policy implications. Linking research findings to possible policy improvements increase the chance that our research has an impact on the wider society. Furthermore, that our research has an impact in REF terms.

This latest policy brief ‘Gaining pounds by losing pounds: research finds financial incentives could help reduce obesity’ is part of a larger project called PROGRESS (Prevent Obesity GRowing Economic Synthesis Study), funded by the National Preventative Research Initiative (NPRI) and the Universities of Aberdeen and Melbourne. The project started when I was still at the University of Aberdeen, before I came down to Bournemouth more than five years ago now. Our research highlights that despite evidence that dietary interventions are the most effective way to lose weight, respondents preferred lifestyle interventions involving physical activity. Also that behaviour-change support improves effectiveness of interventions, but its value to participants was limited. A general preference to maintain current lifestyles, together with the sensitivity of take-up to financial costs, suggests financial incentives could be used to help maximise up-take of healthy lifestyle interventions. Finally, men required more compensation to take up healthier lifestyles.

Full details on methods and results are available in the health economics paper due to be published later this year, currently ‘published ahead of print’ (Ryan et al. 2014).

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

Faculty of Health & Social Sciences

Reference:

Ryan, M., Yi, D., Avenell, A., Douglas, F., Aucott, L., van Teijlingen, E. & Vale, L. (2014) Gaining pounds by losing pounds: preferences for lifestyle interventions to reduce obesity, Health Economics, Policy & Law, [Epub ahead of print] doi: 10.1017/s1744133114000413.

18 March 2015

MIDWIFERY: Top five most down-loaded articles for 2014

Publishing Edwin van Teijlingen

Today academic publisher Elsevier sent round an email with the top five most downloaded articles from the international journal Midwifery.

We were pleased to see that the fifth paper on that list is a BU paper jointly written with Dr. Helen Bryers, Consultant Midwife in Scotland.

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

CMMPH

6 March 2015

Two new CMMPH publications this week!

Publishing Edwin van Teijlingen

BU Senior Lecturer in Midwifery Dr. Jenny Hall published her interesting piece on Nursing Times.net under the title ‘Time-wasters in A&E: time to shake the label’. Jenny uses quite a sociological argument highlighting that “However, labels such as time waster are unhelpful and inappropriate. Instead we have a duty to provide a service that is caring, compassionate and welcoming – no matter the pressures. “

The second CMMPH paper this week is by Professor Emeritus Paul Lewis and BU Visiting Faculty Jillian Ireland in collaboration with Poole Hospital NHS Foundation Trust midwife Danielle Freemantle. Their paper ‘The loss of midwifery supervision: to mourn or rejoice?’ in the March edition of The Practising Midwife reflects on and discusses some of the possible consequences of the NMC’s decision to end statutory supervision of midwives in the UK.

Congratulations to all!

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

Centre for Midwifery, Maternal & Perinatal Health (CMMPH)

Faculty of Health & Social Sciences

2 March 2015

Student-midwife-run postnatal clinic: FUSION example

Fusion, PG research, Publishing Edwin van Teijlingen

FHSS staff and students published their latest article ‘Would a student midwife run postnatal clinic make a valuable addition to midwifery education in the UK? — A systematic review’ now out on line in Nurse Education Today 35 : 480-486. The paper is written by Wendy Marsh, Dana M. Colbourne, Susan Way & Vanora Hundley.

We are pleased to inform you that the final version of your article with full bibliographic details is now available online. The publishers are providing the following personal article link, which will provide free access to this article, and is valid for 50 days, until April 17, 2015: http://authors.elsevier.com/a/1QcG5xHa50bEa

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

CMMPH

2 March 2015

BU Undergraduate Research featured in Houses of Parliament

Fusion, Public engagement, student research mgouthro

BU was well represented at BCUR’s Posters in Parliament Event in February. Karolina Tamauskaite of the Faculty of Management and Susan Girvan of the Faculty of Science and Technology presented their undergraduate research.

Sponsored by the University of Central Lancashire (UCLan), the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) and the Higher Education Academy (HEA), undergraduate students from 24 universities visited Westminster to unveil research findings from a wide range of fascinating subject areas. Among them uni’s included: London School of Economics, London Metropolitan University, Universities of: Aberdeen, Nottingham, Leeds, Reading, Sussex and Exeter. Research topics ranged from cyber-bullying, medicinal properties in wheatgrass juice, climate models, and deprivation in mixed communities, etc.

Susan Girvan is studying a BSc (Hons) in Biological Sciences said “… it was great to meet other undergraduate students from from universities across the country about their research and to see such a wide range of subject matter being represented. Everyone at the event was really approachable and friendly and feedback on my own research was always encouragingly positive”. Susan’s dissertation supervisor Kevin McGhee, Senior Lecturer in Health Sciences was also on hand. Kevin notes that Susan was quizzed by 3 of the Posters in Parliament eminent judges, chaired by Sir Anthony Cleaver, on her research that is funded in part by the BU alumni fund, working with NUI Galway and within a larger international Fusion Project. Her poster on one specific gene, showed the methods employed by geneticists to identify how genes work together to make someone susceptible to schizophrenia.

Susan Girvan and Dr Kevin McGhee take questions from judging panel

Presenting these results at Parliament definitely has an impact nationally, as many MPs also attended the event.

For final year International Hospitality Management student Karolina Tarnauskaite from the Faculty of Management, “Posters in Parliament was a perfect external platform and opportunity for me to present my research, to the public. It was a great and very successful event as I had an opportunity not only to present the hospitality sector issues that I have interest in, but I had an opportunity to have an informed discussion with people from a variety of different backgrounds and disciplines”.

Karolina Tarnauskaite from the Faculty of Management presents her research on the adoption of tapas concept in other cuisines in the hospitality sector

The judging panel was led by UCLan Honorary Fellow Sir Anthony Cleaver, Chairman of the Natural Environment Research Council, and Professor Mick Healey, a leading expert of undergraduate research, and Professor Philippa Levy, Deputy CEO of the Higher Education Academy.

Deputy Vice Chancellor, Tim McIntyre-Bhatty was equally pleased to have BU’s presence in Parliament “It’s great for the students and staff involved, and for BU. Excellent to see all involved in such a high profile event and in good company”.

The event gives BU and other UK universities a stage to present high quality work being produced by undergraduates and also demonstrated how research-informed teaching can enhance the overall student experience. It also is a platform to promote student and staff collaboration on research outputs and publications, with links to BU Fusion.

BU’s presence is precursor to its involvement in the national BCUR (British Conference in Undergraduate Research) taking place at the University of Winchester in April, but also for BU’s inaugural SURE (Showcasing Undergraduate Research) conference being held on March 4^th. SURE is the product of a successful fusion bid and first showcase of its kind at BU where undergrad research and coursework is profiled and promoted to internal and external audiences.

BCUR has made a significant contribution to the success of undergraduate research and continues its work to promote it in all disciplines by providing students with an opportunity to share their research through poster presentations, spoken papers, or through creative outputs such as performances and film.

UCLan’s Professor Stuart Hampton-Reeves, Chair of the BCUR Steering Group, said: “This is our third Posters in Parliament and the event is clearly going from strength to strength demonstrating the vitality and quality of undergraduate research. MPs and other policy-makers have today had the opportunity to see the next generation of academics performing at a level that is already of an international standard.

Posters in Parliament in Jubilee Room - February 2015

“It shows that UK higher education is in good health. ‎We need to continue to protect and nurture our undergraduate research base. By providing more opportunities for our young researchers to develop through inquiry, ‎we can help them grow as academics to confront some challenging topics. The range of issues discussed here today shows that this generation of students is already making a real and valuable contribution to understanding the world around us.”

28 February 2015

Two BU authored chapters in new book on childbirth

Publishing, student research Edwin van Teijlingen

BU Ph.D. student and Consultant Midwife Kathryn Gutteridge and Hannah Dahlen Associate Professor of Midwifery at the University of Western Sydney contributed a chapter to the book ‘The Roar behind the Silence: Why kindness, compassion and respect matter in maternity care’. Kathryn Gutteridge and Hannah Dahlen wrote under the title ‘Stop the fear and embrace birth’. BU’s Dr. Jenny Hall also wrote a chapter called ‘Spirituality, compassion and maternity care’.

The volume edited by Sheena Byrom and Soo Downe was published this week by Pinter & Martin (London). I received my copy of the book yesterday, but didn’t have a chance to look at it until today. The Roar Behind the Silence is both a practical and inspirational book, which likely to be of interest to people working in maternity care (midwives, doctors, managers), local and regional maternity-care policy-makers as well as politicians and funders and, of course, to many pregnant women and maternity-care pressure groups. The book highlights examples of good practice, and offers practical tools for making change happen, advice on how to use evidence and real-life stories.

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

CMMPH

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