News
CRH Researcher completes visiting fellowship at La Trobe Rural Health School
Dr Sarah-Anne Muñoz recently completed a visiting research fellowship at the La Trobe University Rural Health School in Bendigo, Australia. more
European recognition for Highlands and Islands project to empower older people
A project led by the Centre for Rural Health, a research unit involving the University of the Highlands and Islands and the University of Aberdeen, which looked at the role of older people in rural life, and helped to devise community support schemes, has been nominated for a major European Commission award read more
Community Resilience Research Summit
Are you waiting for the storm to pass or learning to dance in the rain? Professor Keith Shaw of Northumbria University posed this question to the audience at a recent research summit on rural resilience. Organised by Ann Clark, Research Fellow at CRH UHI and Dr. Sarah Skerratt of the Scottish Agricultural College, the event was funded by the ESRC as part of the Festival of Social Science. read more here
Engaging Research Users to Demonstrate Impact
Ann Clark, Research Feellow at CRH is Co-Investigator in an ESRC funded research methodology network that will meet four times over the next 12 months to identify innovative ways of engaging non academic audiences with the research process and demonstrating the wider benefits of research to the economy and society. more here
CRH Student Clare Daly - Canada trip
When it was first proposed that I could go to Canada as part of my PhD in rural mental health, I thought I was dreaming and would suddenly wake up! However, in May of this year those initial discussions became a reality as I set off for a 10 week stay in Calgary, in the province of Alberta. read more
Praise for pupil who studied rural road traffic accidents
Head girl awarded science bursary on scheme that enables pupils to work on real-life research projects more
Resilience and Sustainable Rural Communities Seminar
Resilience thinking has a long history in both psychology and social ecology. When applied to communities in the research literature, resilience has generally implied the ability of communities to take action to respond to and positively influence change. Resilience is increasingly part of policy debates around future frameworks for the delivery of public services. It features in the Scottish Government's national objectives and was recently a key plank of the Scottish Rural Development Council's policy statement on the rural economy. Community resilience is also seen as a key building block of primary care health services in rural and remote communities.
Community resilience may have much to offer service providers, being a more positive development model and one which has much in common with asset based approaches to developing healthy people and communities. However is resilience being enthusiastically and uncritically adopted by policy makers while there are many unanswered questions about the processes which underpin community resilience? What relevance do the theoretical underpinnings of resilience in psychology and social ecology have when applied to communities?
Members of the UHI Sustainability Research Network organised a Research Seminar on the topic of 'Resilience and Sustainable Rural Communities' on the 27th of June 2011. A wide range of attendees from UHI, Scottish Agricultural College, The James Hutton Institute, The Highland Council, NHS Highland and the Third Sector were present in person and by VC. Some of the presentations and a note of discussiions on the day are available here.
Rob McMorran's research could not be made available due to the ongoin nature of the work, which is currently being developed for publication. To find out more or discuss the community estates element of the wider Sustainable Estates for the 21st Century project which Rob is currently working on, you can contact him directly at: robert.mcmorran@perth.uhi.ac.uk
All of the findings of the Sustainable Estates work will be published collectively in 2012, as part of an Edinburgh University Press book 'Lairds Land and Sustainability'.
If you are interested in collaborative research in this area and would like to attend please contact Ann.Clark@uhi.ac.uk
New Head for the UHI-CRH Team
Dr Gaener Rodger is the new Head for the UHI team within the Centre for Rural Health. Gaener gained her PhD at the University of Cambridge and went on to hold postdoctoral positions at the University of Oxford, Imperial College and the University of Glasgow. She moved back to the Highlands to manage the development of the Life Science and Business R&D sectors with Highlands and Islands Enterprise. In addition to leading the Centre's University of the Highlands & Islands team of nine researchers and two support staff, Gaener will be pursuing her own research interests in Rural Health Economics.
The University of the Highlands & Islands team has a particular interest in rural health policy & management. Currently it's research focuses on (i) Ways to provide services to remote and rural areas; (ii) Working with communities; (iii) New roles in service delivery and (iv) Measuring & modelling impacts of change.
Located in Inverness, the Centre for Rural Health is a partnership between the University of the Highlands & Islands and the University of Aberdeen. Staff from both academic institutions are working together to develop an international centre of excellence for rural health research across three cross-cutting themes: (i) Access and Delivery of Services; (ii) Rural Health and Technology and (iii) Health of Rural People.
Arts and Humanities Research Council Funded Project
A new Arts and Humanities Research Council funded knowledge-exchange project looking at involving staff and patients in the design, development and management of hospital greenspace will commence this month. The project, led by researchers from the Centre for Rural Health, as well as partners in the Forestry Commission, NHS Tayside and NHS Highland, will start by looking at how several hospitals in Scotland currently involve staff and patients in using the adjacent greenspace. This will inform the development of a series of engagement workshops at the new Forth Valley Hospital in Larbert that will involve staff and patients in the creation of new led activities to take place in the hospital's greenspace. In addition to creating new activities, researchers will also be looking at quantifying the Social Return On Investment (SROI) that these activities create.
The health benefits of using greenspace are well documented, but there is less evidence about how to best involve or engage hospital staff and patients in creating led activities to maximise the benefits of these outdoor spaces. Outputs from this project will include a report, a toolkit of best practice on engagement for greenspace use, and a transferable SROI framework applicable to other hospital greenspace settings.
For more information on the project, please contact either Amy Nimegeer amy.nimegeer@uhi.ac.uk or Sarah-Anne Munoz sarah-anne.munoz@uhi.ac.uk
EU Joint Transnational Conference
In September 2011 there will be an EU Joint Transnational Conference for decision and policy makers as they look forward to 2014. One of the themes will be "Demographic change" and the NPP will use the O4O project (further information here), amongst others, to illustrate how EU projects are helping to meet the demographic challenge.
The conference will include video presentations and workshops and will be held on 15-16 September in Katowice, Poland. This is the first time the thirteen transnational programmes currently operating under the European Regional Development Fund in the EU have come together to arrange a conference on how transnational cooperation can help to improve the future in European regions.
The event will have a strong focus on results for the future and feature an interactive exhibition and video coverage to highlight success stories and point to future potential. It will showcase the results and outcomes of the 13 transnational programmes to date and take outset in these findings to discuss the future prospects for transnational cooperation to help in implementing the EU 2020 Strategy. Further details at O4O website HERE
O4O: Older People for Older People Project End
The O4O: Older People for Older People project has now came to an end. Project publications, including the Final Report and Toolkit, can be viewed here
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