Research news

On World AIDS Day 2020 we spoke to Dr Tom Witney, Postdoctoral Research Associate in the Faculty of Wellbeing, Education and Language Studies (WELS), about HIV stigma and how recent advances in HIV treatment not only promise to alter the dynamics of the epidemic but have the potential to transform the experience of people living with HIV.

Dr Michael Boampong has received £10,000 from the OU’s COVID-19 Rapid Response funding scheme to research the impact of COVID-19 on young Black Britons.

An OU team has worked with sexual health and wellbeing charity, Brook, to support RSE planning in schools.

Extensive work to develop support for student carers at The Open University has been acknowledged with a Going Higher for Student Carers Recognition Award.

Staff Nurse and Open University graduate Bernadette Guthrie has been shortlisted for a Nursing Times Student Award.

A new project, led by the Social History of Learning Disability (SHLD) Research Group, launched last week.  Surviving Through Story will collect and archive the stories of people with learning disabilities through the pandemic.

With face-coverings now mandatory in many indoor settings across the UK, will we need to find new ways of communicating?

The OU and The University of Oxford have been awarded £900,000 by the National Institute for Health (NIHR) to investigate how to improve support for older people with learning disabilities and their family carers. The project is funded through a specific call issued by the NIHR Health Services and Delivery Research (HS&DR) programme for studies of community health and care services.

An Open University research team led by Dr Jitka Vseteckova, Knowledge Exchange & Enterprise Lead for the School of Health, Wellbeing and Social Care (HWSC), are working with The Parks Trust, an independent charity caring for over 6,000 acres of parkland and green space in Milton Keynes, to evaluate a new walking programme initiative for people living with dementia and their informal carers and families.

Following the recent Reading Together Day initiative, the OU’s Reading for Pleasure programme, led by Professor Teresa Cremin, has partnered with The Reading Agency to launch a Teachers’ Reading Challenge this summer. Due to launch on 14 August, the initiative aims to create a community for teachers to share their thoughts and recommendations on children’s literature.