Global health research

The Community and Primary Care Research Group (CPCRG) at the University of Plymouth have been working extensively on lung health research projects in low-resource settings since 2012, starting with an observational prevalence study, an implementation study for co-developing education materials for healthcare workers, and feasibility and acceptability of pulmonary rehabilitation (PR), all in rural Uganda.

Subsequent funding was secured for several packages of work in Uganda, Crete, Kyrgyzstan and Vietnam (FRESH AIR: Horizon 2020), including a midwife-led education programme to reduce smoke exposure for women and children (The Midwife Project), implementation of smoking cessation, and feasibility and acceptability of PR. We also secured funding for Kupumua, a project that culturally adapted and evaluated the incorporation of dance, music and singing into PR sessions (Philip et al, 2021). We have worked with University of Plymouth BSc Illustration students on our projects to design Teaching resources  for children and communities in Uganda.

Following qualitative evaluation of the longer-term impact and change for midwives, village health teams, and mothers who had taken part in The Midwife Project in Uganda (Cartwright et al, 2022), further work is continuing to evaluate feasibility of a new digital educational programme via TeachBox. This programme has been designed collaboratively between The 625, the University of Plymouth and Makerere University in Uganda, and is in line with World Health Organisation guidance. We completed a pilot session in this digital format in Jinja, Uganda in July 2022, during which we ran a full course and consulted with midwives on every aspect of education and assessment. We now hope to secure further funding to enable us to make informed changes to the programme based on this pilot, and evaluate the programme more widely with larger numbers of midwives and in other areas of rural Uganda.

Global health projects are supported by the National Institute for Health and Care Research Applied Research Collaboration South West Peninsula (PenARC).

Please see below for links to all projects.

The University of Plymouth, UK
(Faculty of Health)