Tagged / social sciences

Congratulations to Prof. Brooks

Ann Brooks 2016Congratulations to FHSS Prof. Ann Brooks on her latest academic article in the July issue of Cultural Politics. The article ‘The Cultural Production of Consumption as Achievement’ is co-authored with Lionel Wee.

Brooks, A. & Wee, L., The Cultural Production of Consumption as Achievement Cultural PoliticsCultural Politics (2016) 12 (2): 217-232

doi 10:10.1215/17432197-3592112

http://culturalpolitics.dukejournals.org/content/current

Bringing FUSION to Nepal

FUSION abroad 2016We have written in many previous BU blogs about progress of our THET-funded project in southern Nepal (e.g. here AND here ). Today’s blog reflects on the use on BU’s unique FUSION approach in our project ‘Mental Health Training for Maternity Care Providers in Nepal‘.

DSC_0151Our BU-led project brings highly experienced health professionals, such as midwives, health visitors or mental health nurses, to Nepal to work as volunteer trainers. The training is aimed at community-based maternity care practitioners and addresses key mental health issues relevant to pregnancy and for new mothers and offers the required communication skills. These health professionals will bring their experience as health care providers as well as trainers in the field of mental health and maternity care/midwifery, mental ill-health prevention and health promotion. They volunteer for two to three weeks at a time to design and deliver training in southern Nepal.

logo THETThe Centre for Midwifery & Maternal Health (CMMPH) collaborates in this project with Liverpool John Moores University (LJMU), the Department of Health, and Physical & Population Education at Nepal’s oldest university Tribhuvan University’s (TU). The project is supported in the field by a local charity called Green Tara Nepal. Our project is part of the Health Partnership such as Nepal. HPS itself is funded by the UK Department for International Development and managed by THET (Tropical and Health Education Trust).

Fusion Diagram Our maternal mental health project is a good example of BU’s FUSION approach as it combines EDUCATION (through the training of Auxiliary Nurse-Midwives in Nepal) by UK volunteers (representing PRACTICE) through an intervention which is properly evaluated (representing RESEARCH) is a perfect example of BU’s FUSION in action. Moreover, the project will be partly evaluated by FHSS’s Preeti Mahato as part of her PhD thesis research. This PhD project is supervised by Dr. Catherine Angell (CEL & CMMPH), BU Visiting Professor Padam Simkhada (based at LJMU) and CMMPH’s Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen.BU’s focus on the FUSION of research, education and professional practice is a unique variant of the way UK universities (and many abroad) blend academic teaching, research and scholarship. FUSION is a key concept derived from BU’s strategic Vision & Values).

 

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

CMMPH

Latest Major Funding Opportunities

The following funding opportunities have been announced. Please follow the links for more information.

Economic and Social Research Council

The Economic and Social Research Council, under the Research Councils UK and Fonds National de la Recherche, Luxembourg, bilateral agreement, invites proposals for its Research Grants Scheme. The scheme supports collaborative research in any area of social sciences within the remit of both ESRC and FNR. The UK part of the project must be a minimum of £350,000 and no more than £1 million (at 100% fEC).

Maximum award: £1 million. Closng date: 31/12/16.

Natural Environment Research Council

The Natural Environment Research Council, in collaboration with the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council and the Indian Department of Science and Technology, invites applications for their Water Quality in India Scoping Workshop. The workshop will take place in Delhi on 17th and 18th November 2016 and the aims of the workshop will be: to define the scope of a potential new UK/India interdisciplinary programme focussed on research contributing to improved water quality, and through this support the economic development and welfare of India; to facilitate links between the UK and Indian research communities in the area of water quality research.

Applications from researchers working in the fields of water quality, water engineering and related disciplines are welcome. NERC and EPSRC will cover all reasonable travel and subsistence expenses for UK participants attending the workshop.

Maximum award: Not specified. Closing date: 16/09/16.

The Natural Environment Research Council, under its Discovery Science programme, invites applications for its Standard Research Grants.  Discovery Science is a key component of delivering the strategy of NERC and is intended to facilitate the identification of the next generation of strategic priorities. The minimum that can be requested per complete proposal and per component is £65,000 and the maximum for complete proposal is £800,000 at 100 per cent full economic cost.

You must speak to your DDRPP and your Funding Development Officer before applying to this call. Bournemouth University can submit one application per round and operates a demand management process.

Maximum award: £640,000 (at 80% fEC). Closing date: 17/01/17.

Wellcome Trust

The Wellcome Trust invites submissions for its Wellcome Book Prize.  The award is open to new works of fiction or non-fiction published by a UK based publisher or in-print between 1st January 2016 and 31 December 2016 (for the 2017 prize).

A book should have a central theme that engages with some aspect of medicine, health or illness. This can cover many genres of writing – including crime, romance, popular science, sci fi and history. The subjects these books might include birth and beginnings, illness and loss, pain, memory, and identity. The Wellcome Book Prize aims to excite public interest and encourage debate around these topics. Academic textbooks, scholarly monographs, diet books and picture-led books are not eligible, even if they are relevant to medicine or medical science.

Maximum award: £30,000. Closing date: 09/09/16 (recurring).

If you are interested in submitting to any of the above calls you must contact RKEO with adequate notice before the deadline. Please note that some funding bodies specify a time for submission as well as a date. Please confirm this with your RKEO Funding Development Officer.

You can set up your own personalised alerts on Research Professional. If you need help setting these up, just ask your School’s/Faculty’s Funding Development Officer in RKEO or view the recent blog post here. If you are thinking of applying, why not add an expression of interest on Research Professional so that BU colleagues can see your intention to bid and contact you to collaborate.

 

Public Health in Nepal: Vitamine A

Vit AThis week we published an editorial in the Journal of Biomedical Sciences on the question: “Is early diagnose for Vitamin A deficiency better than the current supplementation programme of Nepal?”
The editorial concludes that prevention is still better than cure, but instead of a mass Vitamin A supplementation in Nepal, we need a health promotion intervention aiming to increase the intake of relatively cheap vegetables and fruit (containing β carotene). In addition we need better surveillance and help to identify children with Vitamin A Deficiency and provide them with Vitamin A supplements. The primary focus should be on adopting sustainable food based approaches to combat vitamin A deficiency. In Public Health terms: rather than a blanket coverage of Vitamin A supplementation to whole population we should consider a targeted intervention aimed at those who need it most.

Reference:
Simkhada P, Sathian B, Adhikari S, van Teijlingen E, Roy B. (2015) Is early diagnose for Vitamin A deficiency better than the current supplementation programme of Nepal?. J Biomed Sci. 2(4):28-30.
http://www.nepjol.info/index.php/JBS/index

Presentation PhD student Jib Acharya in Liverpool

Jib LJMU 2016Mr. Jib Acharya (FHSS) gave an interesting presentation yesterday about the qualitative research findings of his PhD at Liverpool John Moores University.  Jib’s PhD research focused on the knowledge, attitudes and beliefs of poor women in Nepal about healthy eating and the study also identifies major food barriers.

His mixed-methods approach combines a quantitative questionnaire survey with qualitative research. Jib’s research project is supervised by Dr. Jane Murphy, Dr. Martin Hind and Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen. Some of the preliminary findings of this FHSS thesis have already been published in two scientific journals [1-2].

References:

  1. Acharya, J., van Teijlingen, E., Murphy, J., Hind, M. (2015) Assessment of knowledge, beliefs and attitudes towards healthy diet among mothers in Kaski, Nepal, Participation 17(16): 61-72.
  2. Acharya, J., van Teijlingen, E., Murphy, J., Hind, M. (2015) Study of nutritional problems in preschool aged children in Kaski District in Nepal, Journal of Multidisciplinary Research in Healthcare 1(2): 97-118. http://dspace.chitkara.edu.in/jspui/bitstream/1/560/1/12007_JMRH_Acharya.

Why editorials?

Zika editorial 2016BU academics are editors on a wide range of scientific journals.  As editors we often write editorials for academic journals which have a number of specific functions.  It is a key means of communication between the editor(s) and the journal’s readership.  It is also vehicle to highlight topical academic and political issues related to the journal and the discipline(s) it represents. JAM June 2016 editorial

Earlier this week the latest issue of the Journal of Asian Midwives came out with an editorial which is an illustration of the first point giving information to the readers [1].  The topics addressed in this editorial included the announcement that this new journal was now indexed in the CINAHL Database, a recent major international conference in the field and a call for the forthcoming 2017 ICM (Internation Confederation of Midwives) tri-annual conference.  Today saw the publication of an editorial on the Zika virus and its potential impact in Nepal in the journal Medical Science [2].   This guest editorial co-written by BU’s Visiting Faculties Dr. Brijesh Sathian and Prof. Padam Simkhada with Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen (Centre for Midwifery, Maternal & Perinatal Health) calls for action in Nepal.  A country where malaria is endemic. The Zika virus uses mosquitoes like the ones spreading Dengue fever and malaria.  Zika is a virus we do not wish to see spreading in countries where malaria is already rife.  The editorial warns that precautionary measures are needed to prevent a Zika outbreak as the spread of the virus to the country seems inevitable, the only uncertainty is when it will be arriving.

Both journals are Open Access which means these editorials can be read by anybody with internet access free of charge.

References:

  1. Jan, R., van Teijlingen, E. (2016) Editorial JAM June 2016, Journal of Asian Midwives 3(1):1. http://ecommons.aku.edu/jam/vol3/iss1/1/
  2. van Teijlingen, E., Sathian, B., & Simkhada, P. (2016). Zika & Nepal: a far greater risk for its population than to individuals. Medical Science 4(2): 312-313. http://www.pubmedhouse.com/journals/ms/articles/1064/PMHID1064.pdf