Archive for Global Health

Building our collaboration with Stanford

The event New Perspectives in Compassion held at Stanford University California on 16th March was the first academic collaboration between CCARE and the Global Health Academy (GHA) following the launch of our Compassion Initiative in September in Edinburgh by the Principal. We are very grateful to Dr Monica Worline , deputy director, and Professor Jim Doty director at CCARE for their impeccable organisation. It was attended by just over 200 individuals including Edinburgh and Stanford faculty, students and alumni, and those living in the Bay Area and provided a series of short presentations by Stanford  and Edinburgh academics from a number of disciplines in the sciences and humanities.

New Perspectives in Compassion Panel

New Perspectives in Compassion Panel

 

http://ccare.stanford.edu/events/perspectives-on-compassion-new-thinking-from-stanford-university-and-the-university-of-edinburgh/

It was part of the Edinburgh University’s pop-up week in the Bay area of California, which also included events on big data, veterinary medicine, and history.

We were really fortunate to have the active engagement of the Principal, Sir Timothy O’Shea for the afternoon. After an introduction by Jim Doty and Liz Grant, the first session included a short talk and reading of a poem by John Gillies (written by a Stanford medical graduate) from the second edition of ‘Tools of the Trade’. This is a small volume of poems gifted to all new medical graduates in Scotland for the past two years.

Prof Paul Gilbert, an Edinburgh alumnus, and the psychologist who helped to kickstart research and education in compassion over two decades ago, gave an overview of his developing work including psychological tools to help people with moderate to severe problems of anxiety and self esteem.  Monica Worline introduced the theme of compassion in the workplace, the importance of shifting the balance of efficiency and effective measures from material linear outputs to relational outputs, the satisfaction, the ability to enjoy work, the opportunity to grow and flourish in a work environment. Following Monica was one of CCARE’s research partners, Professor Anne-Birgitta Pessi, a visiting Professor of Church and Social Studies from Finland. She summarised a novel approach based on Ricoeurian theory and using specific training to improve compassionate behaviour in leadership and workforce in large corporations in Finland, based on a novel approach called Co-Passion training -http://blogs.helsinki.fi/copassion/copassion-seminar/

The second session had a recorded contribution from Dr Paul Brennan, Co –Director of the Edinburgh GHA Compassion Initiative on the effects of neurosurgery on compassion in patients. Brian Knutson, associate professor of psychology at Stanford spoke on the neural basis of emotions, and we finished with a fascinating talk by associate professor Firdhaus Dhabhar , a Stanford psychiatrist who spoke about the ill effects of chronic stress on immunity and accelerating ageing, and how these can be mitigated by social support, mindfulness and meditation.

 

Professor James Doty, Dr Liz Grant, Dr John Gillies

Professor James Doty, Dr Liz Grant, Dr John Gillies

The second half of the afternoon was a distinguished panel, moderated by Jim Doty on The Compassionate Robot: myth, nightmare or solution. We selected this subject because of the rapidly developing technology around robots and their increasing use in healthcare and social settings across the world.  Principal Sir Tim O’Shea suggested that while a non human robot could not provide truly human compassion, it could provide ‘artificial compassion’ where that would be of utilitarian benefit. However, human compassion also had its inauthentic side as well, he suggested. Rev Professor Jane Shaw, Dean of Religious Life at Stanford gave a Humanities based perspective on what it means to be human: having what Adam Smith called ‘fellow-feeling’ or sympathy. In society today this she argued is often characterised by the shared construct we know either as compassion (which is based on a Buddhist model) or grace ( the word that encapsulates compassion emerging within the Christian tradition). Our understanding of compassion in robots can be much enhanced by looking through the lens of arts and humanities.    Alastair Boyle, Global Client partner of Google and head of strategy at the company Essence looked at compassion in advertising, illustrating this with the ‘Dove’ soap campaign which purposefully set out to make women feel better about themselves. He admitted that the strategy used by all companies now of tailoring advertisements though individual’s internet searches could in fact provide inappropriate and unhelpful targeting at times. He also touched on the ‘uncanny valley’ problem of life-like robots making people feel uncomfortable.

Jon Oberlander, professor of Epistemics here at the University of Edinburgh talked about robotic developments which enabled them to perceive and respond to human emotion, also the benefits and problems associated with robotic carers providing ‘care’ but reducing interaction with human carers. Ultimately, he said, ‘robots just don’t care’, in the metaphoric sense, however the responsibility to care lies not with the robot but with the creator.

The afternoon provided both a breadth of disciplinary approaches and, at times, a surprising depth of insight into the rapidly developing area of academic work on compassion. There was a great deal for our Global Health Academy’s Global Compassion Initiative to build on for the future; much more to come!

 


Dr John Gillies,  Senior Adviser Global Health Academy, Co-Director GHA Compassion initiative

Dr Liz Grant, Director, Global Health Academy, Co-Director GHA Compassion Initiative

The world is changing – will your PhD matter?

At the dawn of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) – which ushers in 17 new goals in a global agenda to “end poverty, protect the planet, and ensure prosperity for all”, most countries will be realigning their national development goals to be in tune with these global goals to realize specific targets over the next 15 years. As a researcher, one thing will soon become obvious in the midst of this global effort to bring about change – that is future research grants will be awarded primarily around these 17 SDG goals. An important question – “how your research fits in this global agenda?” arises for you and other PhD researchers who will soon be applying for these grants to drive your respective fields forward with whatever piece of the bigger science puzzle you will be solving.

It will not be an easy task to find one’s footing in the fast changing terrain of global goals and priorities, and Dr Liz Grant of the Global Health Academy at Edinburgh University is not shy to point this out. But, thankfully, not without some pointers to a way forward. Dr Grant has had extensive research experience at the level of Global Health with her many years of research in palliative care around the globe. In her talk on the ‘Impact of PhD Researchers on Global Health’ which she delivered at the Global Health PhD Network event in October 2015, she had a lot to share.

In a talk that was neatly supplemented with real life examples of her own research, Dr Grant carefully led the thoughts of the PhD researchers in the room on a number of issues, which in her opinion will soon become important in their researching career in the light of the new SDGs.

Top of her list was the need for PhD researchers to start thinking of where to find other pieces of evidence for their research. “What matters in your PhD”, she said, “is pulling materials from connected disciplines and connected areas and making sure you draw them in – use the materials out there…network pieces of information together”. In truth, that is how science works in our day through extensive bridge building across multiple disciplines and you probably have come across this a number of times already in your field. The rewards of this approach is long term and may not be immediate which in the little time space of a PhD makes it appear impractical. But in Dr Grant’s view, your research questions are still questions because there have not been enough conversations around them for others before you to have answered them. This is a brilliant way to look at things because in a way it challenges you to start expanding the discourse around your research to span more than just the area of your interest, to generate interest in other relevant fields.

But what good might all that knowledge you obtain as a result be, if not for the good of mankind. “Knowledge for knowledge sake is wonderful”, she says, “but knowledge to make a difference is why you are here and why I am here and why the university is here”. The message here is pretty simple – don’t let your PhD be only just another addition to the vast collection of information sitting on shelves around the world and only collecting dust. But it should be one that works and makes a difference. And she thinks you can achieve this by starting to think about your PhD research in terms of who the constituents are (i.e. those directly affected by what you are doing), how you will engage the public on important issues like the burden of the problem you are dealing with or trying to help solve, and also the economics involved and equally importantly why your research needs to be prioritised in the face of other competing research.

Huge task, but is it beyond you? Of course not. A big step forward in making any of the impact that would make your PhD research matter is through advocacy. Because the impact is kind of often seen through advocacy, she said, in doing things like, writing blogs, getting local workshops, and communicating what you are studying to people who have the connections to make things work. “People built systems and people can take it down,” she says in reference to the perpetual ‘brick walls’ of resistance that bureaucracies will mount on your path. Keep talking to as many people as possible and never ever underestimate the power of networking because you can change things in partnerships.

In bringing all this home, Dr Grant urges PhD researchers to think once again about their PhD and ask themselves what are the core components of what they are doing. For instance in her own research in palliative care then this would be about the core components of a health care system. Ask yourself if your research is around the core components. If not, what can you do to create the conditions necessary for change? Are you getting the right materials at the right time to create these conditions? And will these conditions support a sustainable system? Also what is the national architecture like in your country that will mean your piece of research can fit in. Answers to these questions and a lot more which couldn’t fit in this piece are what in Dr Grant’s expert opinion would make your PhD make an impact.

“Never forget why we research, you and I – it’s our communities, it’s our families, it’s people.” Dr Liz Grant

Dr Grant’s talk was preceded by a lively PhD poster session that saw four PhD students from the University of Edinburgh present their research work from four different regions around the globe. The first poster by Sara Valencia looked at vaccine trials in Southern and Central America (Colombia, Brazil and Mexico). A second poster that looked at the prevalence of Non-communicable Diseases and the entitlement to and the use of health services in the Gaza strip was presented by Majdi Ashour. Mkululi Wami presented the findings of a research work he carried out in Sub Saharan Africa in Zimbabwe which used antibody responses based on parasite egg counts to estimate infection prevalence of schistosomiasis in young children. The last poster was presented by Ai Oishi on a research that sort to identify patients for palliative care approach in primary care settings in Japan.

The Global Health PhD Network started, in October 2014, as a student-driven interest group within the Global Health Society, University of Edinburgh, with the express aim of bringing together like-minded postgraduate researchers from the three colleges in the university for research sharing, knowledge and skills exchange, networking and shared global health career development. The Network has hosted a series of events during the past year to bring together PhD researchers in the university to listen to and to share thoughts on important issues surrounding global health. And their most recent event (the one I just described) was yet another opportunity for the Network to reiterate its vision of creating an environment that supports and promotes cross-disciplinary networking by inviting PhD poster presenters from all three colleges of the university.

Again, looking back at some of the key points in Liz’s talk on the importance of networking and advocacy for PhD researchers, you realise that the Global Health PhD Network has its priorities well placed, doing things right as it should be and is already on the right bus into the future.


Richard F Oppong, Institute of Evolutionary Biology, University of Edinburgh