salfordpublichealth, Author at Salford Public Health

My Masters Dissertation on tobacco use in new migrant communities By Nisha Kassam

This is my first time blogging and I hope that this piece helps others in their journeys when starting their dissertation projects. At first, I had no understanding of how big a task writing a dissertation was and how much it would consume my life! From the research methods module, I knew that I wanted to look into my own research area and I wanted to build upon a piece of work that I had worked on from start to finish, so my dissertation journey started from picking a topic area of interest and it ended with a report being presented to Manchester City Council. A couple of weeks after submitting the report to the council, I got an email from the council informing that my work will be used in an upcoming Council guideline. I will be referenced in their work, which I still to this day can’t believe is happening!

From the start of the dissertation module, I buddied with up a course colleague, David Gilbert, and we set out a task schedule and went over all the tasks that we needed to complete for the dissertation. We had the same supervisor so that made it easier for us to bounce ideas off each other and work together, it was also great having someone who was working at the same pace as me. We had a lot of late nights in the library working on our individual projects, with delirium usually happening around 2 am in the morning. We would find ourselves arguing over who our supervisor’s favorite student was and shouting ‘noooooo more!!’ at our computer screens after receiving our feedback, which meant more work for us to do. (Helpful hint: if working in the library take snacks—we always got the munchies around midnight and that helped to fuel us on through the night and also there are food options that can be delivered to the library!!!.)

Onto the practical side of things, it was important for me to collaborate with one of the city councils, as they would help in providing resources and would also help in refining the topic area being researched. I approached Manchester City Council during the research proposal stage of my work and they offered to assist me in the dissertation project. My initial topic area of interest was shisha/waterpipe smoking in Manchester, however, the council had already completed a lot of work on waterpipe/shisha smoking and asked me to look at a new area that was under-researched. So my dissertation project changed direction, looking at tobacco use and smoking in new migrant communities. The council provided me with the resources to complete the research project, insofar as access to migrant communities that could take part in focus groups.

I jumped into the research side of things and started conducting focus groups with different migrant communities. I had given myself a month to collect data and then planned to analyse the data, however, the council asked for more out of the project, they wanted to look at the project from different points of view, so that they could have a complete overview of tobacco use in Manchester. Interviews with primary care professionals were added to the project. I approached primary care professionals that the council recommended, as well as primary care professionals I knew through my work as an Operating Department Practitioner. I used all the contacts available to me in order to make my research project successful. However, adding another aspect to the dissertation project was the greatest challenge as it meant that the project changed from being one dimensional to being a triangulated research project. This meant analysing data from different perspectives and also meant further ethical approval was needed for the interviews, adding more layers to an already complex project.

In terms of findings from the research, I found that alternative tobacco products were popular in new migrant communities, many migrants were using different tobacco products including shisha/waterpipes, and heated tobacco units. These products were becoming more popular due to the flavours on offer and also their price points. However, the research indicated that cigarettes were still the most prominent form of tobacco being used within new migrant communities, although migrants were finding ways to get cheaper cigarettes, thus were importing cigarettes from their home countries or were buying cheaper/counterfeit cigarettes from certain supermarkets or corner shops.

There were no services specifically for new migrants, and a lack of data collection on new migrants makes it difficult to track their needs. Gaps in the research were presented clearly and I also included recommendations and conclusions in the report, which the council could implement in the future.

Photo by Ander Burdain on Unsplash

So I still can’t believe that this was the outcome of my work, to be referenced in an important guideline for the council that I was collaborating with. Getting the email to say that my work was being used was completely unexpected, but this meant that all the late nights and library visits were totally worth it…

The one thing that I would recommend to future students is to work systematically, plan everything from data collection to data analysis, timetable your plans and make lists. (Lists are super important in detailing everyday details, the guys on my course used to make fun of my list making, but they do work!)

As cliché as it sounds, doing a dissertation is a real journey, and it presents a lot of challenges along the way, but the key is perseverance and hard work. I enjoyed every aspect of it, from the data collection to the analysis to write up. Even if it meant sleepless nights and no social life for a few months, it is totally worth it! Even now, as I’m writing this, I am now thinking I want to do more and work on other research areas.

(As a side note, I also want to publicly thank the lecturers on this course, as without them none what I have achieved would have been possible without them and their input.)

Nisha

Studying a Master of Public Health at Salford University through a Chevening Scholarship program: a life-changing adventure by Dr Dimby Sambatra Ismael Rabejaona

At the Chevening official award ceremony in London

My Salford adventure started on August 2017 when I got awarded of the Chevening Scholarship that permitted me to pursue a post-graduate study of Public Health in the United Kingdom. The Chevening Scholarship is the UK government’s global scholarship program, funded by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) and partner organisation that aimed to provide opportunities to leader, scholar, researcher and influencer from 144 countries worldwide to fulfil their dream to study in the UK. The application process for this life-changing opportunity was very demanding and competitive but I was driven and strengthened by my desire to experience the best that the UK has to offer in terms of academic life, career opportunities, culture, history, and leisure activities. Therefore, I challenged myself to fulfil all the requirements that was necessary in order to be awarded of such honour to study in the UK, where so many researchers, influencers, scholars, and leaders have shaped our modern world through their astonishing achievement – for example Sir Isaac Newton, Alexander Fleming, Sir Charles Darwin, Sir Alex Ferguson, or John Lennon.

Through my Chevening application process, I had to choose the UK universities that could provide me with the platform to achieve my lifetime project. I, therefore, conducted a thorough search of all UK Universities to find the one that could help me to fulfil my academic and professional goal. My search for the most appropriate university was based on my professional and academic background of public health and occupational medicine. In addition, I was looking for a University that could provide me with the skills and knowledge to strengthen the health system in my country Madagascar, particularly in terms of health at work and well-being, disease surveillance, epidemiology, data monitoring and statistics.

The University of Salford, particularly the Department of Public Health, stood among all UK universities as my first choice. Indeed, during my search for the best university, I discovered that the Salford Department of Public Health delivered a specific module about Health at Work and Well-being led by Dr Margaret Coffey – a well-known and respected researcher in the field of public health. Therefore, I contacted the University of Salford about this module that interested me. The public health team at Salford were keen to enlighten me with additional information through the module leader Dr Margaret Coffey and the programme leader Dr Anna Cooper-Ryan. I was surprised to discover that the module Health at Work and Well-being had been integrated into a particular module called 21^st Century Global public health challenge. This module, led by Dr Anna Cooper-Ryan and Dr Margaret Coffey looked at the challenges of public health on a global scale. Because the Chevening Award represents a global initiative to promote tolerance, excellence in research, leadership and diversity, the choice of the Department of Public Health of the University of Salford became obvious to me as it promotes this global vision of public health by giving opportunities to international students, such as myself, to gather skills and knowledge, and to share my experience of public health among my peers. Definitely, the University of Salford was the place to be to achieve my master’s degree of public health.

With Prof Richard Stephenson the University Deputy Vice-Chancellor at the International Student Scholarship ceremony held at the University of Salford

When I first arrived in Manchester, and I met the public health team, my choice of the University of Salford was reinforced by the level of expertise of the lecturers, the university’s cutting-edge facilities, the amazing students Union, and the International Society activities. In addition, the city of Manchester appeared a vibrant city for the average student, which promoted diversity and tolerance, and provided a wide range of entertainment and leisure. This had a positive impact on my well-being as a student when the master’s study became more demanding. The high level of academic support and the workshops provided by the University of Salford helped me also to achieve a successful academic life.

One of the memorable periods of my academic life in Salford, was our field trip in Eyam when all the teaching staff and the students went on a public health field trip. Not only did the field trip help me to understand in a practical way the “nitty-gritty” of public health and epidemiology, but also permitted me to develop warm relationships with my lecturers and classmates, which strongly contributed to my academic success and well-being later. Apart from the field trip in Eyam, the dissertation project at the end of the academic year was also one of the best moments of my academic life at the University of Salford. During this dissertation project, I had the privilege to work with and to take advantage of the expertise of my supervisor, Dr Margaret Coffey, about the experience of part-time employment in the UK in respect of health and well-being. This project provided me with an in-depth understanding of the challenges that part-time workers might face in terms of health and well-being at work, and the drivers that might explain the level of commitment and satisfaction of the workers for their chosen career. Through this thesis project, I have gathered all the knowledge and skills I needed to go any further in the career of public health with a particular focus on health at work and well-being. In addition, it permitted me to reinforce my research skills and to learn to tackle efficiently all the issues that may occur during a research project that involves a systematic review methodology. I was also astonished by the high level of supportmy supervisor and all the teaching staff provided to me to achieve this memorable success in academic research.

In a nutshell, my academic year at Salford was full of success and was one of the best moments of my life so far. It permitted me to work and to learn from the experience of well-known researchers in public health. It taught me to think outside the box when a public health issue occurs and prepared me to address serenely any public health challenge. This experience helped me to grow, to be more confident, to be bold and to get ready to fight against all form of inequities, inequalities and injustices.

Reflection around group work on the MSc Public Health by Robyn McCarthy

How do you feel when you get asked to work as a group on an assessed piece of work? Are you filled with enthusiasm or a sudden sinking feeling? Our MSc Public Health cohort is an impressive mix of people. We are all different, ages, professions, and nationalities, with differing undergraduate degrees. Early on in the course we had an overnight field trip where we bonded over getting drenched in the Peak district, which helped us get to know each other and we are quite a friendly chatty group.

I started the MSc in Public Health after 15-years out of education: my distant memories of group work were vaguely negative, so, when we were given our first assignment for the Global Health Module as group presentation I didn’t know what to expect. I was asked by three of my course mates to be the fourth person in their group. Our assignment brief was to choose a global public health challenge and give a twenty-minute presentation about it. I was really struggling to come up with a good idea but wanted to do something a bit out of the ordinary.

The first thing we did as a group was to set up a chat group on the social networking platform WhatsApp, so that we could start discussing possible topic choices. One person suggested looking at tuberculosis and another suggested looking at the link between depression in young people and social media. When the two of us without a suggestion then picked which we preferred, the problem was that still left us with a 50/50 split. We discussed flipping a coin, but instead we took both ideas to our course leader, hoping she would choose for us. After discussing each topic, she agreed that the topics were both good ideas and wished us luck with deciding. So, in pairs we then did a pitch of our preferred topic in the form of a quick essay plan. We found it easier to put together the outline-plan for the social media idea, so that’s the one we picked.

One person naturally became team leader, I’ve heard of storming norming and performing, but we just seemed to get along from the start. Maybe it was because we had similar approaches to learning. The four of us are quite laid-back, which meant we were flexible and positive, but with interest in the topic and motivated to put together a good presentation; this helped as it meant we were all prepared to put the hours in. Being quite confident, I really enjoyed working with a team leader who listened and checked everyone was on the same page before making decisions, and as someone who is prone to putting my foot in it, I was pleased to find everyone was open to giving and receiving feedback. As a group we all had work or childcare commitments outside of the course, and long journeys in to campus; at one point we even got snowed off, so we had brainstorming sessions with only three of us but always kept the missing person in the loop via WhatsApp.

The team leader set up a spreadsheet for references, so we could each put in papers as we read them – this was useful, as we could easily go back later to find information. Each one of us managed to find something no one else had. Discovering an alarming lack of evidence of an actual causal link between social media and depression made the project more challenging.

We still had to try to adhere to the marking scheme whilst showing critical analysis of the data. Just to be sure that we were heading in the right direction, we got further feedback from our course leader. We then set up a Google Slides shared file, so we could all work on it at once, and divided up the number of slides and worked on one section each. We then discussed the order and moved items around, and wrote rough drafts of our scripts. The team leader also booked rooms, so we had time to practice the presentation together; for all four of us to be there we had to fit this in between lectures, an hour here and there. But this meant we could run through several times giving feedback on each other’s script and getting our timing accurate, and just about have time to brainstorm possible questions from the audience.

When we came to give our presentation, we remembered almost all of our lines and finished on time. We congratulated each other and talked about how much we had enjoyed working together. It got me thinking, for such a mix of people, is there something we all have in common that helped, or was it that we were able to “encourage an atmosphere of openness to diversity and new ideas” when working collaboratively together (Savin-Baden & Major, 2004, p. 77)? Being able to work well in a team is an important skill not only in an academic environment but looking forward to our future career paths. It would be interesting to look further into the theory behind what makes working in groups productive and enjoyable, but for now there’s another assignment waiting to be written.

The transition from MSc student to a PhD student, at The University of Salford by Abolanle Gbadamosi

The first transition for me was moving from my home country, Nigeria, to England to study – it was very daunting to begin with. The initial decision to come to England to study for a Masters was very different from the decision I made to stay to further my studies and start a PhD. When I came to England to study for my Masters, I wanted to gain further skills and knowledge – the decision was based on the challenge to get better academically, and in turn to inform my future career path. The decision to further my education and embark on a PhD was based on the skills and knowledge I had acquired during my Masters degree. The wide range of resources available to students to make learning convenient at the University of Salford was beyond expectations. As a postgraduate student, I had unlimited access to an extensive range of books, e-books, journal articles, and government publications to help me study, as well as request for articles that are not licensed to the University.

The major influence in deciding to apply for a PhD was based on the final semester of my Masters programme, when I conducted a research study for my dissertation. The research study examined the associations between sitting at work and mental wellbeing. I loved the idea of looking into a problem and trying to find out as much as I could about it, and looking into something that there was little previous research on. That’s the joy of being a researcher (although it is not always as simple as it sounds!).

The progression from a postgraduate taught degree to a postgraduate research degree is a big step in one’s education, because the doctorate degree is seen as the highest level of educational achievement. The move from a ‘regimented and structured’ life of a taught programme to the ‘unstructured’ life of a PhD can be scary. This is because the structure of deadlines and assignment submissions is no longer there – you have to carefully plan your own time and set your own targets. It can be quite overwhelming at times, sitting in an office every day of the week, rather than attending classes for two to four hours every day. I am in an office with other PhD students, many of whom are working in studies that are not related to my field – this can make the PhD journey lonely at times, but also interesting because I get to learn about things outside of my own area of research.

When I started my PhD, all of a sudden I was exposed to all these opportunities and changes. The PhD involves independent research and that means a lot of input from me as a researcher – like I said, it can be quite scary if you face it all alone. The University has provided various workshops and study skills sessions to help me adapt to the system, without feeling too overwhelmed! Also, there is an allocated staff member to stand in as a personal tutor to help discuss any issues that may affect one’s studies. I have made use of these resources and intend to keep making use of them. So far so good, it’s been an interesting journey and I hope it will get even better!

In the first year of Abolanle’s PhD, she has had the work from her Masters study accepted at the International Conference on Ambulatory Monitoring of Physical Activity and Movement (see poster), and has recently submitted work from her first PhD study to the International Society for Physical Activity and Health Congress.

Association between sitting at work and mental wellbeing

MSc Public Health Trip to Eyam – October 2017

As part of the extended induction programme, the MSc Public Health students took part in a two-day field trip that was designed to provide an immersive experience for students to orientate towards the discipline (with a real word example of a past public health situation), get to know each other, form friendship groups, and begin to work in teams.

Students learned about the control of an infectious disease in history, and one village’s unique approach to dealing with the plague crisis. This was designed to enable students to learn lessons that can be applied to infectious disease today.

The field trip took us to Eyam, a small village in the Derbyshire Dales within the Peak District. In 1665, the village experienced an outbreak of the bubonic plague, and the villagers chose to isolate themselves to prevent the spread of infection. During the outbreak, 260 villagers died (double the rate of those who died in London from the bubonic plague).

On day one, the students took part in a guided transect walk around the village to learn about the history of the village, some of the key places, and the decisions that were made during the outbreak of the bubonic plague. The great British weather made this a very wet two hours, but a few hardy souls made it to the boundary stone, and we all learned a lot along the way about how the village dealt with the situation.

‘This event has brought public health to life in terms of location of historical plague being very real with houses in the village, the well etc.”

Upon warming up with cuppa soup, teas, and coffees back at the Youth Hostel, the students started completing more detailed maps in groups to present to the judges (the lecturing staff), and provide their overview of the village based on the transect walk. As you can see the judging was intense!

The final activity of day one involved an outbreak game: could our students and staff survive being infected by those who were the source of the outbreak? Our very own Margaret Coffey was infected twice, but was deemed allowed to stay in the Youth Hostel, once the class had worked out who were the sources of the outbreak, and how it had spread around to those infected.

‘The outbreak activity was a lot of fun! It helped us understand how infections spread and the concept of having carriers who come into contact with a specific infection but do not get sick’

On the second day, those who were unable to join us, and were based back at the University, carried out similar activities to those who were in Eyam. The students were split into groups to create a presentation related to either: the data and risk factors related to the plague outbreak in Eyam; or the modern spread of the plague, looking at Madagascar as a current case-study. Having a student from Madagascar on the trip with us really brought this work home for everyone, with their explanation of some of the measures that were currently in place.

‘The group work on the Plague worked very well, especially presenting in the order that we did – historical plague to current issues re: global plague. Definitely a learning experience’.

Finally, we finished off with a trip to the local museum to round up all the learning before people headed back to Salford on the coach. Despite the weather, we all had a great time getting to know each other, learning about Eyam, and thinking about how this relates to modern Public Health.

‘I feel like I know more people and am more relaxed around them’.

‘It has helped us get together. I think we will work together more effectively’.

The trip received overwhelmingly positive feedback, with 68% reported their experience on the trip as ‘excellent’ and 26% as ‘good’. Participants especially valued the chance to get to know each other.

‘I feel more confident now about my MSc programme and want to give my best in order to succeed’

‘I believe I am 100% ready to study this course. I have developed a better understanding and a new love for it. I know it’s going to be an enjoyable course. Looking forward to it’

We hope you will be able to join the MSc Public Health course in the future and come with us to learn more about the history of public health, and experience some of the English countryside. You even get to stay in a mini castle for a night that is owned by the Youth Hostel Association.

Public Health Conference: Social prescribing, social movements, shaping attitudes and behaviours (Friday, 17th November 2017)

This blog post is written by four of our current MSc Students – Aneela Khanum, Cynthia Poolay Mootien, Gloria Serwah Asare & Ella Train

The public health conference on ‘social prescribing, social movements, shaping attitudes and behaviours’ organised by the Salford Professional Development team and the University of Salford, was chaired by Professor Penny Cook, and centred around finding innovative and alternative ways to treat and care for patients outside of healthcare settings.

Chris Easton, from Tameside Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, opened the talk by discussing the implementation of a system wide approach to self-care. He stressed the need to change the public’s perception and behaviour towards clinicians and hospitals, and for more instituitional integration, which will only be successful if both the health and social needs of patients are considered. He also pointed out that more emphasis should be placed on stimulating a fundamental paradigm shift between the people and their communities, as well as the healthcare system. The issues brought up by Chris showed an interesting perspective of the healthcare system that challenges clinical pathways to have self-management at their core, and would encourage doctors to take a more holistic approach when treating their patients.

Alan Higgins, Director of Public Health, Oldham Council, discussed the importance of health as a social movement to empower patients and citizens, strengthen communities, improve health and wellbeing, and eventually moderate the rising demands on the NHS. Another speaker at the event was Siobhan Farmer, a Public Health Consultant for Salford City Council, who talked about the importance of influencing population health by focusing on education in early years, including more person-centred approaches to health and lifestyle behaviours. She further explained the role of Salford City council in health and social care, which gave us further insight on the many health inequalities present in Salford.

Variation in Life Expectancy – Male life expectancy ranges from 81.9 years in Worsley to 69.8 years in Pendleton
(Source: Salford City Council)

The event was also a great networking opportunity, where we met many professionals from various fields in the public health sector. We had the privilege of talking to Professor John Middleton, President of the UK Faculty of Public Health, following his inspiring talk about encouraging an asset-based approach to improving health and wellbeing through social prescribing. The various other speakers at the conference also advocated for a change in the healthcare system, with a more comprehensive community-centred approach, where social prescribing could help change and shape attitudes and behaviours towards health and wellbeing.

The conference ended with a highly inspirational presentation by Chrissie Wellington, Global Lead for Health and Wellbeing Parkrun, and Doctor Simon Tobin a General Practitioner with strong ties to Parkrun, who both stressed the benefits of exercise and outdoor activities for better health. Dr. Tobin emphasised the need for doctors to take a more social approach to improving patients’ healthcare, instead of over-diagnosing and overprescribing without first exploring the hopes, wishes and needs of the patients. The conference concluded with a challenging note, to not only change other people’s attitudes and behaviours towards healthcare, but to also change our own stance on health and social prescribing, for better health and wellbeing in the long-term.

The conference was a wonderful opportunity, to meet public health professionals and academics, as well as be part of an informative forum with many speakers from various fields in public health. Our sincere thanks go to Professor Penny Cook, Dr. Margaret Coffey, Dr. Anna Cooper-Ryan, and Alex Clarke-Cornwell for organising and promoting a very thought-provoking and worthwhile conference.

MSc Public Health Facebook Live

If you’re interested in studying MSc Public Health at the University of Salford, join us on Facebook on Wednesday 12 July to see our live interview with the Programme Leads and Admissions Tutor from our MSc Public Health course. Dr Anna Cooper and Dr Margaret Coffey will answer questions about the course, the modules you will study and how it could help with your career.

For a limited time we are also offering two students the opportunity to receive a 50% reduction in the course fees for the MSc Public Health (closing date Monday 7th August). You can find out more about this on our website

The Facebook Live session starts at 3.00pm (GMT) on Wednesday 12 July, simply join our Facebook page and watch. If you aren’t able to join us, the session will be recorded for you to watch at a time that suits you.

About one of our PhD Alumni – Dr James Chandler

James is a researcher with experience using both qualitative and quantitative research methods and an understanding of the social determinants of health, particularly the role of work and how the psychosocial work environment impacts on employees’ mental and physical health and wellbeing.

His PhD explored the impact of working in a social enterprise on employee health and wellbeing through the lens of ‘good’ work, culminating in the development of an empirically informed conceptual model that illustrates how working in a social enterprise may lead to improved health and wellbeing outcomes.

Following the completion of his PhD, he secured the role of Researcher at the Work Foundation, a think-tank based in London, which is dedicated to promoting the concept of ‘good’ work and its benefits for employees and employers alike. Drawing on the knowledge and research skills acquired through his PhD, he is, primarily, focused on developing evidence-based policy recommendations relating to the health and wellbeing at work agenda. Recent projects include: overseeing the development of an ‘early intervention toolkit’ designed to make the case, using the example of musculoskeletal conditions, for the implementation of early intervention services across the European Union; and a service evaluation of a newly-formed early intervention clinic, based in Leeds, which aims to get people signed-off work with a musculoskeletal condition back to work as soon as possible. To read more about this see – http://earlyinterventiontoolkit.com

About James

James was awarded a BA (Hons) in History and Politics from Keele University in 2008 and an MA in Political Economy from the University of Manchester in 2010. His MA dissertation explored the relationship between income inequality and health, which focused his interest on the areas of public health and health inequalities. Prior to starting a PhD in Public Health at the University of Salford, James conducted a literature review for the university in 2011 on the impact of working for a social enterprise on employee health and wellbeing – this project served as a platform for his PhD research.

Twitter – @jbchandler

Details of James’s PhD

His PhD explored the experience of working for a social enterprise – an organisation with social aims that uses profits for that purpose – and whether these organisations provide good quality work conducive to employee health and wellbeing. Using a mixed-methods approach, comprising (i) a mapping study that identified social enterprises active in the Greater Manchester region, (ii) semi-structured qualitative interviews, and (iii) a survey completed by social enterprise employees across the region, the research finds that social enterprises provide good quality work environments conducive to employee health and wellbeing – furthermore, when compared to a national sample of individuals working in non-social enterprise organisations, social enterprise employees report significantly higher levels of control over their work, support at work, job satisfaction and job-related wellbeing.

Chandler, James 2016, A study to explore the impact of working in a social enterprise on employee health and wellbeing in Greater Manchester , PhD thesis, University of Salford.

New reports :

Work Foundation’s Health at Work Policy Unit publishes its latest report: Who cares? The implications of informal care and work for policymakers and employers.

Other papers in the series include:
• More than ‘women’s issues’
• Men’s mental health and work: the case for a gendered approach to policy
• Managing migraine: a women’s health issue?

For more information, see our background paper and accompanying infographics.

Read the full report or executive summary.

Please feel free to contact the report’s author, Dr James Chandler, for more information.

Brief review of Making Every Contact Count conference – Health Education England

By Anna Cooper, Jess Brooke and Penny Cook

On the 27^th January over 200 people congregated at the University of Salford for the MECC conference run by Health Education England with support from Public Health England. The conference started off with a welcome and a bit of a dance (as we are told is tradition in some other conferences), but it proved to set the scene for what was an informative but also welcoming event. Sir Stephen Moss in his forward outlines MECC as ‘enables the systematic delivery of consistent and simple lifestyle advice, helping people to make positive changes that will improve their health and wellbeing.’

To start there was a bit of a race through some of the evidence, policy and local level examples of MECC. Shirley Cramer outlined the definition of the wider workforce and next steps, but also the importance of the workers’ situation in the community that they serve, while Sir Stephen Moss talked about changing the culture to embed MECC into everyday practice. Dr Charles Alessi reiterated the important message of ‘don’t let there be more missed opportunities when we could be doing something’. Dr Paul Chadwick reminded us that we need to reflect on our own behaviour and motivations as health practitioners, since MECC relies on us having the confidence to raise sensitive issues. A challenge of MECC is gaining consistent evaluation to explore the impact due to the diverse nature and content on the brief interventions; what is clear is that it can impact communities – as shown by Professor Kate Arden in Wigan.

The keynote session was followed with presentations on examples of tools kits, those produced at both a local and national level. There were examples provided by Claire Cheminade, the Public Health Wider Workforce lead in Wessex and Sally James the Public Health Workforce Specialist for the west midlands, which showed how MECC is embedded across all areas right from training of the new workforce. Nigel Smith and Mandy Harling used the session to help launch the ‘MECC: quality checklist for training resources’ and ‘MECC: implementation guide’, developed by Public Health England and Health Education England.

On breaking out for the session before and after lunch there was a chance to hear about more examples, but also look at settings and behaviour change, to help with understanding the theory and practice. During lunch there was an opportunity to take a seat in the MECC cinema where a short film was shown which illustrated different people who have undertaken MECC training and put it into practice successfully. In the afternoon, one of the workshops, titled ‘NICE Guidelines and Behaviour Change Approaches’ was led by Dr Paul Chadwick. This included an interesting lecture and some useful group work. It enabled attendees to consider how their own behaviour and beliefs could impact on the implementation of MECC in their setting.

As part of @SalfordPH involvement throughout the day, eight of the MSc public health students (as pictured below), were on hand to support the event staff and delegates with their day. Additionally Penny and Anna chaired the initial sessions around “what the system is saying about MECC and why it is important” and “Implementing MECC”.

This also provided our students with the chance to hear from some leading experts in this area and be able to hear examples of how what we talk about in lectures relates to worked examples. Our thanks go to each of the students for taking the time to support the day.

Although MECC is going through a difficult time in many local areas in relation to funding, it is clear from this day there are many people who carry out the premise of MECC in their everyday working and it is something we can all be more aware of doing.

Views of an international student around public health and why it is important in the UAE

Ahmed Mohammed Al gharib is an international student from the UAE who is currently studying public health at Salford. Public Health is still developing in the UAE. Ahmed has written a short reflection around his thoughts about the importance of Public Health to the UAE.

Two major factors in UAE are of particular importance to public health; the very high socio-economic status; and the impact of the built environment. In this regard, there is a larger population of wealthy individuals from all over the world who live in the UAE. In the major cities like Dubai and Abu Dhabi it is not common to see poorer-class citizens. This socio-economic status is likely to impact on their health.

The wealth of the country has led to a huge increase in the number of tower blocks being built. Within these, there is an emphasis on using the most up-to date technologies available, so potentially relying a lot at technology during work and/or at home, (e.g. through “smart house”) which is also likely to impact health conditions. In particular, the Gulf countries face pretty high diabetic and obese populations compared to other countries. This is in part due to the wealthy lifestyle and the consistent cultural/traditional hospitality; i.e. invitations to dinners with a huge amount of food. Culture plays a major role in this.

In the region:

Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has the world’s highest number of diabetic people.
Saudi Arabia takes 3rd place in Obesity.
Kuwait is the highest number of obese people worldwide.

I believe that the Public Health sector, when working alongside other professional sectors in cross-sectional teams, will carry out research that can work towards resolving many complex problems in the UAE and Gulf countries -that are a cause of mortality and morbidity. Public Health staff are very useful, as they think critically about an issue to determine its origins, work along management and policy makers, and implement strategic decisions that will improve health, and health care delivery. Advanced methods in public health have the potential to help people and organisations to cope with the rapid technological/industrial and organizational issues in the UAE to make the best possible decisions in relation to health and wellbeing. There is also the potential for aspects of public health maximizing productivity, profitability, and life satisfaction within the region.

In addition, there is a need for being ready to deal with future challenges resulting from changes in the interaction between people and the environment and implementing epidemiological skills to the field of public health. It is also important to correlate environmental and Public Health concepts to protect the citizens and the environment from stressors or contaminants there. Particularly as the weather in UAE gets very hot during summer times; it over 54 Celsius! As such there is a need for public health solutions in relation to this area and suitable interventions and education.

Implementing the theoretical and practical knowledge of Public Health (e.g. in relation to communicable and non-communicable diseases) within the UAE has the potential to have a stronger impact compared to other countries.