This has been a busy year for us at SCPHRP with lots to celebrate and look back on, including our move to our new home in the School of Health in Social Science. In this issue you can read about:

And then we also have a chance to sign up for a new Environmnetal Arts Therapy Group and a chance to take part in the George Street (Edinburgh) consultation. Please also get in touch if you have ever used 6SQuID as we want to hear about it.

As always, we love to hear your news as well, so if you have anything you want to share with us and the wider membership, including job vacancies, projects, conferences you can find out how to do so at the end of the bulletin.

Here we are celebrating the end of another successful year at our SCPHRP Christmas lunch.

We would like to thank all our friends and colleagues for your support and wish you all a lovely break and all the best for 2019.With very best wishes,
Everyone at SCPHRP

Citizen science project ‘Our Outdoors’ 
‘Our Outdoors’ is a citizen science project exploring how shared (public) outdoor spaces affect health and wellbeing.  John McAteer, Kathleen Morrison, Yvonne Laird and Ruth Jepson are working with Edinburgh City Council, Sustrans and industry partner AECOM to examine outdoor space and health in relation to a new planned development in Lower Granton Road.The design intent of the development is to create a series of stimulating spaces, at a variety of scales, vary the sense of enclosure and openness within the greenspace, and work seamlessly with its context. The design includes wildflower meadows, low earth mounds, and trees. The waterfront greenspace alongside the cycle way hopes to enhance a sense of place through changes to the landscape. The landscape proposals provide greater visual interest, opportunities for informal seating, rest and recreation, whilst maintaining one of the key aspects of this space: stunning coastal views.

The Team recently held a community forum on Saturday 8^th December at St Columba’s Hospice in Trinity. The two hour event was is an informal drop-in style event and was an opportunity for members of the public to engage with the issue of outdoor space and health through fun activities (such as lego!) and to learn more about how they can be involved in the project.  The event was well attended by both children and adults.

Larry Doi, Yvonne Laird and Kathleen Morrison recently delivered an inclusion health workshop on behalf of NHS Lothian. The workshop aimed to develop an evaluation plan for a number of inclusion health projects currently being delivered around the NHS Lothian locality.  John McAteer, Larry and Yvonne continue to work with NHS Lothian to assist with their evaluation planning.

SCPHRP PhD student, Audrey Buelo, attended the Diabetes UK PhD networking day in London on the 30^th November, an opportunity to meet with other Diabetes UK-funded PhD students and learn about their work. Audrey presented a short talk of an overview of her PhD (see image) about developing and testing a physical activity intervention for women with previous gestational diabetes. The talk was well-received amongst the primarily biomolecular research students and Audrey won the best poster presentation award. Congratulations Audrey!

Audrey also held her third Lay Advisory Group meeting in Glasgow in November, composed of three women who have had gestational diabetes in previous pregnancies. At the meeting, she discussed her research progress with them and received their feedback. They also worked together to come up with a plan for a future project to develop the physical activity intervention. It appears that social media is an increasingly useful tool to contact mothers of young children, due to its ease of access for time-constrained groups. Audrey is very excited to move forward with this research and grateful for the help of her advisory group.

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Cycling and walking for individual and population health benefits 
SCPHRP’s Yvonne Laird was involved in conducting a rapid review of the health benefits of walking and cycling with Paul Kelly of the Physical Activity for Health Research Centre, University of Edinburgh, and James Woodcock and Soren Brage of the Centre for Diet and Activity Research, University of Cambridge.The rapid review was commissioned by Public Health England. The report has recently been published and can be viewed here.The impact of community-based universal youth work in Scotland
Working with colleagues within NHS Lothian, Youthlink Scotland, and the Institute For Education, John McAteer has recently completed a national research project that engaged with three communities in Scotland examining the impact of community-based universal youth work services, using Transformative Evaluation (Cooper, 2012). You can read the findings of the report here.

Pringle, J., Whitehead, R., Milne, D., Scott, E., McAteer, J. 2018. The relationship between a trusted adult and adolescent outcomes: a protocol for a scoping review. Systematic Reviews, 7, 207. Link to paper here.

Pringle J. 2018. Health mind-mapping has the potential to facilitate patient engagement in self-management of long term conditions. Evidence Based Nursing. Commentary on: Buitron de la Vega P, Coe C, Paasche-Orlow MK et al. “It’s like a mirror image of my illness”: Exploring Patient Perceptions About Illness Using Health Mind Mapping-a Qualitative Study. J Gen Intern Med. 2018 Jul 10. Link to paper here.

Pringle J, Doi L, Jepson R, McAteer J. 2018. Developing an evidence and theory based intervention that seeks to promote positive adolescent health and education outcomes. Lancet (Nov): 73

 

In the UK, Edinburgh has lower car use than most cities and the highest level of public transport patronage outside of London. Edinburgh’s relative “success” regarding the car use problem is an underutilised case study among cities without metro train systems. This study sought to explore transport in Edinburgh and build evidence for the city’s unusual position among its peer cities. The research is organised using the individual, social, and material (ISM) framework developed by Southerton et al. (2011) and the Scottish Government. Using secondary data analysis and GIS techniques, Edinburgh was compared with 74 other UK cities and factors that contribute to low levels of car use were identified. The main conclusion is that Edinburgh’s historic, densely-populated city centre (with 90% of residents living in flats) has a pervasive walking culture that combines with high-quality, affordable bus service (and less-than-average space for cars) in peripheral areas to give the city one of the lowest car use rates in the UK.

Research summary (PDF)
Story map: This interactive and address-searchable series of maps explores Edinburgh transport modes further

Patrick Miner
MScR Human Geography, School of GeoSciences
University of Edinburgh
patrick.miner@ed.ac.uk pdbminer.com

The George Street New Town (GNT) project aims to design a vibrant street environment that is safe for all users – one which significantly enhances its use for pedestrians while prioritising active travel and accessibility. The project is being developed as part of the wider City Centre Transformation project

A new concept design has been produced for the streets, and whatever your views about the proposals, we want to hear from you.

An online survey is available until 25 January 2019. Further information about the project including a film of the proposals can be found on the GNT project website

There are exciting times ahead at SCPHRP and we need your help. Please contact us if you or a colleague are using the Six Steps in Quality Intervention Development (6SQuID) Framework in any part of your research. Please email Audrey (Audrey.Buelo@ed.ac.uk) with details of your experience of 6SQuID.

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NEW ARTS THERAPY GROUP

A new Environmental Arts Therapy group entitled Circle of Trees, run by Rachel Campling is  starting in February 2019 at the Salisbury Centre in Edinburgh’s southside. This will be a fortnightly experiential therapy group for counsellors, therapists and people working in education, health and social care who wish to deepen their relationship with nature and with themselves.

If you have work colleagues or other professional contacts who may be interested in joining this small group, the information can be found on the Salisbury Centre Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/events/773143156398923.