Tagged / Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

New weight change BU paper

BU research, Featured academics, PG research, Publishing, Research news, Uncategorized, Women's Academic Network, writing

Congratulations to Faculty of Health & Social Sciences (FHSS) PhD student Eirini-Iro Arvanitidou and two FHSS colleagues Dr. Fotini Tsofliou, and Dr. Juliet Wood who published together with Ioulia Tsatsani (Stanley Centre for Psychiatric Research, Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Cambridge, USA) the paper ‘The effectiveness of couples’ lifestyle interventions on weight change: A systematic review and meta-analysis of Randomised Controlled Trials‘.

Iro is a PhD student and this systematic review and meta-analysis is the first to investigate the effectiveness of lifestyle interventions targeting couples on weight loss, compared to interventions focused on individuals or standard care. The findings suggest that interventions aimed at couples lead to greater weight loss, though the results should be interpreted with caution due to the wide heterogeneity among the studies. The authors conclude that further research is needed with evidence-based study designs, targeting younger participants, and incorporating intervention of longer duration, and longer follow-up periods.

Congratulations!
Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen
Reference:
  1. Arvanitidou, E. I., Tsofliou, F., Wood, J., & Tsatsani, I. (2024). The effectiveness of couples’ lifestyle interventions on weight change: A systematic review and meta-analysis of Randomised Controlled Trials. Nutrition and health, 2601060241291123. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1177/02601060241291123

Congratulations to three former BU staff

BU research, Featured academics, Publishing, Research news, writing

Bournemouth University Emeritus Professor, Jonathan Parker, now Health Services University, UK, former BU academic Professor Vanessa Heaslip, now Salford University and Professor Sarah Hean and Pravin Tembjerg from the University of Stavanger, Norway, are pleased to announce the publication of their edited international research collection Rebuilding Family Relations for Children and Youth Separated from Family.  This edited volume is published by Palgrave Macmillan.

This edited volume explores a range of causes for separation of children and young people from family, the impact of these causes, and methods that both professionals and families may employ to build or rebuild these relations. In particular, contributions focus on six high priority crises through which children and young people become either permanently or temporarily separated from their families: removal by child welfare services, migration, family breakdown, placement into institutional care, incarceration and/or the death of a parent. Contributors include scholars in social work, psychology, health, sociology, social policy, and political science and the work develops co-production participatory research methods and tools in addition to empirical research to enhance professional practice.

 

Congratulations!

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

CMWH

Seventh edition of Social Work textbook

BU research, Featured academics, Publishing, writing

Congratulations to Bournemouth University’s  Emeritus Professor Jonathan Parker who has just published the 7th edition of his best-selling Social Work Practice. This latest edition of Social Work Practice comes with updated content and case studies.  First published in 2004, this textbook has guided social work students through the processes of working with people, groups and communities looking at the politics of assessment, planning, intervention and review and negotiating a value-based approach to practice that acknowledged the centrality of relationships and respect for the people with whom social workers practice.
Well done!
Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

International Open Access Week: Open Access – facilitating global development

BU research, Featured, REF2029, Research assessment, Research communication

In our final blog post to mark International Open Access Week, Professor Edwin van Teijlingen, Chair of BU’s REF Outputs Sub-Committee, writes about the role of open access research in supporting the REF and facilitating global development…

The REF (Research Excellence Framework) is the periodical (every seven years or so) assessment of the quality of research in the UK at universities and research institutes.

Every university prepares a submission comprising its best publications, evidence of impact in wider society, and a description of its research environment.  The next REF – 2029 – will be in just over four years’ time.

The relevance of open access to the REF is that it is a requirement that academics at UK universities and research institutes make their publications in papers open access. This means making publications available to any reader without them having to pay a fee.

The underlying argument is that publicly funded research, be it funded by charities or by the government, should be freely available for all to read, i.e. for the greater good!

One important side effect of the REF’s push for open access is that people who would otherwise not have access can see and use the research.

The three main groups in my view are those not based at universities with subscriptions to loads of scientific journals:

(1) practitioners, in our field health and social care staff who are not working in universities;

(2) members of the public interested in their own conditions and relevant care;

(3) those involved in patient pressure groups and charities; and

(4) students and academics in low-income countries, such as Nepal and Bangladesh.

These groups are now getting access to up-to-date research findings that otherwise would be hidden behind a paywall.

The latter is of key importance, as Bournemouth University colleagues work in many low-income countries.

For me personally, I have been teaching sessions in Nepal on research methods for nearly two decades and I have noticed the enormous improvement in access to up-to-date research publications amongst students during this period, since some many more international publications are now freely available in Nepal.

It is gratifying to know that Bournemouth University academics, together with colleagues all over the world, are contributing to global development through open access publishing.

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

Chair of Bournemouth University REF Outputs Sub-Committee

Visiting Faculty, Centre for Disability Studies, Mahatma Gandhi University, Kerala, India
Honorary Professor, School of Health Sciences, University of Nottingham, UK.
Visiting Professor, Nobel College, affiliated with Pokhara University, Nepal.
Visiting Professor. Manmohan Memorial Inst Health Sci affiliated with Tribhuvan University, Nepal

 

 

Three grant applications rejected this month

BU research, international, Uncategorized

The start of October has not been good for me in terms of grant applications.  On the first day of October the NIHR informed us that our application to the call for a research programme for social care was unsuccessful.  The reason given by the NIHR panel was that our proposal was not competitive enough, this was a BU-led proposal working with colleagues based in Dorset.

Four days later another application to the NIHR, this time to another different funding stream, was rejected by Global Health Research Programme Funding Committees. This second failed grant application was written by an international interdisciplinary team led by the Canterbury Christ Church University.  It was a follow-up of our successful study ‘The impact of federalisation on Nepal’s health system: a longitudinal analysis’, which was funded by the UK Health Systems Research Initiative, itself a collaboration of the MRC/FCDO/Wellcome Trust/ESRC; Grant ref. MR/T023554/1.

To rub salt in the wounds, an international funding body, a joint initiative of the Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR; France), the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG; Germany), the Economic & Social Research Council (ESRC; UK) and the Social Sciences & Humanities Research Council (SSHRC; Canada). The secretariat emailed us a few days ago than our application was not short-listed in this very competitive call, where 90% of applications were rejected.

Some of these proposals can, and will be, revamped and resubmitted to other funding bodies.

 

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

Centre for Midwifery & Women’s Health

New nursing paper published

Uncategorized

Congratulations to Emeritus Prof. Jonathan Parker, Faculty of Health & Social Sciences Visiting Faculty Prof. Vanessa Heaslip and Dr. Kirsty Marshall, the latter two co-authors are based at the University of Salford, on their latest paper ‘Promoting equity in community nursing’ [1].  This paper links to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) published by the United Nations (UN) in 2015 in order to promote health, well-being and economic security for all. Bournemouth University, of course, is among the best universities worldwide for its sustainability, according to the new Times Higher Education (THE) Impact Rankings. BU was ranked 39th out of 1,963 universities measured against the UN Sustainable Development Goals (UNSDGs) internationally in June 2024.

Heaslip and colleagues remind us that  is worth considering the degree to which these influence one’s professional practice.  They offer a reflective activity on the issue, see Box 1 ‘Community nurses and the SDGs’ .

 

 

Congratulations!

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

 

Reference:

Parkr, J., Heaslip, V., Marshall, K. (2024) Promoting equity in community nursing, Clinics in integrated care 26 October , 100229

 

New BU women’s health publication

BU research, Featured academics, international, open access, Postgraduate Research, Publishing, Research news, student research, Women's Academic Network, writing

Congratulations to Karim Khaled on the publication in the international journal Nutrients of his latest women’s health paper  [1].  The paper ‘A Structural Equation Modelling Approach to Examine the Mediating Effect of Stress on Diet in Culturally Diverse Women of Childbearing Age’ is co-authored with his PhD supervisors Dr. Fotini Tsofliou and Prof. Vanora Hundley.

This paper in Nutrients  is Open Access, hence available to read to anybody across the globe with internet access.

 

Well done!

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

Centre for Midwifery & Women’s Health

 

Reference:

  1. Khaled, K., Tsofliou, F., Hundley, V.A. A Structural Equation Modelling Approach to Examine the Mediating Effect of Stress on Diet in Culturally Diverse Women of Childbearing Age. Nutrients. 2024; 16(19):3354. https://doi.org/10.3390/nu16193354

New BU Social Work publication

BU research, Featured academics, international, Uncategorized, writing

Growing international interest in approaches to social work focussing on human growth and development and including each social actor’s real freedoms to act, such as the capabilities approach, has fascinated BU Professor Emeritus, Jonathan Parker. In this new paper Parker and his German colleagues introduce a related, but internationally less well-known concept from German-language philosophy of education discourses, Bildung, arguing that Bildung represents a valuable additional framework that emphasises human growth and human flourishing.
The concept of Bildung has changed over time, with this paper charting development from its late enlightenment-period origins. Two particular variants are highlighted: the original 18th-century Bildung, which focussed on helping the individual reach a state of agency, and Mündigkeit (maturity), a late 20th-century critical theory-influenced Bildung, which focussed on the relationship between the growth of the individual and the society of which they are part. It is suggested that due to their shared tenets, both variants of Bildung can be seen a single concept, one with a strong conceptual closeness to the capabilities approach.
When applied to social work, Bildung suggests a shift away from thinking about the person in terms of utilities and outcomes, towards instead an understanding of a person’s humanness in their freedom to choose their own path and become the author of their own life. Parker and colleagues highlight four key elements of Bildung-informed social work: (1) the role of the social worker stimulating the service user’s dispositions in the context of their social environment; (2) shifting to a relationship-oriented practice, centring on direct work; (3) utilizing community settings in practice, and (4) the importance of refraining from using guidance, persuasion and coercion.
Congratulations!
Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen
Reference:
  1. Frampton, M., Friesenhahn, G. J., & Parker, J. (2024). Bildung, capabilities, human freedom and human flourishing: impulses for social work. Journal of Comparative Social Work, 19(1), 129–156. https://doi.org/10.31265/jcsw.v19i1.727

Pregnancy & COVID-19 in UK: New study published

BU research, COVID-19, Featured academics, NHS, Research news, Women's Academic Network, writing

This morning the editor of the Frontiers in Psychiatry emailed us that the paper reporting the findings of the baseline data of a large-scale epidemiological study into pregnancy during COVID-19 in the UK has been published [1].  The interdisciplinary research team includes researchers from University Hospitals Dorset NHS Foundation Trust (Dr. Latha Vinayakarao & Prof. Minesh Khashu) and Bournemouth University (Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen). 

This longitudinal study explores how the SARS-CoV-2 [COVID-19] pandemic affected the mental health of pregnant people in the UK.  In mid-to-late 2020, we recruited 3666 individuals in the UK for the EPPOCH pregnancy cohort (Maternal mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic: Effect of the Pandemic on Pregnancy Outcomes and Childhood Health). Participants were assessed for depression, anxiety, anger and pregnancy-related anxiety using validated scales. Additionally, physical activity, social support, individualized support and personal coping ability of the respondents were assessed as potential resilience factors.

Participants reported high levels of depression (57.05%), anxiety (58.04%) and anger (58.05%). Higher levels of social and individualized support and personal coping ability were associated with lower mental health challenges. Additionally, pregnant individuals in the UK experienced higher depression during the pandemic than that reported in Canada. Finally, qualitative analysis revealed that restrictions for partners and support persons during medical appointments as well as poor public health communication led to increased mental health adversities and hindered ability to make medical decisions.

The study highlights the increased mental health challenges among pregnant individuals in the UK during pandemic. These results highlight the need for reassessing the mental health support measures available to pregnant people in the UK, both during times of crisis and in general.

Reference:

  1. Datye, S., Smiljanic, M., Shetti, R.H., MacRae-Miller, A., van Teijlingen, E., Vinayakarao, L., Peters, E.M.J., Lebel, C.A., Tomfohr-Madsen, L., Giesbrecht, G., Khashu, M., Conrad, M.L. (2024) Prenatal maternal mental health and resilience in the United Kingdom during the SARS-CoV-2 Pandemic: A cross-national comparison, Frontiers in Psychiatry, 15 https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2024.1411761