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University of Stirling

The University of Stirling, in close collaboration with colleagues in Malawi, is engaged in a range of applied health across a range of research to develop cultures, communities and society, improve global security and resilience and developing and evaluating approaches and interventions to improve health and wellbeing outcomes.

Projects

Project 1: Safe Roads Africa

Preventing injury and death caused by road traffic collisions, and to develop, implement and evaluate a community resilience intervention that trains community members in life-saving first aid.

University of Stirling 1

Area of work: Health, Wellbeing, Traffic Collisions
Location of work:
Bangwe West, Limbe and Domasi

Project lead:
Dr. Edward Duncan
Contact details:
Edward.duncan@stir.ac.uk, Dr Greg Mannion - greg.mannion@stir.ac.uk

Partner organisation: University of Malawi College of Medicine, Polytechnic and Chancellor College
Pakachere Institute for Heath, Development and Communication
Jacaranda Foundation
Partner contact:
Dr Wakisa Mulwafu
Contact details:
wmulwafu2@gmail.com

Funding:
Medical Research Council, The Arts and Humanities Research Council, the University of Stirling
More information:
https://saferoadsafrica.com/

Description of project

Our work started in 2017 in Malawi, which has one of the world’s highest rates of road traffic related mortality (approximately 5,700 deaths as a result of RTCs each year) but one of the world’s lowest, though rapidly rising, rates of vehicle ownership.

Our Medical Research Councils and Arts and Humanity Research Council funded awards has the following long-term partnership aims:

  • To establish lasting interdisciplinary and inter-sectoral research partnership to develop, evaluate and disseminate innovative and sustainable solutions that prevent and respond to road traffic related trauma in Malawi, and across sub-Saharan Africa.
  • To investigate the barriers and facilitators, including cultural and contextual factors that influence the community prevention of and response to road traffic related trauma.
  • To develop a programme intervention to improve community prevention and first-response within local communities highly affected by road traffic related trauma.
  • To consider the potential transferability of the developed programme intervention across sub-Saharan Africa.
  • To communicate the outputs of the partnership, and the interdisciplinary and inter-sectoral methods that are used to achieve its aims, to a local national and international audience.
  • To develop a partnership funding plan to ensure sustainability of the partnership.
Key successes and outcomes so far

Following from our work to date 42 individuals in Bangwe and Domasi have been trained in an intense internationally recognised First Aid training Programme. Following our prevention intervention, improvements to the road infrastructure around two schools in Limbe have been made – a direct consequence of our work. Further details on this work can be found on Twitter by searching #saferoadsafrica.

Future and ideas for partnership development

To date the community resilience intervention has been co-developed with local communities and national stakeholders. In addition, a prevention intervention targeted at adolescents in schools has also been developed and feasibility tested. Research funding applications are currently under review and further applications are planned for the Spring of 2020.

We continue to aim to:-

  • Reduce the number of road traffic related collisions in communities
  • Save lives by responding better to collisions when they occur
  • Enable people who have been affected by road traffic related trauma to recover and continue living healthy and productive lives

We are very open to collaborating with people who are interested in working to reduce deaths and injuries due to road traffic collisions.

Project 2: REvAMP Consortium for Alcohol Policy research (Malawi)

Promote population level policy and policymaking in Malawi that can reduce alcohol-related harms in Malawi

Area of work: Alcohol, Policy
Location of work:
Across Malawi

Project lead:
Dr Isabelle Uny
Contact details:
Isabelle.uny@stir.ac.uk

Partner organisation: Chancellor College University of Malawi
Partner contact:
Dr Benjamin Kaneka
Contact details:
bkaneka@cc.ac.mw

Funding: Internal Connect funding and the University of Stirling
More information:
www.unima.mw

Description of project

We develop effective working relationships with LMIC partners (currently Malawi, Uganda, South Africa, Lebanon, Peru, Brazil, and Honduras) on alcohol policy research. We discuss and agree research priorities of mutual interest that meet and develop viable research project proposals, with a view to UK ODA-linked Research Funding (GCRF, MRC Applied Global Health).

We are also interested in the impact of alcohol marketing on consumption at community level.

Key successes and outcomes so far

We are currently developing funding applications for projects in Malawi, Uganda and South Africa (MRC Applied Global health, Health Systems Research Initiative 7, Global Research Challenge Fund)

Future and ideas for partnership development

We would like to collaborate with any Scotland Malawi Partnership member who is working on the population level impact of alcohol policy and looking to reduce harm from alcohol consumption at community level.

Project 3: Promoting Respectful childbirth Care in Malawi

Intervention Development and Feasibility of Using 'respect circles' to promote respectful care in childbirth in Malawi.

Area of work: Health, Maternal Health, Quality of Care
Location of work:
Blantyre District

Project lead:
Dr Isabelle Uny
Contact details:
Isabelle.uny@stir.ac.uk

Partner organisation: MUST, Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital
Partner contact:
Prof. Address Malata
Contact details:
amalata@must.ac.mw

Description of project

Together the partners have submitted a bid to the Global Health Research Challenge Fund Maternal and Neonatal Health seed funding for an Intervention Development and Feasibility of Using 'respect circles' to promote respectful care in childbirth in Malawi. Our objective is to work together to refine, prototype and assess the feasibility of delivering an intervention based around 'respect circles' for improving the quality of childbirth care in Malawi. The main aims are to:

Gain a deeper understanding of women's, guardians' and midwives' priorities around childbirth, and identify any conflicts in priorities;

  1. Gain a deeper understanding of women's, guardians' and midwives' priorities around childbirth, and identify any conflicts in priorities;
  2. Identify barriers and facilitators to changing the behaviours of midwives, but also of women and guardians, and ascertain what elements of the intervention can address these factors;
  3. Collaboratively agree on concrete changes (action plans) which can be made immediately at low cost to promote good communications and high-quality, respectful childbirth care at health facilities.

Project 4: Bats without Borders

To improve ecological knowledge of bats in southern Africa and to conserve bat populations and biodiversity.

Area of work: Research, Conservation, Bats
Location of work:
Across Malawi

Project lead:
Prof. Kirsty Park
Contact details:
k.j.park@stir.ac.uk

Partner organisation: MUST
Partner contact:
Dr Tiwonge Gawa
Contact details:
Rachel@batswithoutboarders.org

Funding: Rufford Foundation and EU (via the Global Biodiversity Information Facility)
More information:
http://www.batswithoutborders.org/

Description of project

Bats without Borders, a registered Scottish charity based at the University of Stirling works across southern Africa to conserve bat populations and biodiversity by engaging with children, adults, students, researchers, communities, decision makers, conservationists, land managers, agricultural industry and private and public institutions.

The founder, Dr Rachael Cooper-Bohannon, an honorary research fellow at UoS is based in Malawi, and Prof. Kirsty Park (based at UoS) is the Chair of the board. A brief outline of recent activities is listed below:

  • In partnership with the Livingstone Museum (Zambia), we completed the EU funded Zambian bat data mobilisation project – as well as increasing the amount of bat data available to researchers, this project greatly enhanced local capacity through training.
  • Members of the BwB team regularly run a number of training and education courses, including for rangers and community members at Kasanka National Park.
  • In 2019, we ran a workshop for early career ecologists in Malawi, funded by the Global Challenges Research Fund through the University of Stirling. Thirty participants from across Malawi joined the workshop, which included speakers from BwB, University of Stirling, Malawi and South Africa. Discussions and group exercises covered threats to Malawi’s biodiversity, identifying information gaps, designing ecological surveys, science communication and presentation skills. The long-term vision for positive economic and societal outcomes likely to be achieved through the workshop will be to: 1.) strengthen capacity to bridge knowledge and skills gaps to enable Malawi to halt threatened species’ population declines; 2.) work together to prioritise action to mitigate the current conservation threats of Malawi’s fauna and flora; 3.) address threats and improve the conservation status of focal populations and/or habitats that are threatened and declining.
Key successes and outcomes so far

Bats without Borders continue to work with local NGOs, National Parks to pursue all areas of the charity’s work (outlined above).

Project 5: From fuel to pot

An interdisciplinary partnership to address the role of solid fuel use in food preparation in the household in Kenya and Malawi.

Area of work: Household Energy use; maternal and child health
Location of work:
Blantyre (informal settlement of Ndirande)

Project lead:
Dr Isabelle Uny
Contact details:
Isabelle.uny@stir.ac.uk

Partner organisation: Malawi University for Business and Applied Sciences (MUBAS)
Partner contact:
L. Kalumbi

Funding: Arts and Humanities research Council
More information: https://www.stir.ac.uk/research/hub/contract/1420147

Description of project

More than 3 billion people globally cook their food on solid fuels including wood, charcoal, coal and animal dung, as these are the most available and affordable sources of energy. Those most affected are poor urban and peri-urban dwellers in low and middle income countries (LMICs) who cannot afford to connect to the modern energy infrastructure for their cooking needs, and who live in high-density housing with limited ventilation. Women and girls are particularly at risk as they are the primary cooking fuel gatherers and the primary cooks in most LMICs. The aim of this 20 months project is to better understand the role of solid fuel ( charcoal, wood, biomass waste etc) use in cooking food in informal settlements in Kenya and Malawi, given its adverse health impacts, and in order to develop innovative and contextually appropriate interventions. We will work closely with community members in the slum of Mukuru ( Kenya) and Ndirande ( Malawi). We will use participatory and and interdisciplinary methods to explore the lived experiences of women and children in households which cook food with solid fuels in Kenya and Malawi.

We will conduct walking interviews to understand the experience of the of ‘fuel to pot’ journey in Mukuru and Ndirande and use photovoice methods to explore and understand the lived experience of community members of cooking using solid fuel. We will also visualize and sense-check the data co-constructed with community members using a range of techniques focused on visual literacy (pop-up exhibitions of posters, paintings or drawings made by local artists and videos), and engage in a discussion with community members in Mukuru and Ndirande around potential intervention ideas which the Partnership may take forward to address their priorities in terms of cooking food on solid fuels. We will take the feedback from those discussion to further stakeholders events with policy makers, government officials, NGOS, academics and traditional leaders and discuss the potential intervention ideas and their feasibility and appropriateness, at events in Nairobi and Blantyre.

Key successes and outcomes so far

What has worked well in these first few months (bearing in mind the pandemic and the impact of the ODA cuts) is our programme of training and knowledge sharing online, co-designed and delivered by members of the team in Malawi, Scotland and Kenya.

Future and ideas for partnership development

The project will finish Sept 2022. We will use learning and findings to co-develop with the communities involved potential interventions that are both contextually appropriate, but also feasible and sustainable.