Month: December 2013

The Global School Health and Nutrition Resource Relaunched

The global school health and nutrition resource schoolsandhealth.org, administered by Partnership for Child Development (PCD), was recently re-launched to further the reach of high quality School Health and Nutrition (SHN) documents, resources and news to the SHN community.

Improving the way news and information on the health, nutrition and education of school-age children around the world is disseminated remains as vital as ever. The new website allows quality assured, academically reviewed SHN resources, data and information to be distinguished from the multitude of information now available online; ensuring the SHN community has easy access to what they are looking for.” said PCD’s Executive Director, Lesley Drake.

schoolsandhealth.org was developed in 1998 in collaboration between: World Bank, World Food Programme, World Health Organization, UNICEF, PCD and other partners in response to a demand for a global online portal making SHN resources easily accessible to SHN interest groups, and in particular to policy makers and practitioners. The re-launched website continues to adhere to this demand; through its new and improved sections the website’s user friendliness, navigation and accessibility from internet searches is further ensured.

 

Selected New Website Features

 

 

Documents and Resource Centre:

The revitalised Documents and Resource Centre holds over an impressive 670 resources – twice as many relevant SHN relevant resources as previously displayed. These range in topic from: examples of good programming practice and policy, case studies, technical reviews, toolkits and guidelines, reports, surveys, advocacy tools and international declarations. Within the centre details including description, topic, title and author are outlined for each document allowing information to be easily viewed prior to download. Searches can also be categorized by SHN theme, language and year.
• Visit the Documents and Resource Centre

Updated Website Pages:

The website provides revamped pages for relevant school health topic areas including: helminth infectionsnutritionHIVwater, hygiene and sanitationacute respiratory infections and malaria. Reflecting  SHN expansion, the site now encompasses an inclusive education section.

News & Events Section:

Global and country specific school health news continues to be displayed in a new appealing format through the website’s news and events section holding almost 200 diverse SHN news articles which can be easily viewed collectively as well as in detail individually.
• Visit the News and Events Section

Visit schoolsandhealth.org to view all other features and the revitalised layout.

 

Charlotte Broyd
Website and Communications Assistant
Partnership for Child Development

REF and all that…

Well, it’s over for another 6 years, all bar the shouting. The Faculty finally submitted its REF2014 return on 22 November well ahead of the November 29th deadline, along with the rest of the College.  The hard metrics show that we have returned 435 FTEs (representing 521 academics) across three Units of assessment:

  • UoA1 – Clinical medicine
  • UoA2 – Epidemiology and Public Health
  • UoA4 – Neurosciences.

We take this opportunity to thank all our academics, our impact case contributors, our Divisional administrators and their teams and our HoDs for their unswerving commitment and sheer hard work to make this such a strong return.

UoA1 is our largest return with 334 FTEs representing 406 academics, which is over 25% of the whole College in one single unit. There were 34 impact cases presented – whittled down by the Faculty REF Impact Committee (chaired by Deborah Ashby) from the >80 impacts which we initially reviewed. These impact cases are completely new to this year’s REF so we, and all our competitors, are working without any precedents to guide us. However, we were really impressed by the high quality of the translation of our research into new therapies, clinical guidelines and health policies. Given the size and ability of our Faculty, we have high hopes of a strong result in UoA1.

In the last RAE2008 exercise, our Dept of Epidemiology, Public Health and Primary Care was joint 1st nationally in its UoA with 33 FTEs returned. In REF2014, we have returned 55 FTEs in UoA2 (61 academics), and six impact cases. We believe that the quality of our outputs is as high as previously, and with two new MRC Centres, strong impact cases and the creation of the expanded School of Public Health, we hope and expect to equal our performance in this competitive area.

We have returned 44 FTEs (54 academics) in Neuroscience, representing the College and Faculty support for the rebuilding of this critical component of our research base in Medicine, under the leadership of Prof Paul Matthews. The three Neuroscience themes have each demonstrated critical mass, high quality outputs and compelling impact cases; we are optimistic that we shall exceed our performance in this UoA over RAE2008.

This REF return is very much a team effort involving the whole Faculty, but the contributions of Lyndsey Pallant and Sarah Perkins have been massive and this is an opportunity for the Faculty to thank them wholeheartedly for their skill and dedication.

The results of REF2014 will be public in December 2014; in the meanwhile my colleagues and I brace ourselves for the actual assessment process itself in the Spring.

Professor Jonathan Weber
Vice Dean
 (Research)
Faculty of Medicine

Professor John Warner Awarded OBE at Windsor Palace

Prof J O Warner OBEProfessor John Warner, a consultant paediatrician at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, was awarded his OBE at Windsor Castle on 22 November. Speaking at his Investiture, Professor Warner said he was honoured to receive the award.

“It was unexpected and unasked for. I feel very flattered and honoured that my research and the research of my team has been recognised in this way.”

Professor Warner has been involved in food allergy research over the past 25 years. His research has focused on the early life origins of asthma and related allergic and respiratory disorders. He is currently working on a programme to improve knowledge and co-ordinate the management of children with allergies in general practices, nurseries, schools and home.