Community and Health Research Unit

CaHRU’s research impact has now been captured in a series of stunning infographics created by student intern Beth Warman and accessed via our page ‘How we are making a difference‘. Beth, after studying a number of impact case studies produced by Professor Niro Siriwardena and the team describing the effect of CaHRU’s research on “change or benefit to the economy, society, culture, public policy or services, health, the environment or quality of life, beyond academia”, developed this evidence into the infographics. These capture how CaHRU’s research is making a difference in a visual form, accessible to the general public as well as the scientific community in a number of topics including: sleep and insomnia, prehospital outcome measures, flu vaccination uptake, large-scale healthcare quality improvement programmes, new prehospital ambulance pathways, and reliable, valid and fair licensing exams for doctors.

Beth, a student in psychology recently graduated and is going on to study for her PhD entitled ‘Character strengths, mindfulness and pro-environmental behaviours: how awareness of one’s strengths affects engagement in sustainability’. She will be looking at mindfulness and the positive psychological traits most strongly associated with being eco-friendly.

She is also due to start as a research assistant, working with Dr Roger Bretherton on a project called ‘The character course: design, dissemination and evaluation of a church-based small group programme for character development’. This will involve creating a church-based multimedia course to encourage people’s use of certain personal strengths (in this case, learning, hope, love, forgiveness, gratitude, humour, persistence and curiosity). We wish her the best in her future endeavours and thank her for the work she has done with CaHRU.

By Prof Niro Siriwardena

HAPPI group

Professors Graham Law and Niro Siriwardena contributed to the Public Engagement for All with Research in Lincolnshire (PEARL) conference which took place at the Cargill Lecture theatre at the University of Lincoln on 21 March 2018. PEARL is an initiative led by Professors Carenza Lewis (Professor for the Public Understanding of Science) and Tim Hodgson (Professor of Psychology) at the University of Lincoln. The conference introduced by Prof Lewis sought to showcase and share publicly engaged research at the University. Prof Hodgson introduced the speakers at the event.

The first speaker was Professor Siriwardena who spoke on ‘From conception to dissemination: involving patients and the public in community and health research’, presenting CaHRU’s work supported by the Healthier Aging Patient and Public Involvement (HAPPI) group. This included the involvement of patients in the Resources for Effective Sleep Treatment (REST) study and the animation produced by the Prehospital Outcomes for Evidence Based Evaluation (PhOEBE) PPI group to help disseminate the work of the 5-year NIHR programme.

Professor Graham Law’s talk entitled ‘Pushing at an open door: sleep research and people’ continued the theme of insomnia research at CaHRU, presenting work on the link between insomnia and disease and his wide engagement with the general public through his books, public lectures and research to raise awareness of the importance of insomnia and the myths surrounding sleep.

There were a number of other speakers from across the university whcih showed the extent and depth of public engagement with research at the university.

By Profs Graham Law and Niro Siriwardena