Bringing people together to improve communication of research findings
Profile Information
- Country:
- UK
- What do you do?
- Editor
- Fields of interest
- science, health, sustainable development, poverty reduction, policy
- Email address
- elmienw@gmail.com
- Website:
- http://jceh.co.uk
- Languages
- English
- Please introduce yourself....
- I'm a journalist by training and a science communicator by profession. I wear several hats: I'm the editor of the Community Eye Health Journal (www.jceh.ac.uk) based at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine; I'm a freelance writer and editor, I work on the E-Guide to Science Communication for SciDev.Net (http://www.scidev.net/ms/sci_comm/); and I teach workshops on clear and simple communication for scientists.
I think science falls short of its potential if it remains in the pages of peer-reviewed journals. Scientists need to be given the skills and support they need to communicate their work to the public, the media, policy makers, industry and each other.
31 May 2007: I taught a communication component of a workshop on evidence-informed decision making in Johannesburg last week - it was a huge success. There were 18 participants (all researchers) from all over South Africa who each had a specific question around HIV/AIDS prevention, care, or education.
The participants learnt how to rapidly search for and generate evidence, to critically assess their evidence, to synthesise it so that it answers their specific question, and to make recommendations based on their answers.
I then helped them to identify a target audience, to analyse that audience's knowledge, needs/interests and obstacles/problems, and to convince that audience to take specific actions based on their findings.
The participants found it quite difficult, but did really well - I helped them put together Powerpoint presentations, and the next day each participant gave a persuasive 3-5 minute talk aimed at their particular target audience.
For some participants, the timing of the workshop couldn't have been better: a participant from the University of the Free State used it to prepare for a meeting with the provincial minister of health, which is taking place in two weeks' time.
The workshop is called HIVSA2: Evidence-informed decision making in evidence poor settings, and is funded by the British Council. The next workshop is going to be held in September; for more information, contact George TH Ellison, g.ellison@hscs.sgul.ac.uk.
The participants learnt how to rapidly search for and generate evidence, to critically assess their evidence, to synthesise it so that it answers their specific question, and to make recommendations based on their answers.
I then helped them to identify a target audience, to analyse that audience's knowledge, needs/interests and obstacles/problems, and to convince that audience to take specific actions based on their findings.
The participants found it quite difficult, but did really well - I helped them put together Powerpoint presentations, and the next day each participant gave a persuasive 3-5 minute talk aimed at their particular target audience.
For some participants, the timing of the workshop couldn't have been better: a participant from the University of the Free State used it to prepare for a meeting with the provincial minister of health, which is taking place in two weeks' time.
The workshop is called HIVSA2: Evidence-informed decision making in evidence poor settings, and is funded by the British Council. The next workshop is going to be held in September; for more information, contact George TH Ellison, g.ellison@hscs.sgul.ac.uk.
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Hi from Brussels ... where Barroso is looking to formulate an answer to all the dynamism coming from the MIT ... seems like 60% of all inventions of EU's and the world's R&D centers only becomes a business when it reaches the USA.
Do you have any figures on how much R&D results are sucked into the USA ?
I've been in a think tank on this matter and my conclusion is that today players think that by just putting bankers and business and R&D'ers together ... magic will happen. I think the only thing you see is a clash of cultures ... nice staring ...and then everybody gets back to business as usual ... there is a need for teams that offer services to buffer the contacts ... financiers now seem to take pride in reading 100rds of R&D/business plans and then only selecting 1 or 2 ... to me it is just a very inefficient process. I think we need to offer all our R&D people Research Transfer to the Financiers and Business Community-Services: asking our R&D'ers ... ok so you did a great invention .... do you want to continue to do R&D ... or do you want to commercialise your invention ? Do you have friends that can and want to do that ? Are they a multi-disciplinary team or do you want us to arrange you one ? To give them master-classes on how financiers & business people need things to be presented ... etc.
One of the things I can do is generate lists with all the R&D going on in eco-innovations, e.g. if you want to know all innovative wind-turbine R&D ... I can give you a list and pictures of all of them, idem on Waste-2-Energy plants, PV, Algae2Biofuels ... etc. Is that useful ? Or stuff like : www.earthrace.net ... and www.smartfish.ch ... real eye-openers...
Yes I knew about the big romance... because you told me yourself! I'm still really glad that something so positive came out of the genome conference. I had something really positive too... shortly afterwards I sued Wilmot and won (and bought a really cool camera which goes by the name of James!)
i have seen the E-guide to sci communication Scidev.net and its really an axcellent work.Its great that you have also been associated with that.Deserve all kudos for such a nice work.
best wishes
arvind
Good to see you again! By chance, I picked up a copy of Julian's book "Sharing Knowledge" and it is really excellent. Try to find one online if you can. Mike