Latest research and knowledge exchange news at Bournemouth University
Congratulations to Dr. Sarah Collard and Dr. Pramod Regmi whose paper ‘Qualitative insights into feelings, knowledge, and impact of SUDEP: A narrative synthesis’. The paper has been accepted by the scientific journal Epilepsy & Behavior (published by Elsevier). Epilepsy Action is a charity that improves the lives of everyone affected by epilepsy. Epilepsy Action gives advice, improves healthcare, funds research and campaigns for change.
Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen
CMMPH
Experts from universities across the UK have contributed to a new edition of a best-selling textbook which is out this month. This is the fourth edition of Psychology and Sociology Applied to Medicine which is a jargon-free 179-page introduction to psychology and sociology for medical students (and other health care students). The book is published by one of the largest academic publishers in the world, Elsevier in its series of Illustrated Colour Texts.
Seventy-three academics contributed chapters to the book which was edited by psychologist Prof. Gerry Humphris (University of St. Andrews) and sociologist Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen (Bournemouth University). The contributors are discipline and topic experts and come mainly from the UK but some are from further afield such as Ireland and Australia. Compared to the third edition this latest edition has 45 new authors, who contribute the most up-to-date knowledge on classical psychological and sociological concepts and issues. All chapters have been updated and several have been renamed and revamped to reflect changes in society, and three new ones have been added. The editors are very grateful to Catherine Calderwood, Chief Medical Officer for Scotland, for writing the Foreword.
Teaching behavioural and social sciences to students is of vital importance for good health care in the future. This textbook covers topics across the life cycle from birth to death. A range of concepts and issues such as health screening, personality & health, quality of life, self-care, and anxiety are explained in an easy to understand fashion. This makes the textbook excellent introductory text as well as an essential revision tool for students. This textbook for medical students is Bournemouth University’s latest contribution to medical training.
Reference:
van Teijlingen, E. & Humphris, G. (Eds.) (2019)Psychology & Sociology Applied to Medicine: An Illustrated Colour Text (4th Edn), Edinburgh: Elsevier The book is available as eBook [ISBN: 9780702062995] and as paperback [ISBN: 9780702062988].
Academic colleagues from the UK, China, South Africa, Australia and Sweden are working on developing joint answers to global challenges from a dual cultural perspective.
The aim of this research project with the title Global challenges: taking an international approach, is to find holistic approaches to security questions, ecological threats and development challenges. This includes researching diverse topics such as exploring the potential of terrorism litigation as a legal security tool for China’s One Belt Road initiative; investigating the role that river rights play in producing new modes of regulation along China’s trans-boundary rivers; and exploring the symbolic power of International Environmental Law as a force for managing dissent in the South China Sea.
Dr. Kenneth Kang, BU Centre for Conflict, Rule of Law and Society (CROLS) PGR and affiliated with Xiamen University, China International Water Law Research Group, and Yu Dong, a graduate from Peking University and CROLS researcher granted by China Scholarship Council and China’s Department of Education, are preparing under the supervision of Dr. Bachmann two security related themes for the Chinese market.
One current activity is titled ‘Eco threats as security threats and the protection of the environment during hostilities’ and ‘Terrorism litigation as deterrence under international law’ and is based on existing academic work published in the UK by members of CROLS and aims at transferring the findings into the Chinese context. Two publications in leading Chinese journals are planned for 2019.
The study group is led by Dr. Sascha Dov Bachmann, Associate Professor at BU, Reader in War Studies at the Swedish Defence University, and Research Fellow at the Faculty of Military Science at Stellenbosch University, who is the Head of the (CRoLS), Bournemouth University, and Scientific Contributor and Research Fellow (designate) at the Legal Office of NATO, the Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE). Expressions of interest of becoming involved can be sent directly to sbachmann@bournemouth.ac.uk.
The group aims at fostering research collaborations across the globe and to foster academic dialogue in a non-partisan way among academic and professional practitioners.
Conducting interdisciplinary or even transdisciplinary research has become more to the fore in many academic fields. As a result of the steady rise of multidisciplinary research It has been made more explicit in REF 2021 [1]. For example, REF 2021 UoA 2 Public Health, Health Services & Primary Care “recognises the breadth and diverse range of single, multidisciplinary and/or multi-professional research across public health, health services and primary care”, whilst UoA22 Anthropology & Development Studies states that its submissions “can be multidisciplinary or interdisciplinary and may combine social science with other disciplines”.
However, doing multidisciplinary research is not without its problems (and barriers). In a paper accepted today we reflect on some of these issues [2]. The co-authors are Bournemouth University’s Dr. Pramod Regmi, Dr. Nirmal Ayral and Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen, and BU Visiting Professor Padam Simkhada (Public Health Institute, Liverpool John Moores University) and BU graduate Dr. Pratik Adhikary (Green Tara Nepal). We all are Public Health researchers, with very different educational backgrounds and training, reflecting the diversity of and interdisciplinarity in the field. Several of us have a first degree in Education or Health Education, but one has a first degree in Sociology. Whilst four of the five authors have Master degree in Public Health and/or Health Promotion, two have a Master in Education. Most of us have a Ph.D. in Public Health, but again one of us has a Ph.D. in Sociology. Our paper ‘Interdisciplinary Research in Public Health: Not quite straightforward’ has been accepted by the journal Health Prospect [2]. The advantage of this journal, which is part of the NepJOL family is that it is Open Access and hence freely available for anybody working in Public Health across the globe.
Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen
Centre for Midwifery, Maternal & Perinatal Health (CMMPH)
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Congratulations to Dr. Nirmal Aryal and Dr. Pramod Regmi in BU’s Faculty of Health & Social Sciences on the acceptance of their latest paper ‘Adolescents left behind by migrant workers: Call for community-based mental health interventions in Nepal’ [1]. This paper has just been accepted by WHO South East Asia Journal of Public Health. This academic journal is Open Access and published by the Regional Office for South-East Asia of the World Health Organization (WHO) in Delhi, India. Co-authors of this scientific paper are: Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen in the Centre for Midwifery, Maternal & Perinatal Health (CMMPH); BU Visiting Prof. Padam Simkhada (based at Liverpool John Moores University);and Dr. Pashupati Mahat from CMC-Nepal (Center for Mental Health & Counselling- Nepal).
The paper argues that there exists an increased risk of mental health problems in Nepali adolescents, especially those left-behind by migrant workers. There is a paucity of research on mental health intervention among adolescents in low and middle income countries (LMICs) such as Nepal. The paper calls for more and better community-based mental health intervention in Nepali adolescents including the special group of left-behind adolescents. Doing this work in Nepal, a country with a very high proportion of its population working abroad will have a broader implication for a other low-and middle-income countries. This article is a welcome addition to BU’s growing publications on migrant workers and health in Nepal [2-11].
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A few months ago Dr. Ann Luce (Faculty of Media & Communication) and I were interviewed by the US-based organisation Catalysta TM on the issue of the portrayal of childbirth in the media. This week Catalysta released the podcast which is available here! 
The online interviews with a journalist and podcast producer in the USA was based on our publications around the topic, such as our highly cited BMC Pregnancy& Childbirth paper ‘“Is it realistic?” the portrayal of pregnancy and childbirth in the media ‘ [1] and our 2017 book Midwifery, Childbirth and the Media published by Palgrave Macmillan [2], as well as papers in UK midwifery journals [3-4].
Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen
CMMPH
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Having had the pleasure of announcing the last BU publication yesterday, today we received an email that our paper ‘Design errors in vital sign charts used in consultant-led maternity units in the United Kingdom’ has been accepted by the International Journal of Obstetric Anesthesia. This paper is led by FHSS Visiting Faculty Gary Smith and Richard Isaac and has as co-authors Vanora Hundley, Lisa Gale-Andrews and Edwin van Teijlingen as well as two further BU Visiting Professors: Mike Wee and Debra Bick.
Congratulations to Orlanda Harvey on the publication of her paper ‘Shades of Grey’: The Ethics of Social Work Practice in Relation to Un-prescribed Anabolic Androgenic Steroid Use. Orlanda Harvey is a PhD student in the Faculty of Health and Social Sciences with a research interest in image and performance enhancing drug (IPED) use. Her paper will be published in Practice: Social Work in Action. 
This paper highlights ethical dilemmas that social workers face when assessing risk in relation to those using substances. It explores how legislation and societal factors can impact not just on people’s choices and decisions but also on their ‘vulnerability’ and access to services. Vulnerability, a contested term, is linked, in this paper, to assessment of risk. There are ethical issues that arise when assessing risk with people who use Anabolic Androgenic Steroids (AAS) from both service user and professional perspectives. These ethical issues concern a person’s right to choose whilst making potentially harmful decisions. The paper argues that using substances such as AAS in and of itself does not suffice to make a person vulnerable but this does not mean that people using AAS are not in need of support. It suggests that there may be some groups of people who are more at risk to starting AAS use and that social workers should be aware of these. It also recommends the need for further qualitative research to understand the reasons for starting use and support to help people stop using AAS.
Well done!
Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen
CMMPH
On the last working day of 2018 at Bournemouth University we congratulate FHSS student Raksha Thapa on the publication of her first PhD paper in her first PhD year. The paper Uptake of Health Services by People from the Dalit Community was published today in the Journal of BP Koirala Institute of Health Sciences [1]. Raksha is supervised by Dr. Pramod Regmi, Dr. Vanessa Heaslip and Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen.
The paper discusses a variety of studies and reports on the uptake of health services in Nepal and other low-income countries by socio-economic cultural status in South Asia. These reports often focus on limitations due to physical factors, such as travel distance to health facility, or lack of medical facilities or electricity at the health care centre or focus on resources, such as lack of service providers, or lack of appropriately trained staff. Therefore, this article highlights the importance of discrimination as a reason for people not seeking available health care. Discrimination is particularly a barrier to service usage among the most deprived people in society, such as the Dalit community in Nepal and South Asia more generally. The authors discuss the caste-based discrimination in Nepal and its effects on health outcomes of those groups who experience such discrimination.
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The HRA recently carried out a survey which aimed to establish some of the current obstacles to transparency, and to identify future opportunities to improve practices.
The survey was advertised to researchers, researcher managers, sponsors and funders in order to collate views surrounding research transparency.
You can see the results here on the HRA website.
It’s vital that research participants are informed about the results of research, and in the beginning they are told about the research and implications, in a transparent fashion.
BU has access to the ClinicalTrials.gov system so get in touch if you would like access. This is a great opportunity to register your study and study results in the public domain.
Despite the name, the system may be used for other clinical research projects.
Congratulations to FHSS Dr. Pramod Regmi & Dr. Nirmal Aryal on their media appearance yesterday in a national English-language newspaper Republica. The newspaper article covers one of the key social issues in Nepal today namely migration, especially for work. Moreover, there was a different story on the Britain-Nepal health and medical relationship over the past fifty year. This feature article appeared on BBC Nepali (if you can read Nepali click here !). 
In FHSS we have been working on health and migration issues in Nepal and the health and well-being of Nepali migrant workers abroad for over ten years, resulting in numerous publications [1-9].
Well done!
Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen
CMMPH
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Patient data underpins and leads to improvements in research and care.
The National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) has recently shared a resource surrounding the use of patient data in clinical research. The page contains a number of useful links to guidance such as the NHS pages on why patients’ data matters and also the Understanding Patient Data resource, which outlines a set of key principles that should be followed in using patient data for research purposes.
It’s important that if a researcher uses patient data, that they acknowledge it by using the following citation –
“This work uses data provided by patients and collected by the NHS as part of their care and support”
The above has been developed by use MY data, a movement of patients, carers and relatives, in place to ensure that the patient data used is protected by the appropriate safeguards, and is treated with the respect and confidentiality it deserves.
The page likewise signposts the above programme which allows patients and the public to opt-out of their confidential patient information being used for planning and research purposes.
All health and care organisation will uphold these choices by March 2020.
This week we had this enviable record of two academic papers on health topics being rejected the day after submission. The first paper was submitted on Monday to Issues in Mental Health Nursing. Our paper reported the Content Analysis of a review of the nursing curricula on mental health and maternity care issues in Nepal. The journal editor emailed us the next day to inform us that the topic was interesting, but not relevant enough to the journal’s readers.
The second paper submitted by a different configuration of staff was submitted last Friday to the Journal of Youth & Adolescence. The second paper reported a qualitative study on students views on abortion in the south of England. This journal’s rapid reply came the next day (yesterday) stating that:
Unfortunately, the editors have completed an internal review of your study and have deemed your manuscript inappropriate for our journal. Although your manuscript has important strengths, the journal has moved away from supporting qualitative work (unless it would be part of a journal special issue). Please rest assured that our decision has nothing to do with the quality of your study or findings.
On both occasion we had discussed potential journals and we thought we had targeted appropriate journals for the respective manuscripts. Moreover, in both manuscripts we managed to cite at least one paper published in the journal to which we had submitted it. The general message to my colleagues is that it does not matter how many papers you have written and submitted, you will: (1) occasionally opt for the wrong journal; (2) continue to face regular rejection by journal editors; and (3) have an opportunity to submit to another journal.
Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen
Centre for Midwifery, Maternal & Perinatal Health
Congratulations to BU PhD student Dimitrios Vlachos who had his PROSPERO protocol published [1]. Dimitrios working on a project promoting the Mediterranean-style diet in childbearing age, he is supervised across faculties by Dr. Fotini Tsofliou and Prof. Katherine Appleton.
Well done!
Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen
Centre for Midwifery, Maternal & Perinatal Health (CMMPH)
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Many congratulations to Dr. Nirmal Aryal, postdoctoral researcher in FHSS for his new publication ‘Blood pressure and hypertension in people living at high altitude in Nepal’ in Hypertension Research [1]. Hypertension Research is a prestigious journal published by Nature (Impact Factor of 3.4). 
This is the first study of its kind to collect cardiovascular disease and risk factors related information at four different altitude levels above or equal to 2800 m and from ethnically diverse samples. This paper highlighted that despite known hypoxia-induced favourable physiological responses on blood pressure, high altitude residents (>2800 m) in Nepal might have an increased risk of raised blood pressure associated with lifestyle factors and clinicians should be aware of it. The authors previously published a systematic review paper summarizing global evidence on the relationship between blood pressure and high altitude [2].
This publication is available online at: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41440-018-0138-x and pre-refereed version is available in BURO.
Well done!
Dr. Pramod Regmi & Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen
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A recent inquiry into research integrity was made earlier this year by the Science and Technology Committee, which revealed that nearly half of clinical trials fail to publish their results.
This lack of publishing has been deemed a risk to human health and a contributory factor in research wastage.
The article gives examples of a number of studies that are yet to be published, and how this activity ‘threaten(s) research integrity, and in some cases, endanger(s) human life’. The full article can be found here.
The University has administrative access to the ClinicalTrials.gov system – get in touch with us if you are conducting clinical research, to ensure that you have access.
Congratulations to Lesley Milne, senior lecturer in midwifery, on the acceptance of her latest paper on maternity care in Nepal. This new paper ‘Gender inequali
ties and childbearing: A qualitative study of two maternity units in Nepal’ will appear soon in the Open Access publication: Journal of Asian Midwives [1]. This is the second publication from a qualitative research study undertaken in two birthing facilities in Kathmandu Valley to examine barriers to women accessing these services from the perspective of hospital staff [2].
The study received financial support from Wellbeing of Women and the RCM (Royal College of Midwives) as Lesley won their first International Fellowship Award. The study was a collaboration led by Lesley in the Centre for Midwifery, Maternal & Perinatal Health (CMMPH) with two of FHSS’s Visiting Faculty, namely Prof. Padam Simkhada who is based at Liverpool John Moores University and Jillian Ireland, Professional Midwifery Advocate based at Poole NHS Hospitals Foundation Trust.
Well done!
Profs. Vanora Hundley & Edwin van Teijlingen
References
As co-editor of the Journal of Asian Midwives I receive occasional updates from the Aga Khan University (AKU) library in Pakistan on the number of downloads of articles published in the journal. The journal is fully Open Access and does not charge a submission or processing fees! All articles in the Journal of Asian Midwives are stored online in the AKU Institutional Repository. The latest update with data until end of September 2018 informed us that there had been: 18,462 downloads, from 167 countries/regions, across 56 articles. Nearly 20,000 downloads is not bad for a fairly new journal, which only published its inaugural issue online in 2014.
What is interesting is that the detailed download figures show that Bournemouth University is the highest ranking university of all the downloading organisations. Listed as fifth on the download list, Bournemouth is behind two commercial organisations, the Pakistan library network and Bangladesh-based Icddr-B. The latter is one of the largest NGO (Non-Governmental Organisations in the world based on staff numbers. Of course it helps that Bournemouth academic staff and PhD students have published five scientific articles in the past four editions of the journal [1-5].
Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen
CMMPH (Centre for Midwifery, Maternal & Perinatal Health)
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Well done!