Connecting Citizens to Science

We have a conversation including our first citizen scientist to kick of 2023. Lou Kellett is an active participant in the Liverpool School of Tropical medicine Swab and Send programme, which is striving to find the next breakthrough in bacteria to defeat antimicrobial resistance.

We also hear from Dr. Adam Roberts, the creator of the programme, and Dr. Amy McLeman, who is taking the bacteria that shows promising results, through to the next stage of investigation in the lab.

Swab and Send is an innovative programme that relies on the anticipation of citizens to infinitely broaden the search for a solution to the AMR problem.

Amy provides us with an insight:

“Antimicrobials can be produced by bacteria or fungus from anywhere; from the soil in your local park to your kitchen sink. These are just two of the places we are looking for the next new antibiotics and it works! We are finding microbes producing interesting antimicrobials that our team are working on characterising, but did you know it can take 10-15 years and over $1.7 billion to develop a new antibiotic from discovery to market. Even then once a new antibiotic is being sold the investment return is less than $50 million on average each year. Research and development costs massively outweigh the financial return”.

About our guests:

Dr. Adam Roberts – Reader, Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine

Adam Roberts leads a research group investigating various aspects of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) from molecular biology and evolution of transferable AMR to genomic surveillance and antimicrobial drug discovery.

Dr. Amy McLeman - Postdoctoral Research Associate, Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine

Amy works as a postdoctoral research associate on discovery and characterisation of novel antimicrobials from environmental isolates. Her work includes outreach to individuals and communities to communicate the importance of AMR and what Swab and Send is doing to tackle this, and to also encourage involvement of the public to take swabs of everything and anything and send them into us to look for the next antibiotic.

Lou Kellett – Active Citizen Scientists, Wales, UK

Lou has worked in local food and farming business for the last couple of decades, including organic farming. An active participant in many citizen science projects, Lou is particularly enthusiastic about the swab and send programme as it creates the opportunity for to share the unique local environmental habitats with the wider world. Lou finds being an active citizen scientist is a great way satiate a hungry sense of curiosity.

Relevant links:

https://www.lstmed.ac.uk/public-engagement/swab-send                                   

https://www.facebook.com/swabandsend/

https://www.future-science.com/doi/10.2144/fsoa-2020-0053

#SwabAndSend

Want to hear more podcasts like this?

Follow Connecting Citizens to Science on your usual podcast platform or YouTube to hear more about the methods and approaches that researchers apply to connect with communities and co-produce solutions to global health challenges.

The podcast covers wide ranging topics such as NTD’s, NCD’s, antenatal and postnatal care, mental wellbeing and climate change, all linked to community engagement and power dynamics.    

If you would like your own project or programme to feature in an episode, get in touch with producers of Connecting Citizens to Science, The SCL Agency.   

In this celebratory episode to close out 2022, we have brought together previous co-hosts and guests to reflect on what we have learned over the past year. We examine our learning along the translational research pathway. 

The Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine have a translational research trajectory; that means there is a continuum of science from basic research and labs to embedding change for communities and within sustainable policies and practices. LSTM works with a range of partners globally along this continuum, and in this episode, we will be hearing from some of those that have worked with LSTM and have different positions within programmes and PhDs. Our multidisciplinary guests share their understanding of community engagement and how they ensure that community voice is included in research design, analysis and outcomes throughout the research pathway.

This episode features: 

Beatrice Egid – MRC PhD Student, Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine

In 2017, Beatrice completed a BA in Biological Sciences at the University of Oxford. She began an MSc in Tropical Disease Biology at LSTM in September 2018, during which she undertook a research project determining the level of insecticide resistance in Aedes aegypti mosquitoes in Accra, Ghana, and the metabolic mechanisms driving it. Beatrice started the MRC Doctoral Training Programme at LSTM, with an integrated MRes at Lancaster University in Global Health: Quantitative and Translational Skills, in 2019.

Beatrice is undertaking her PhD as part of the ARISE project. Within ARISE, Beatrice's project focuses on vector-borne diseases in waste-picking communities in Vijayawada, India. She will be employing a mixed-methods approach, combining aspects of entomology and policy analysis alongside qualitative and participatory methods.

Beatrice has a strong interest in health policy and co-production research approaches. She conducted a desk-based policy project exploring the intersection between vector-borne diseases and city resilience in the context of the Resilient Cities Network (RCN), and has published two papers from her MRes qualitative research project investigating power dynamics in participatory research.

Dr. Oluwatosin Adekeye - Assistant Director of Clinical Psychology, Department of Psychiatry Ahmadu Bello University Hospital Zaria Kaduna

A social scientist with varied experience in both clinical and research aspects of health among communities in Northern Nigeria. As a Clinical Psychologist, his work has been both on mental and behavioural disorders and the effects of chronic disease on the well-being of patients and caregivers. As a Social Scientist, he just concluded a study that documented the well-being of people with stigmatizing skin diseases and established a care and support group within the community. More recently he is working on developing a well-being tool for parents and children with disability. 

Dr Akinola Oluwole – Consultant, Sightsavers, Nigeria

Dr Akinola Oluwole is an experienced researcher with a special interest in socio-epidemiology of tropical infectious diseases. His multidisciplinary expertise includes spatial disease mapping, monitoring and evaluation of intervention and control programmes and implementation/Health systems research for public health and disease control. He has over Fifteen years’ experience working on Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDs). Recently, Dr Akinola was the programme lead for two Co-production research projects within the COUNTDOWN consortia, one to develop a care package for Female Genital Schistosomiasis and a second to improve the equity of mass drug administration in Nigeria. Both projects utilised innovative Participatory Health Research methods to generate evidence-based information on how to effectively tackle implementation challenges for NTD programme in Nigeria. Dr Akinola has strengthened the capacity of health systems actors, NTD implementers and researchers through training, mentorship and the development of practical guidelines and policy.

He is passionate about influencing policy change in Nigeria and Internationally to reduce inequities created by NTDS within the poorest communities.

Yaimie López - Research Assistant, Centre for Health Studies, Universidad del Valle de Guatemala 

Yaimie is a biologist from Guatemala with research experience in vector borne diseases and strengthening of health systems. She has been involved in several quantitative research projects focused on the biological side of the diseases, and in one qualitative project to understand the perception of key actors involved. The qualitative project was done with the participatory action research methods, with municipal stakeholders acting as co-researchers. The aim of the project was to develop a tool that would help to measure and improve the governance, leadership, multisectoral action and accountability of two municipal health systems. The project used PAR for the development of the tool, including the co-selection of questions, rating criteria and the visual presentation of the tool. 

LSTM’s translational research process

LSTM categorises the process of translating research findings into practical benefits for people living mainly in low and middle-income countries, into 5 stages:

Discovery

Development

Implementation

Evaluation & review

Research uptake

This pathway, leading from the field into the laboratory is often followed by taking the research back into the field again. Even during the initial laboratory phase, LSTM works together with its many overseas partners to deliver as much of the science locally in order to support high-quality research and capacity strengthening there where it matters most.

The continuous search for, and development, of new products will help to improve prevention and treatment of many diseases and address global health issues. This, together with knowledge of their effective implementation and an understanding of their impact through monitoring and evaluation, aim to achieve the uptake of LSTM’s research outcomes into policies and practices, ultimately benefiting patients worldwide.

Want to hear more podcasts like this?

Follow Connecting Citizens to Science on your usual podcast platform or YouTube to hear more about the methods and approaches that researchers apply to connect with communities and co-produce solutions to global health challenges.

The podcast covers wide ranging topics such as TB, NTD’s, antenatal and postnatal care, mental wellbeing and climate change, all linked to global health and community engagement.   

If you would like your own project or programme to feature in an episode, get in touch with producers of Connecting Citizens to Science, the SCL Agency.   

In this week's episode, we are talking to the Tupumue Project, who applied creative participatory methods alongside clinical data to understand how many children, in two communities in Nairobi, Kenya have lung problems, and to explore children's experiences of lung problems and air pollution. The project used a variety of creative research methods including drawings, drama, walking interviews with go pros, comics, graffiti and others. They even engaged children in co- analysis and theme development.  

Co-host for this episode, Dr. Hellen Meme, told us more about the programme; 

“The choice of the word “Tupumue” (meaning “lets breathe”!) as an identity of the program was because breathing is a function important to all. The Tupumue programme was a complex undertaking considering the broadness of the subject that was covered, in regard to establishing the burden of non-communicable lung diseases in school children and risk factors in both an informal and formal community context. The necessary skill pool had to be wide to achieve this and hence the broad collaboration involving a multidisciplinary team derived from several North and South institutions. For everyone to own the study, we held consultative meetings through which we established a niche for everyone to participate. We are in the process of widely disseminating our study findings and are currently sharing our results with all stakeholders including participating schools and the community in order to get their views on the findings before we engage policy makers”. 

This episode features: 

Dr. Hellen Meme (co-host) - Chief Research Scientist, Kenya Medical Research Institute (KEMRI) 

Hellen Meme’s research work spans over 30 years and involves health and communities. Her research area of interest is in respiratory diseases with bias towards conducting  research in congregate communities. This necessitates a broad skill base as well as innovation in planning approaches appropriate for project implementation. In this regard, engagement of community and other stakeholders is key.  

Dr Sarah West - Centre Director and Senior Research Fellow, Stockholm Environment Institute, University of York 

Sarah has been using citizen science approaches since she began work at SEI York in 2008, working on topics ranging from air pollution and biodiversity through to parenting and food waste. All her work uses citizen science approaches to engage a diverse range of people with research. She uses this approach because she believes that well designed projects can have huge benefits for advancing research and for making a difference for all those involved in projects. She also conducts research around the method of citizen science, looking at who is and isn’t participating in projects, and evaluating projects’ efficacy.  

Relevant links: 

https://www.sei.org/featured/citizen-science-month/ 

Fred Orina - Senior Research Scientist, Kenya Medical Research Institute (KEMRI) 

Fred’s interest is research implementation. He has 10 years’ experience in coordinating the implementation of human health research, with a focus on lung health studies in both static and nomadic communities. This involves liaising with communities and diverse stakeholders. With a scientific background, he acts as the interlink between the community, researchers, and the sponsor. 

Professor Graham Devereux - Professor of Respiratory Medicine, Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine 

Graham is a Professor of Respiratory Medicine with research interests in the antenatal influences on the life course of airways disease and clinical trials in COPD.  He is also an Honorary Consultant at Aintree University Hospital and spent 2020-2022 managing patients with COVID-19. 

His research into the life-course of airways diseases such as asthma and COPD has involved studies of large numbers of pregnant women, children and adults, originally in the UK,  since his move to the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine his work has involved large numbers of children and adults in Kenya and Malawi. 

Follow Connecting Citizens to Science on your usual podcast platform or YouTube to hear more about the methods and approaches that researchers apply to connect with communities and co-produce solutions to global health challenges. The series covers wide ranging topics such as TB, NTD’s, antenatal and postnatal care, mental wellbeing and climate change, all linked to health.   

If you would like your own project or programme to feature in an episode, get in touch with producers of Connecting Citizens to Science, the SCL Agency.   

In this episode we hear about a participatory action research project in Guatemala, funded by the Director's Catalyst Fund at LSTM, that co-designed a tool for health leaders and community partners to assess and improve urban health governance.  

The project was based in two Guatemalan urban municipalities; Villa Nueva and Mixco. We speak with Guillermo Hegel, the project lead who was also the Health Director at Villa Nueva Municipality at the time of the project. We also hear from Yaimie Lopez and Cintia Cansado who coordinated and evaluated the project. They share their experience of participatory research and working with policy makers.  

The research team together with co-researchers who were urban health stakeholders looked at 4 domains, Governance, leadership accountability and multi-sectoral action. They first defined what these terms were, then they co-analysed existing tools to measure governance performance and designed an online tool which could be used to rank current performance and areas for improvement which could then track over time.  

The tool involved a number of qualitative questions that required discussions and reflections about governance in their work and required a level of trust and transparency which is further explored by our guests.  

This Episode features: 

Wesam is a Health System Researcher with research expertise in health workforce and health systems strengthening in fragile contexts using qualitative research and participatory action research approaches. Her work includes working in the areas of gender, equity and justice and how to apply those concepts to develop gender-equitable, resilient and inclusive health systems. She is currently working, in LSTM, on the ReBUILD4Resilience project which is health system research in Fragile and Shock-Prone (FASP) settings in 4 countries (Nepal, Myanmar, Sierra Leone, and Lebanon). In ReBUILD, they worked with the Close to Community (CTC) providers in FASP settings to explore how participatory action research can support CTC providers to address gender norms and power relations within their communities and in the health systems in Lebanon and Nepal. 

Links:

LSTM - Wesam Mansour

ReBUILD Consortium

ReBUILD - Gender Project

Since 2020 Guillermo has been a researcher at CIIPEC. He coordinates a participatory action research project in collaboration with the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine. From 2014 to early 2020, he was health director of the municipality of Villa Nueva, Guatemala. A core part of his tasks was to articulate 'Health-in-All Policies' and to improve the primary health care system in urban setting through participatory processes. Between 2008-2013, he worked at PAHO/WHO Guatemala, as an advisor for social determinants of health and the ´Healthy Cities´ initiative, leading and contributing to several programs in Guatemala and Latin America. He began his career in public health in 2000, promoting small-scale projects at the community level with an environmental and inter-sectoral approach. Since 2016 Guillermo holds a master's degree in public health from the Institute of Tropical Medicine, Antwerp, Belgium, in addition to a previous master's degree in development (2011) and a BA in environmental science (2004), both from Universidad del Valle de Guatemala. As of 2018 he is a member of Health Systems Global and Emerging Voices for Global Health. 

Yaimie is a biologist from Guatemala with research experience in vector borne diseases and strengthening of health systems. She has been involved in several quantitative research projects focused on the biological side of the diseases, and in one qualitative project to understand the perception of key actors involved. The qualitative project was done with the participatory action research methods, with municipal stakeholders acting as co-researchers. The aim of the project was to develop a tool that would help to measure and improve the governance, leadership, multi-sectoral action and accountability of two municipal health systems. The project used PAR for the development of the tool, including the co-selection of questions, rating criteria and the visual presentation of the tool. 

Cintia comes from a background in molecular biology. Her bachelor’s degree is in Biotechnology and her master’s degree is in Medical Parasitology and Entomology. Most of her expertise involves lab work with some field work in Guinea, studying mosquitoes. At the beginning of her PhD, she enrolled in an MRes in Global Health where she acquired translational skills and became interested in qualitative research. She had the opportunity to participate in the GOBLAR project with Kim, Guillermo, Yaimie and the rest of the participants and she cites it as a very positive experience for her. She believes there is a gap between basic and applied science, and although her PhD focuses on molecular biology of mosquitoes, she would like to incorporate some qualitative methods to her research to understand the perceptions of novel mosquito control methods from a community perspective and contribute to close this gap.  

For more information about the tool mentioned in this episode, see this video on our YouTube channel:

https://youtu.be/nXxOoN74OAc

Guillermo and Yaimie, who worked with Oscar (mentioned in the episode), pay tribute to their valued and much missed co-worker;

 “Oscar Hernandez was a medical doctor from Guatemala who died in 2020 while working in the front lines against the Covid-19 pandemic. He believed so much in his work that he had isolated from his family while working in the hospital to avoid infecting them. He was one of the first people to be on the participatory action research team and worked hard to lay the foundation of the project.

Oscar was a highly energetic person, eager to learn. He knew how to see the bright side of difficult situations. He was very funny, always making jokes.” 

Follow Connecting Citizens to Science on your usual podcast platform or YouTube to hear our equitable global health research podcast connect discussing how researchers connect with communities and people to co-develop solutions to global health challenges. The series covers wide ranging topics such as TB, NTD’s, antenatal and postnatal care, mental wellbeing and climate change linked to health.  

If you would like your own project or programme to feature in an episode, get in touch with producers of Connecting Citizens to Science, the SCL Agency.  

Our team of podcasters were roaming the halls of HSR2022, the Seventh Global Symposium on Health Systems Research, capturing the conversations ‘in the halls’ after the sessions, with a focus on community engagement. 

In this final HSR2022 episode, host Kim Ozano and guests share their thoughts and takeaways from the conference.  Our host, Kim, presented at HSR2022 sessions as part of Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine’s (LSTM) cohort.  As LSTM mark 125 years of global health research and look to the next 125 years, she summarises  the themes that reoccurred in conversation with other delegates and presenters.  

Host of Connecting Citizens to Science podcast: Dr Kim Ozano – Research Director, the SCL Agency 

Bea Egid (co-host) -  MRC PhD Student, Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine

Jhaki A. Mendoza – Research Associate, University of the Philippines  

Maria Van Der Merwe -  Research Coordinator, VAPAR

Vivek Dsouza – Research officer, Institute of Public Health, Bangalore 

Kara Hanson - Professor of Health System Economics and Dean, Faculty of Public Health & Policy, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine 

Follow Connecting Citizens to Science on your usual podcast platform to hear our equitable global health research podcast connect discussing how researchers connect with communities and people to co-develop solutions to global health challenges.

The series covers wide ranging topics such as TB, NTD’s, antenatal and postnatal care, mental wellbeing and climate change linked to health. 

Our team of podcasters were roaming the halls of HSR2022, capturing the thoughts and takeways of the presenters and delegates after the sessions, with a focus on community engagement. 

In today’s special episode we have: 

We will compile and share further conversations and insights from the symposium over the coming weeks.  

Follow Connecting Citizens to Science on your usual podcast platform to hear our equitable global health research podcast connect discussing how researchers connect with communities and people to co-develop solutions to global health challenges. The series covers wide ranging topics such as TB, NTD’s, antenatal and postnatal care, mental wellbeing and climate change linked to health. 

Our team of podcasters are roaming the halls of HSR2022 to bring you the thoughts and takeways of the presenters and delegates after the sessions, with a focus on community engagement.

In today’s special episode (capturing thoughts from 02/11/22) we have:

More conference coverage coming your way throughout the week!

Follow Connecting Citizens to Science on your usual podcast platform to hear our equitable global health research podcast connect discussing how researchers connect with communities and people to co-develop solutions to global health challenges. The series covers wide ranging topics such as TB, NTD’s, antenatal and postnatal care, mental wellbeing and climate change linked to health.

Our team of podcasters are roaming the halls of HSR2022 to bring you the thoughts and takeways of the presenters and delegates after the sessions, with a focus on community engagement. 

In today’s special episode we have: 

More conference coverage coming your way throughout the week! 

Follow Connecting Citizens to Science on your usual podcast platform to hear our equitable global health research podcast connect discussing how researchers connect with communities and people to co-develop solutions to global health challenges. The series covers wide ranging topics such as TB, NTD’s, antenatal and postnatal care, mental wellbeing and climate change linked to health. 

To do this, we will be hosting conversations about the ways in which the Global South and the Global North have learned from each other and the valuable collaborations that have shaped global health policies and practices and continue to influence them. These conversations, will of course, have a specific focus on engaging with communities and people.

This episode examines how The Liverpool Vaccine Equity project applied lessons learned from the Global South, specifically Kenya, to reduce vaccine hesitancy in Merseyside and how the methods have created a legacy that is improving uptake of other health services.

The episodes guests:

Community Mobiliser, Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine

Amina is a Community Mobiliser at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine working on the Liverpool Vaccine Equity Project. She is a qualified Primary teacher and understands the positive impact of supporting communities to address inequality.

Amina has over 25 years’ experience in the UK and Saudi Arabia working with communities across both the education and health sector. She has supported multidisciplinary Community Innovation Teams (CITs) working in deprived areas of Liverpool to identify reasons for vaccine hesitancy.

Amina has provided coaching and support to the Community Innovation Teams. She is committed to working with the CITs and engaging with different stakeholders to improve collaborative working reflective of a community-led approach to achieve vaccine equity.  

 Relevant links:

About The Liverpool Vaccine Equity project

Project

Approach (video)

I did if for……photo exhibition

22 Vaccination Stories

Community Champion, Merseyside Somali and Community Association and Kaalmo Youth Development

The aim of Zak's role is to reduce health inequalities and increase health equity and support his community. At Kaalmo Youth Development, Zak supports young people working as a sessional youth worker arranging trips, group activities and after school classes.

He supports a community drop-in service held in the Merseyside Somali and Community Association helping people with benefits services, debt advice, support with translation and school admissions.

Zak also runs his own organisation on the side Granby Toxteth Athletic a mental health sports organisation tackling mental health through physical activity they have as a walking club a football team and a basketball team.

Relevant Links:

Granby Toxteth Athletic Project

Project Officer, Continuous Quality Improvement, LVCT Health

Mandela serves as Project Officer for continuous quality improvement at LVCT Health Organisation based in Kenya, Kisii County. He has previously worked on mixed methods research projects around quality of care in community health programs in multiple low- and middle-income community settings.

His work provides a unique platform that empowers community health workers, community health extension workers and peer educators to acquire feedback directly from the beneficiaries (clients) on how to improve quality health services at the community level. This enables improved access and provision of quality and equitable health service provision at the primary and secondary health facilities.

He also worked as a Program Officer for 4byFour model; a maternal health system strengthening intervention which builds on the flagship SQALE quality improvement intervention. It combines quality improvement with roll out of antenatal facility point-of-care testing for HIV, syphilis, anemia and malaria, and community pregnancy testing and referral.

He was part of the team that supported the success of USAID SQALE Program in Migori County.

Relevant links:

USAIDSQALE

Our team of Connecting Citizens to Science podcasters are roaming the halls of HSR2022 to bring you the thoughts and takeways of the presenters and delegates after the sessions, with a focus on community engagement. 

In today’s special episode we have: 

These delegates share  their thoughts and takeaways from some of the sessions held on 31/10/22.  

More conference coverage coming your way throughout the week! 

Follow Connecting Citizens to Science on your usual podcast platform to hear our equitable global health research podcast discussing how researchers connect with communities and people to co-develop solutions to global health challenges. The series covers wide ranging topics such as TB, NTD’s, antenatal and postnatal care, mental well-being and climate change linked to health.