Helen Higgins

Contact

• workRoom Gateway Veterinary Medicine and Science
  Sutton Bonington Campus
  Sutton Bonington
  Leicestershire
  LE12 5RD
  UK
• work0115 951 6572
• helen.higgins@nottingham.ac.uk

Expertise Summary

Helen is a junior Wellcome Trust Research Fellow. She holds the RCVS certificate in Cattle Health and Production

Research Summary

New knowledge will only be used effectively on farm if the underpinning research has an impact by changing the minds and actions of veterinary surgeons in practice. If practitioners currently hold… read more

Current Research

New knowledge will only be used effectively on farm if the underpinning research has an impact by changing the minds and actions of veterinary surgeons in practice. If practitioners currently hold very strong and/or diverse clinical beliefs, stronger future evidence will be required to alter those pre-existing beliefs and forge a new prevailing opinion amongst the veterinary community. The main focus of this research is to investigate within a Bayesian framework, the current opinions of practitioners' regarding herd health interventions to reduce key endemic diseases of dairy cattle. However, whilst the effective transfer of research knowledge into clinical practice is vital, this alone is not sufficient to secure real improvements in herd health; crucial to all herd health programmes is the practitioner's ability to facilitate changes to human behaviour relating to stockmanship, management and investment on farm. Part of this research, therefore, is devoted to investigating and understandings ways to facilitate the necessary changes on farm so that knowledge is put into action; it involves applying human behavioural science to a herd health context.