Educating young people on tuberculosis

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To mark World TB Day 2020, Professor Sanjib Bhakta, Professor of Molecular Microbiology and Biochemistry, discusses his new collaborative project which aims to educate children on tuberculosis (TB).

JoiHok

 Birkbeck’s Mycobacteria Research Laboratory is currently working on a charity project, called ‘JoiHok’ (translated to ‘Let victory be yours!” in English), that is looking at educational intervention as a means of spreading awareness and effective control of disease. The project concentrates on students in greater Kolkata, India from low socioeconomic backgrounds, whose families are disproportionately affected by tuberculosis (TB) due to factors like malnutrition and poor living conditions.

TB has progressively worsened with the advent of antibiotic resistance, hence there is urgent need to review and deal with the disease not only as a medical concern or even public health problem alone, but also as a social problem. The project is using creative tools like local folk-art and music to encourage children to engage, learn and discuss the issue of antibiotic resistance in the context of TB. It is hoped the children’s knowledge will be transferred to household members which in turn could encourage patients to adhere to prescribed anti-TB medication.

Global infectious diseases are rarely out of the news, as new communicable diseases such as COVID-19, Ebola, Zika, bird flu as well as older, familiar diseases such TB, cholera and malaria, raise concerns about outbreaks and global pandemics. In our ever-changing, rapidly globalising world, the free movement of people and goods, social change, urbanisation and environmental degradation, mean that microorganisms can move quickly between and across populations, crossing natural and human-made borders with ease. On top of this, microorganisms are constantly adapting and developing resistance to existing antibiotic and other treatments, leading to the resurgence of old diseases and the evolution of new ones.

Birkbeck’s research-intensive MRes Global Infectious Diseases course is designed for developing the research aptitude and skills that one needs to develop an academic or professional career as a researcher into global infectious diseases.

Bring in Your Parents Day: an inclusive alternative to boost employee engagement

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Research by Dr Alexandra Beauregard from the Department of Organizational Psychology explores the impact of LinkedIn’s employee engagement initiative.

A child walking with her parents.

Employee-sponsored family-friendly events are designed to boost engagement and encourage retention by building family members’ identification with the organization. However, longstanding traditions such as ‘Bring Your Children to Work’ days inadvertently exclude employees without caregiving responsibilities for children.

That’s where ‘Bring in Your Parents’ (BIYP) comes in. Launched by LinkedIn in 2013, the initiative targets a segment of the workforce not usually included in family-friendly initiatives: employees from the ‘Generation Y’, ‘Millennial’ or ‘Generation Z’ generations, born after 1981. After internal conversations at LinkedIn revealed that employees struggled to explain the nature of their work to parents who were not familiar with social media, LinkedIn introduced BIYP as a means of improving older parents’ understanding of their children’s jobs.

Together with Dr Karin King at LSE, I conducted a study to evaluate the impact of BIYP on the attitudes and behavioural intentions of employees and their parents. We surveyed participating employees and their parents in six organisations in six countries, followed by in-person interviews with participating employees and phone interviews with HR managers.

Following participation in BIYP, there were statistically significant increases in employee engagement and perceived problem-solving ability. By bringing parents to the workplace and having them learn about the nature of one’s job responsibilities, employees’ enthusiasm and sense of vitality on the job were renewed. Employees also felt that their employer appreciated them and their contribution to the organization’s goals.

BIYP also improved parental understanding of their child’s job. While the new, non-traditional jobs performed by their children seemed intangible to many parents prior to participating in BIYP, they now make more sense. Employees reported that having their parents better understand their work responsibilities and pace of work enabled parents to offer more frequent and appropriate support. This was especially important for young employees who, due to the high cost of housing in some metropolitan areas, still live with their parents and see them every day after work.

Furthermore, following parents’ participation in BIYP, there were significant increases in identification with their children’s organizations and of willingness to promote their children’s organization to outsiders. Parents became brand advocates among their own peer groups and even encouraged their children to stay with the firm for longer.

By incorporating events such as BIYP into existing family-friendly events, organizations can express their support for the work-family balance of all employees, rather than just those with caregiving responsibilities for children. Participation was shown to benefit all involved: employees, their parents or other family guests, and the organization for whom they work. The development of further initiatives that support employers in demonstrating inclusion, deepening employee engagement and widening organizational engagement with a range of stakeholders beyond the employee would be a welcome next step.

The citation for this study is: Beauregard, T. A., & King, K. A. (2019). “Bring in Your Parents Day”: Building inclusion and engagement through a cross-generational family-friendly workplace initiative. Strategic HR Review, (19)1, 15-21.

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Working conditions, exposure to trauma and the mental health of firefighters

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Dr Kevin Teoh from the Department of Organizational Psychology shares the findings so far from the Firefighter Longitudinal Health Study.

Firefighters working on the Brumadinho Dam Disaster in 2019

Firefighters play a crucial role in the emergency response system, taking on a myriad of roles that range from the firefighting to responding to car crashes, delivering emergency care and raising safety awareness. They also perform rescue services and are involved in disaster relief.

The nature of this work is often physically, mentally and emotionally challenging, and firefighters can be exposed to traumatic situations such as the destruction of property, burn victims, serious injuries and death. All this can eventually take a toll on the mental health of this occupational group, and it is not surprising that firefighters report high levels of burnout, posttraumatic stress and common mental health disorders (Katsavouni et al., 2016; Lima & Assunção, 2011; Noor et al, 2019).

An international partnership

To better understand what, and how, different factors lead to the development of poor mental health in firefighters, in 2018 two psychologists from Brazil – Dr Eduardo de Paula Lima and Dr Alina Gomide Vasconcelos – visited the Birkbeck Centre for Sustainable Working Life for a six-month Fellowship. More specifically, they came from the Minas Gerais Fire Department, whose firefighters received international media coverage when the Brumadinho dam collapsed in 2019, leading to the loss of at least 256 lives.

The cornerstone of our international collaboration is the ongoing Firefighter Longitudinal Health Study (FLOHS), which aims to better understand the dynamic relationships among individual, operational (traumatic) and organisational risk factors in the development of post-traumatic symptoms and other mental health problems in firefighters. Recruits are assessed in their first week of training with follow up data collected every two years.

The role of working conditions

A simplistic take on the poor mental health of firefighters is that this is the product of the challenging work that they do. However, this ignores the fact that there is consistent research showing that psychosocial working conditions can have a beneficial and detrimental impact on our mental health (Harvey et al., 2017). Within the field of organizational psychology, psychosocial working conditions refer to how work is designed, organised and managed. Here in the Department of Organizational Psychology, we have studied this in a range of different occupations, including doctors (Teoh, Hassard, & Cox, 2018), teachers (Hassard, Teoh, & Cox, 2016) and performing artists (McDowall et al., 2019).

The current study

As psychologists, we were not only interested in whether exposure to traumatic events had a link to firefighters’ mental health, but whether psychosocial working conditions had a similar effect. In our first published study from the FLOHS project, we examined the data from 312 firefighters that were part of the first batch of participants. Three types of psychosocial working conditions were measured: how demanding the job is (i.e. job demands), how much influence one has on their work environment (i.e. job control) and how supported one is (i.e. social support). This was in addition to measuring firefighters’ exposure to traumatic events. The findings were quite clear:

  • 13% of firefighters reported a level of poor mental health that warrants psychological intervention.
  • Higher levels of exposure to trauma and higher levels of job demands were associated with poorer mental health.
  • Higher levels of job control and social support were associated with better mental health.
  • The strength of the relationship that job demands had on poor mental health reduced when firefighters reported high levels of either job control or social support.

What does this all mean? What if I’m not a firefighter?

The findings show that to support the mental health of firefighters, fire departments should focus on reducing the levels of job demands while increasing the levels of social support and job control. Given the inherently difficult nature of firefighting that will be very difficult to remove or reduce, the very least that firefighters deserve is to work in an organisation where the psychosocial working conditions are not another contributing factor to poor mental health.

This message has direct relevance to workers in other occupations within the emergency services, including healthcare workers, the police and the armed forces. In addition, more generally, our findings emphasise that supporting the mental health of workers requires improvements to their psychosocial working conditions and needs to focus on the organisation itself – not through individual interventions such as resilience or mindfulness training (Kinman & Teoh, 2018).

The citation for the study is: Teoh, K. R. H., Lima, E., Vasconcelos, A., Nascimento, E., & Cox, T. (2019). Trauma and work factors as predictors of firefighters’ psychiatric distress. Occupational Medicine. doi: 10.1093/occmed/kqz168

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References

Harvey, S. B., Modini, M., Joyce, S., S, M.-S. J., Tan, L., Mykletun, A., … Mitchell, P. B. (2017). Can work make you mentally ill? A systematic meta-review of work-related risk factors for common mental health problems. Occupational and Environmental Medicine, oemed-2016-104015. https://doi.org/10.1136/oemed-2016-104015

Hassard, J., Teoh, K. R.-H., & Cox, T. (2016). Organizational uncertainty and stress among teachers in Hong Kong: work characteristics and organizational justice. Health Promotion International, daw018. https://doi.org/10.1093/heapro/daw018

Katsavouni, F., Bebetsos, E., Malliou, P., & Beneka, A. (2016). The relationship between burnout, PTSD symptoms and injuries in firefighters. Occupational Medicine, 66(1), 32–37. https://doi.org/10.1093/occmed/kqv144

Kinman, G., & Teoh, K. R.-H. (2018). What could make a difference to the mental health of UK doctors? A review of the research evidence. London, UK, UK. Retrieved from https://www.som.org.uk/sites/som.org.uk/files/What_could_make_a_difference_to_the_mental_health_of_UK_doctors_LTF_SOM.pdf

Lima, E. de P., & Assunção, A. Á. (2011). Prevalência e fatores associados ao Transtorno de Estresse Pós-Traumático (TEPT) em profissionais de emergência: uma revisão sistemática da literatura. Revista Brasileira de Epidemiologia, 14(2), 217–230. https://doi.org/10.1590/S1415-790X2011000200004

McDowall, A., Gamblin, D., Teoh, K. R.-H., Raine, C., & Ehnold-Danailov, A. (2019). Balancing Act: The Impact of Caring Responsibilities on Career Progression in the Performing Arts. London. Retrieved from http://www.pipacampaign.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/BA-Final.pdf

Noor, N., Pao, C., Dragomir-Davis, M., Tran, J., & Arbona, C. (2019). PTSD symptoms and suicidal ideation in US female firefighters. Occupational Medicine. https://doi.org/10.1093/occmed/kqz057

Teoh, K. R.-H., Hassard, J., & Cox, T. (2018). Individual and organizational psychosocial predictors of hospital doctors’ work-related well-being. Health Care Management Review, 1. https://doi.org/10.1097/HMR.0000000000000207

Meet our academics: Dr Manto Gotsi

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Meet our Academics: Dr Manto Gotsi

Dr Manto Gotsi is a Senior Lecturer in Marketing in Birkbeck’s Department of Management. She is Programme Director for the new online MSc Marketing and Module Convenor for Consumer Behaviour.

Manto GotsiQ: What is your #BBKStory?

My academic career to date could have been entitled “A Greek’s adventure around the UK”, if only Northern Ireland featured in my appointments. Born in Athens, I travelled to Glasgow to study a BA(Hons) in Marketing at the University of Strathclyde. I’ve always loved writing, so my 18-year old self thought that a degree in Marketing would help secure a job as a copywriter. While studying, I worked in the Marketing department of a bank and in a PR agency, only to realise that writing marketing material was not the creative endeavour I envisaged. So, I decided to embark on a PhD in Marketing at Strathclyde – and join the creative freedom of the academic community.

Since then, I’ve held Lectureships at the University of Aberdeen and Brunel University, a Senior Lectureship at Cardiff University and a Readership at the University of Westminster. I’ve always been looking for an opening at Birkbeck. I strongly believe in the transformative power of education, to open horizons, improve job prospects and trigger new careers – and Birkbeck seems to be the perfect ambassador.

Q: What are you currently working on?

My research focuses on the management of paradoxes – how organizations, teams and individuals respond to competing demands and resulting tensions. At the moment, I am working on two exciting research projects. The first has been an eye opener. It is an exploratory study of the formalisation of informal entrepreneurs – waste pickers in Colombia – which has recently been funded by a British Academy/Leverhulme Small Research Grant. Findings reveal the struggles that waste pickers experience in disengaging from their informal role and transitioning into a formal entrepreneurial identity. The study ultimately argues that formalisation is a process rather than a destination. The second is in the corporate realm, exploring how different types of team goal orientation are linked to radical innovation outcomes in a corporate research lab in the USA.

I also lead the development of the new online MSc in Marketing to be launched in September 2020 in collaboration with the University of London. This is an exciting initiative for many reasons. Firstly, I strongly view online learning as part of the future of education – and I am delighted that Birkbeck plays a role in this new era. Secondly, I believe that online learning sits very closely to Birkbeck’s ethos and values of enhancing access to education. Beyond part-time learning in our on-the-ground programmes, online programmes thus seem like a natural extension. Lastly, on the personal front, this programme is an opportunity for me to learn new skills, which I am very much enjoying!

Q: What do you do in your spare time?

I have always enjoyed writing poetry and short stories and recently I’ve been flirting with the idea of publishing my work. Beyond writing, I adore travelling. I spend most of my disposable income travelling around the world with my family and friends. I love exploring new places, understanding how people live and trying out new cuisines.  I am an avid reader of novels and poetry, and also follow international news with a passion.  I also enjoy hanging out in the Victoria and Albert Museum and having endless coffees with my friends.

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