Dr Lucie Byrne-Davis and Dr Jo Hart are visiting the Division of Primary Care on Thursday 26th April 2018 and will give a talk called “Is there a role for UK Health Psychology in global health? Experiences from The Change Exchange”.
The presenters:
Dr Lucie Byrne-Davis is a Senior Lecturer in Assessment and Psychometrics at the University of Manchester. Her research is about health professional behaviour change, focusing on training as an intervention to change practice. She has a passion for translational behavioural science, and as well as her research, she leads for the behavioural and social sciences component of the medical programme at University of Manchester.
Dr Jo Hart is a Reader in Health Professional Education, is Deputy Head of the Division of Medical Education, University of Manchester and is the Chair of the British Psychological Society Division of Health Psychology. Her research is about the impact of health professional education on practice. She is working to increase the reach and influence of Health Psychology nationally and internationally.
Together, Lucie and Jo lead The Change Exchange, an organisation established to translate behavioural science to support health systems strengthening in global health.
Presentation Overview:
In this talk, Lucie and Jo will describe a project in which health psychology volunteers enabled health partnerships to understand and use the theories, techniques and assessments of behavioural science. Health partnerships are partnerships between High Income Country (HIC) and Low and Middle Income Country healthcare organisations that aim to strengthen health systems.
Health Partnerships often use health professional training to change practice with the aim of improving quality of care. Training is rarely viewed as an intervention to change practice, which means that there is fertile ground for health psychology to help shift the focus from only improving the competence and capability of health professionals to include their opportunity and motivation to make changes in practice. The Change Exchange, a collective of volunteer health psychologists, worked with health partnerships to strengthen their projects by translating behavioural science in situ. Lucie and Jo will outline four case studies in which UK health psychologists working with colleagues in Uganda, Sierra Leone and Mozambique, explored the behaviour change techniques used by educators, supported knowledge and skill development in behaviour change, monitored the impact of projects on psychological determinants of behaviour and made recommendations for future project developments.
Challenges in the work included having time and space for behavioural science in already very busy health partnership schedules and the difficulties in using certain methods in other cultures. Lucie and Jo will briefly discuss the difficulties in this way of working at the intersection of research, volunteering and consultancy and how this might add value.
This seminar is part of the joint seminar/skills programme organised by the Divisions of Primary Care and Epidemiology & Public Health.