Episode 5
S10 E5: From lab to people - the translational research journey
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.
Transcript
Hello listeners and welcome to the Connecting Citizens to Science Podcast.
Kim Ozano:A podcast that explores methods and approaches that are used in research and science to connect communities and make
Kim Ozano:Welcome to the final episode of 2022.
Kim Ozano:I'm Dr.
Kim Ozano:Kim Ozano, and today we ask you to join us in celebrating a year of Connecting Citizens to Science podcasting.
Kim Ozano:I'm here with co-founder Beatrice Egid, and over the last year we have heard from communities and patients survivors,
Kim Ozano:In this celebratory episode to close out 2022, we have brought together previous co-hosts and guests to
Kim Ozano:To do this, we decided we would examine our learning along the translational research pathway.
Kim Ozano:The Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, who we've worked with in this last year, they have a translational research
Kim Ozano:LSTM works with a range of partners globally along this continuum, and today we will be hearing from some of
Kim Ozano:So welcome to our guests.
Kim Ozano:Let's start by hearing from Tosin.
Tosin Adekeye:I am Tosin Adekeye.
Tosin Adekeye:I work with the Ahmadu Bello University Teaching Hospital in Zaria.
Tosin Adekeye:I work primarily in the mental health department.
Akinola Oluwole:I'm Akinola Oluwole.
Akinola Oluwole:I currently consult on with Sightsavers on the FGS project.
Akinola Oluwole:I was background in Zoology, but then now I'm a social scientist, social parasitologist, when the translation between, from
Kim Ozano:FGS is Female Genital Schistosomiasis, a condition that affects women and is quite stigmatising and can have
Yaimie Lopez:I am Yaimie, I was a master's student between 2020 and 2021 at the Tropical Disease Biology Masters, and now I'm leading a
Yaimie Lopez:I've been working in the UK for, for a bit now, processing my samples, but all the data has been collected in Guatemala and I've
Yaimie Lopez:We are bringing the, the research back to, to Guatemala and, I actually want to highlight the LSTM part in my life because there
Yaimie Lopez:So LSTM has been a big part for us at the university back in Guatemala because we know it's a great institution and
Kim Ozano:Thank you very much.
Kim Ozano:So I think what's really interesting here is we have different backgrounds and we're going to hear more about what that means
Kim Ozano:So I have worked at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine for five years as a social scientist and a
Kim Ozano:And I think you're right, Yaimie it's the networks is, is amazing.
Kim Ozano:Bea, have you, introduced yourself on any of our episodes?
Beatrice Egid:I've been doing a PhD at LSTM for the last three years and before that I did a master's, the
Beatrice Egid:My trajectory is an interesting one in that I started studying biology and I've moved much more towards kind of
Beatrice Egid:It's been really interesting for me to kind of work across different departments at LSTM.
Beatrice Egid:So I'm technically part of the vector biology department, but I work very closely with people in the International Public
Kim Ozano:So how should we explore this translational pathway?
Beatrice Egid:Maybe we'll come to Yaimie first and ask her if we can get her take on what the translational pathway
Beatrice Egid:I think of all of us here, Yaimie, someone's working very much at the initial stages of the
Yaimie Lopez:Yeah, sure.
Yaimie Lopez:Thank you.
Yaimie Lopez:So, translational research can be defined in several ways, depending on what are you working on.
Yaimie Lopez:Uh, but here focusing on, on the LSTM definition, I'm at the first stage on discovery.
Yaimie Lopez:My work has been focusing on, as I said, on cutaneous leishmaniasis in Guatemala, trying to discover and to understand which
Yaimie Lopez:As we all know, in a theoretical way, that it is a parasite, it involves a vector, it involves a vessel for a mammal, a
Yaimie Lopez:The specifics of this in Guatemala are unknown.
Yaimie Lopez:My work has been focusing the endemic community with the highest prevalence of cutaneous leishmaniasis in the country, trying to
Yaimie Lopez:We want to create these control tools despite having little information, now we want to start
Yaimie Lopez:So let's say, now I am analysing my data, and I have discovered some three species that we weren't confirmed that we had in Guatemala.
Yaimie Lopez:Now this gives me more information that I can go back to the community and say, we have this, what are we going to do?
Yaimie Lopez:We are not at the end of the pathway we're at just at the start, but we are going back to the community for feedback
Yaimie Lopez:At the first stage, with the information we have now, we're going to go to the community and say, "so
Yaimie Lopez:For me, it's a bit of a cycle., It's not linear.
Yaimie Lopez:It's a cycling stages and they all feed on it on each other, and you can go back and you discover
Yaimie Lopez:It has been very interesting to be working with the community, thinking about how we're going to implement, what are we going
Beatrice Egid:I really like that and I think it's great that you brought back that this translational pathway that looks
Beatrice Egid:Also, as you've highlighted, the importance of actually making sure that you're engaging with communities at every level of
Beatrice Egid:I think that's really interesting.
Beatrice Egid:Thanks Yaimie.
Kim Ozano:Yeah.
Kim Ozano:Akin.
Kim Ozano:I wonder if it might be good to hear a little bit from you here as a, I think you have this joke, you call yourself
Akinola Oluwole:I started with a background in Zoology.
Akinola Oluwole:Then at my postgrad level doing epidemiology, trying to, you know, have an interaction with the community to see, uh, the
Akinola Oluwole:You know, getting to see that people have this problem and we have to, you know, help solve it by bringing the attention of the government.
Akinola Oluwole:With the social science, approach, we get them to see or to understand from the perspective of the community what the Ministry of Health need
Akinola Oluwole:These are what we call the participatory action research cycle, where we try to understand what is the problem.
Akinola Oluwole:We get to the community to get their view about what we need to do to help them solve the problem.
Akinola Oluwole:Then we come back to the table with the Ministry of Health to see that this is what the people are saying they need.
Akinola Oluwole:It's not about doing the research from what we used to know, that we do research and just publish the paper, but then we
Yaimie Lopez:Yeah, I, I find this very interesting because I think that what you're talking about is stopping
Yaimie Lopez:What you're doing is collecting the data and asking the people what's going on and how you can implement this is, this is amazing and this
Yaimie Lopez:Of course we are going to try to, to not forget the side of science and publish, but as a community, what are we going to do?
Yaimie Lopez:How we can improve your lives?
Yaimie Lopez:And that's what you're doing.
Yaimie Lopez:This is amazing.
Tosin Adekeye:Yes.
Tosin Adekeye:I, I'm really excited about all of this because I come from a background before I started work with LSTM, over 22 years,
Tosin Adekeye:Tell them how they need to understand their lives.
Tosin Adekeye:Tell them, you know, how the therapy is going to work, but then having to work on the Countdown project,
Tosin Adekeye:Now we had to take that around to using the community-based participatory approach, which is now not the typical
Tosin Adekeye:If you don't do this, this is going to happen, to going back to now, listen, you know, to the people tell their story and tell it from
Tosin Adekeye:They are now providing that information and saying, if you have an intervention, this is how it's going to work in our community,
Tosin Adekeye:Finally coming also with my side of the science to say, okay, now I see it from your perspective.
Tosin Adekeye:This is the science behind it, and then shaping whatever intervention they want.
Tosin Adekeye:In fact, when we sat to talk about the interventions, you know, we had to sit back and say, "okay, how do you want it?".
Tosin Adekeye:"How is it going to work?".
Tosin Adekeye:We came with some suggestions and they would say to us, "that's not going to work here because
Tosin Adekeye:Now when we came to evaluation, we found out that it actually works, you know, so they are really the expert, and that's
Akinola Oluwole:We had this intervention between the urban centre and the rural community, and we did initially
Akinola Oluwole:Then from the study they had to tell us that this approach may not work because of 1, 2, 3.
Akinola Oluwole:Why?
Akinola Oluwole:Because of the status of the people, because of their belief system that they will not accept drugs from
Akinola Oluwole:We saw that when they brought up this by themselves, we tried to see how this will work.
Akinola Oluwole:It was interesting to see that in the next round of intervention when they used their own approach, which they suggested,
Akinola Oluwole:It's about how do we get the people involved to see how we want to translate what we are finding out to bring about the
Tosin Adekeye:You know, beyond the outputs and the difference, you know, something has just come to my mind when we were planning
Tosin Adekeye:Now, when we're discussing the method and looking at people affected by skin NTDs, who in our eyes, are not
Tosin Adekeye:You know, uh, the question I asked myself was how they would help us in developing themes, from the data that they had collected.
Tosin Adekeye:Now there's something significant there because as we sat down to say, "what does this photo tell?"
Tosin Adekeye:"what do you mean by this photo?"
Tosin Adekeye:" how does that describe your experience?", then we began to look at the themes that were emerging from
Tosin Adekeye:I saw them, literally tell us this collection of photographs, this is what they're talking about.
Tosin Adekeye:This collection of photographs, this is what they're talking about.
Tosin Adekeye:In other words, they were involved in the data processing and analysis, so it's not just the end point, it's also
Yaimie Lopez:I completely agree with you and coming from my side that I'm doing more quantitative research now.
Yaimie Lopez:What I'm doing is placing traps for insects and collecting samples from skin to, to identify the parasites, still,
Yaimie Lopez:Our traps were inside the house, near the house where they keep the animals and in the forest, this is a very rural area.
Yaimie Lopez:For me to place the traps, I know that I need a specific height, but they know where, so I've been
Yaimie Lopez:And they all excitedly come and, "yeah, you should put it here and we can store it, don't worry, do we need to do something?".
Yaimie Lopez:It's just like, no, that trap, just leave it alone.
Yaimie Lopez:It's going to work all night.
Yaimie Lopez:We're going to collect the insects.
Yaimie Lopez:Then, when we collect the insects trap the next day, because it's a trap for all night, we show them this is
Yaimie Lopez:The next day when we arrive again to collect the traps, they're like, "oh, you can see it there it is".
Yaimie Lopez:It's not it, but you can see that they remember what I told them because they are seeing, uh, very small insect.
Yaimie Lopez:There's some mixture of excitement when you find insect inside the house or when you don't
Yaimie Lopez:They're like, you should be happy because the then probably the transmission is not occurring in your house..
Yaimie Lopez:When we find the insects, they're very excited.
Yaimie Lopez:So yes, I, I agree completely that we need to involve communities
Yaimie Lopez:In my country, is a very diverse country.
Yaimie Lopez:We have 25 different ethnic groups.
Yaimie Lopez:Everything works different within each ethnic group.
Yaimie Lopez:I think all research should be translational research, not just staying on the bench, but, keeping all this together so the
Kim Ozano:I think it's great.
Kim Ozano:What's coming across so clear is the community, the people that we work with, they're our partners.
Kim Ozano:They're at the centre of what we do.
Kim Ozano:It sounds like over this last year we've, really embraced that, and I know at Health Systems Global, we heard a lot about gaining trust
Kim Ozano:So, on that note, Bea, do you have anything you would like to reflect on at this point?
Kim Ozano:And then I was thinking, let's get a learning that's happened from everyone over 2022.
Beatrice Egid:I think one of my main reflections and learnings is just about genuine community engagement and
Beatrice Egid:I think what's been really, um, inspiring about all these podcasts is the real genuine examples of real engagement with communities
Beatrice Egid:I love hearing about how that's been applied to different, um, disciplines, in different contexts.
Beatrice Egid:I think that's one of my main reflections and it's definitely inspired me in lots of ways that I will
Kim Ozano:Yeah, I think Akin mentioned policy makers and governance actors, they are also part of the community of making sure that
Kim Ozano:So, over the last year, if you think back to the work and your year and everything you've achieved, what's the main highlight in terms
Kim Ozano:Yaimie, should we start with you?
Yaimie Lopez:Sure.
Yaimie Lopez:I think that what I learned the most is to be adaptable because I had planned something to go to the field, but once I arrived
Yaimie Lopez:Could you come to my place?"
Yaimie Lopez:and everybody wanted the traps and I thought this could change a bit how I want to present my result, but the community wants this.
Yaimie Lopez:So I thought about it, how to improve it, we adapted in the field.
Yaimie Lopez:So yeah, my biggest learning is being adaptable and being open to change that not everything is as you wrote it in
Kim Ozano:Yeah.
Kim Ozano:It sounds also that the community have a right to say what they want from the research.
Kim Ozano:It affects them and uh, they should be able to voice that and we should be able to adapt to that in practice as well.
Kim Ozano:Tosin?
Tosin Adekeye:Yes, I think my main learning has to do with power balance.
Tosin Adekeye:As I listen to all the other podcasts, and hear from people from different disciplines and different countries and from different
Tosin Adekeye:That applies to power balance in that I'm not approaching it as, I'm the researcher, I'm the know-all, I have this
Kim Ozano:Wonderful.
Kim Ozano:Our listeners can't see here, but we've got lots of nodding and thumbs up in the group because
Kim Ozano:Akinola, what would you like to share with us from 2022?
Akinola Oluwole:Well, I think they've mentioned so many.
Akinola Oluwole:Just to add last is, lean not only on your own understanding and be open because you may not know that the person
Kim Ozano:Being open is crucial.
Kim Ozano:Bea, any last reflections on 2022 and your learning?
Beatrice Egid:I think it's been really interesting for me doing this podcast.
Beatrice Egid:Obviously talking to such a range of different people and seeing the parallels to the approach that I wanted take in
Beatrice Egid:Hearing about how participatory action research is used for all kinds of different health issues and different contexts has really
Beatrice Egid:It's also been great to hear from Yaimie who's also working in a kind of intersection of entomology
Beatrice Egid:I'm just really grateful to have the opportunity to hear from so many other inspiring researchers
Kim Ozano:Thanks very much.
Kim Ozano:I think for me, just to end, I think the intersection between research and activism, Bea, as you were speaking then you
Kim Ozano:So thank you everyone for participating in our last celebratory podcast of 2022.
Kim Ozano:Listeners, we are not leaving you.
Kim Ozano:We will continue in 2023 and we are excited to start planning the episodes for next year.
Kim Ozano:So do like, share, rate, subscribe over the New Year and the festivities and all the best.
Kim Ozano:Thank you everyone.
