BU Research Blog

Sheetal’s SSM poster can be viewed here

Sheetal Sharma a PhD student at Health and Social Care at BU was lucky to be accepted at the Society for Social Medicine (SSM) September Conference in London to present her poster on my PhD research: Mixed-methods evaluation of a health promotion intervention in rural Nepal, complete with a photograph of the fieldwork involved in villages in Nepal! This year was particularly tough getting accepted as conference organisers commented that 360 abstracts were submitted, of which just 159 (44%) were accepted (including 3 as plenary presentations, 96 as parallel presentations, and 60 as poster presentations). And further stated that that at another SSM conference, an abstract awarded a poster presentation would have been given an oral presentation.
“My BU supervisors Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen, Prof. Vanora Hundley, Dr. Catherine Angell and my external supervisor Dr. Padam Simkhada (University of Sheffield) supported me to submit an abstract with our Spanish and Argentine academic partners, early this year”. I really appreciated the free place as universities have limited budgets to support their students in presenting at conferences; I doubt I would have attended had I had to meet the costs myself. So a big thanks to BU and SSM for supporting me! After my experiences at SSM 2012, I would encourage students and young researchers to attend SSM, as the research presented is stimulating and the feedback obtained is invaluable, the conference is really well organised, the support team and volunteers are really friendly and helpful! I hope to be a part of the ECR committee based on this conference.”
Sheetal mentioned she particularly enjoyed the workshop session on Evaluation of complex public health interventions, the concepts and methods practical guidance on “how to do it” and the applicability of different study designs, particularly the role of qualitative research by Mark Petticrew (LSHTM), James Hargreaves (LSHTM), and Steve Cummins (QMUL), as it relates to her evaluation on a health promotion intervention that aims to improve childbearing women’s demand of health services.
Sheetal felt it was great to see what research is conducted from institutions across the U.K. and globally, in a dynamic setting specifically the welcome address by Dr Piot who co-discovered the Ebola virus in Zaire in 1976, the Pemberton Lecture, 2012: Ethnicity and health by Peter Whincup. Sheetal feels research students should be encouraged to present as it motivates them to publish and network. Attending the conference in London also gave her a chance to visit the King’s Fund and dine at Lincoln’s Inn in the 19th century Great Hall with a view onto a fresco of Moses and Edward I ending with a guided tour of the Wellcome Collection.