The Climate and Health Interdisciplinary Research Programme (CHIRP) at Leeds is based in the Priestly International Centre for Climate at the University of Leeds. CHIRP@LEEDS is a joint collaboration across the climate and global health themes, and partners the Leeds School of Earth and Environment, and the Leeds Institute for Health Sciences, including the Nuffield Centre for Global Health and Development. Led by Professor Lea Berrang-Ford, the programme integrates interdisciplinary expertise across Leeds faculties, including strengths in public health, epidemiology, medicine, engineering, climate science, nutrition, and geography.
Kate Bishop-Williams presented her preliminary research findings from Rigolet, Nunatsiavut at the first ever International Conference on the Impact of Environmental Change on Infectious Diseases in Sitges, Spain on Monday, March 22, 2015. Kate’s research is entitled: Seasonal changes in prevalence of acute gastrointestinal illness and concurrent respiratory symptoms in Rigolet, Nunatsiavut, Canada. This research was supervised by: Dr. Sherilee Harper, Dr. Lea Berrang-Ford, and Dr. Victoria Edge, and conducted in collaboration with Dr. Kate Thomas, Dr. James Ford, Inez Shiwak and the IHACC research team. Kate’s trip was funded by a Latornell scholarship at the University of Guelph.
Sierra is presenting her honours thesis work looking at the burden and lived experience of self-reported acute gastrointestinal illness (AGI) in an Indigenous Batwa-Pygmy population in southwestern Uganda at the Geography Honours poster session today at McGill University. We take this opportunity to congratulate Sierra on her thesis work. If you are interested in learning more about Sierra’s work, please read her latest article, published in Epidemiology and Infection in December 2014:
Clark, S., Berrang-Ford, L., Lwasa, S., Namanya, D.B., Edge, V.L., IHACC Research Team, and Harper, S. (2014).The burden and determinants of self-reported acute gastrointestinal illness in an Indigenous Batwa Pygmy population in southwestern Uganda. Epidemiology and Infection, [Epub ahead of print]. IHACC PhD student Kate Bishop-Williams and research assistant Vivienne Steele recently spent nearly 2 months working in Buhoma, Uganda at Bwindi Community Hospital (BCH). Kate and Vivienne arrived in Kampala in late January with Dr. Sherilee Harper to meet with IHACC team members at Makerere University. After a very short visit in the city, the team headed into Buhoma on a caravan plane; ready to hit the ground running. Hospital meetings began immediately at BCH and facilitated a quick start to data collection. Kate and Vivienne’s travel plan was primarily focused on entering hardcopy health records into BCH’s electronic database where gaps were identified, and included generating a new database for additional climate-sensitive health outcomes. Kate and Vivienne strengthened existing partnerships with BCH by offering to do an additional task at their request. Whilst entering data for the hospital that would be useful for IHACC as well, Kate and Vivienne conducted a health records system evaluation. The research required they conduct semi-structured interviews (11), a focus group (1) and a preliminary results sharing meeting. The research was loosely based on the CDC Guidelines for Evaluating Public Health Surveillance Systems. The interviews were conducted first and informed the participatory research and methods in the focus group. Proportional piling activities were used to prioritize resources for system improvements in the future. Similarly, in the preliminary results sharing meeting on Kate and Vivienne’s final day in Buhoma, the previous research informed the process. Based on the priorities identified in the focus group, the meeting participants were asked to sort the priorities based on the time required to complete task. Kate and Vivienne are preparing a plain-language report for the hospital presently, and will share the results with the hospital again soon. Kate and Vivienne returned to Kampala for 3 days at the end of their trip to meet with the IHACC research team again and report back on their adventures. In addition to discussing the data that was collected from hardcopy records, discussions were primarily focused on generating additional recommendations for the health records system evaluation.
While in Uganda, Kate and Vivienne engaged in a variety of other community activities. Hiking, sharing suppers, shopping in town, visiting Bwindi Impenetrable National Park and hospital socials were great ways to integrate into the community and forge great relationships. They even participated in nurse training sessions for nutrition and had cooking lessons to make chapattis! Additionally, Kate and Vivienne took advantage of their time in Uganda to seek out wildlife at Murchison Falls in the northwest and at Queen Elizabeth National Park in the central west. They had the great opportunity to see elephants, giraffes, warthogs, hyenas, hippos, crocodiles, buffalo, antelope, and more! No lions, but both Kate and Vivienne hope they will see a lion in future fieldwork in Uganda. |