Tagged / Sonamoni

Anyone can drown. No one should!

Awarded & submitted bids, international, PG research, Publishing, writing

The first editorial of The Lancet Public Health [1] highlights a public health issue close to our work in Bangladesh, namely the risk of drowning, especially in young children.  “Anyone can drown. No one should” are the words of the Director General of the World Health Organization (WHO) in its first Global status report on drowning prevention, published two weeks ago (Dec. 2024). According to  The Lancet Public Health this landmark report dissects the drowning burden globally, at the country level, and the trends since 2000, presents an overview of the key strategies to prevent drowning, and provides a benchmark for tracking prevention efforts in the future. Importantly, this report sheds light on a tragic, neglected, mostly preventable public health issue.

We are grateful to The Lancet Public Health for raising this important issue in 2025, since Bournemouth University (BU) is currently engaged in  research project in this field called ‘Sonamoni’.  This an interdisciplinary study is a collaboration with CIPRB (the Centre for Injury Prevention and Research, Bangladesh), the University of the West of England (in Bristol), the University of Southampton, the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI), and Design Without Borders (DWB) in Uganda.  Sonamoni aims to design and develop interventions to reduce the number of  young children drowning in Bangladesh.

This public health project is funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) through its Research and Innovation for Global Health Transformation programme. For more information, visit the NIHR website.

The interdisciplinary team at BU includes three faculties and six member of staff: Dr. Mavis Bengtsson, Dr. Kyungjoo Cha, Dr. Mehdi Chowdhury, Dr. Yong Hun Lim, Mr. John Powell, and Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen.  We recently published the first paper ‘Drowning Prevention should be a Public Health Issue in Nepal related to this project [2].

 

References:

  1. Anonymous (2025) Anyone can drown. No one should. The Lancet Public Health, 10(1): e1
  2. Hossain, M. S., Pant, P.R., van Teijlingen, E., Sedain, B., Rahman, A. (2024). Drowning Prevention should be a Public Health Issue in Nepal. International Journal of Social Sciences and Management, 11(4): 83–87.

Celebrating with the RNLI

Awarded & submitted bids, international, PG research, Publishing

Staff in the Faculty of Health & Social Sciences at Bournemouth University (BU) would like to take this opportunity to congratulate the charity the RNLI (Royal National Lifeboat Institution) on its 200th anniversary!  Some of us have personal experience of working with the RNLI.  For example, Adam Bancroft, Programme Lead in Paramedic Science and Senior Lecturer in Paramedic Science, in the Department of Midwifery & Health Sciences has been a lifeboat volunteer  Adam and his wife Paula were  both volunteer crew at Tower RNLI on the banks of the river Thames, which is still the busiest RNLI station in the UK.   They would commit to at least two shifts a month where they would be at a state of readiness to launch at moments notice on the pier, ready to respond. 
The picture of Adam and Paula was taken in 2013 for the RNLI as part of a photo shoot that was published in the Lifeboat magazine featuring volunteers and the different walks of life from across the UK and Ireland and the Channel Islands.  I am not sure Adam wants me to share this, but on their wedding day the ‘car’ for Paula was the spare RNLI boat, crewed by volunteer and full-time crew who gave their time to deliver her to the party boat for the service.  Adam did say that sadly neither of them able to volunteer now.
In a very different way of working with the RNLI, BU academics currently are involved in a collaborative research project with RNLI to prevent the drowning of toddlers under the age of two in rural Bangladesh.  This project called Sonamoni.  BU is leading this interdisciplinary study of nearly £1.7 million funded by the UK National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR).
This interdisciplinary project is a collaboration of BU’s Centre for Midwifery & Women’s Health (CMWH), BU’s Department in Accounting, Finance & Economics and Department of Design & Engineering, and external partners, namely the University of the West of England, the University of Southampton, the Poole-based RNLI and in Bangladesh the research organisation CIPRB (Centre for Injury Prevention and Research, Bangladesh), and in Uganda Design Without Borders (DWB).  The Bournemouth University team comprises staff from three faculties: Dr. Mavis Bengtsson, Dr. Kyungjoo Cha, Dr. Mehdi Chowdhury, Dr. Yong Hun Lim, Mr. John Powell, and Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen, and one PhD student Mr. Md. Shafkat Hossain.
Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen
CMWH