Health

Research at the OU finds that online dancing for unpaid adult carers proves beneficial to their mental and physical health.

Research by WELS academics has resulted in 14 nominations at this year’s Open University Research Excellence Awards, including a project heralded as ‘groundbreaking’ by Dame Elizabeth Fradd DBE.

To mark World Health Day, we spoke to several academics from across the Faculty of Wellbeing, Education & Language Studies (WELS) to hear their thoughts on this year’s campaign theme of ‘Building a fairer, healthier world’ and find out how their own work is feeding into the WHO's call for global leaders to work together to tackle inequities in order to “build back fairer” post-pandemic.

We caught up with WELS academics Dr Jenny Douglas, Senior Lecturer in Health Promotion, and Kate Lister, Lecturer in Education Studies, to hear more about their personal experiences of gender bias in academia and to find out how being a woman in research has impacted their career in a positive way.

​Health and Social Care graduate Jo had to leave school after her O-Levels, to help support her family. Following a conversation with a colleague, she was inspired to pursue an Access course with the OU, which she describes as a 'game-changer'. She shared her OU journey with us.