Who was Joan Franklin-Adams?

Joan Franklin-Adams worked internationally, including as a medical officer for the Save the Children Fund. Her endowment, held at the University of Bristol, was designed to further the study of child health, both physical and mental, with an international focus, to make a difference to global knowledge and health.

Franklin-Adams Research Award

The successful candidate for the Franklin-Adams Research Award call was Nick Townsend, Professor in Public Health, School for Policy Studies. He will act as supervisor to a post-doctoral researcher to carry out a project titled: ‘Community Participatory Research for Adolescent Health Promotion in Diverse Communities in Bangladesh’.

We’re pleased to announce that the successful researcher who will lead on this project under the supervision of Nick Townsend is Dr Nuzhat Choudhury, who will join the team shortly from Durham University. She will be based at the University of Bristol for this project, but will also undertake work in Bangladesh.

Bangladesh is experiencing a rapid economic, demographic, and epidemiological transition, leading to an increasing burden from non-communicable disease (NCD). Research led by Nick Townsend, and the partner organisation for this proposal, the Asian University for Women (AUW), found that more than one third of those aged 10-19 years had four or more NCD risk factors. Improvements in health throughout adolescence can bring a triple dividend of immediate benefits, benefits into future adult life and benefits for the next generation of children.

Challenges have been found with adolescent health promotion in Bangladesh, leading the Bangladesh World Health Organisation (WHO) office to call for a review of the recent implementation challenges related to the Health Promoting School (HPS) approach within the country. However, contexts vary enormously across Bangladesh, with variations between urban and rural populations. 

This project will use participatory research approaches to engage with communities and adolescents within urban, rural and tea plantations within Bangladesh, to examine the current NCD risk factor prevalence and the sectors involved in tackling them, including HPSs. The project will employ community members that are now based at AUW for data collection, to ensure the research is relevant to their needs. It will link to WHO and other relevant stakeholders to ensure that the research informs approaches within the country and will act as a pilot and feasibility study for a larger grant application, to support the researcher after study completion.

Franklin-Adams Project Award

The successful candidate for the Franklin-Adams Project Award was Dr Emma Anderson, based in the Bristol Medical School, for her project titled: ‘Training Azerbaijani paediatricians in communicating about vaccinations with caregivers – AzPIC Study’.

Childhood vaccination rates in Azerbaijan suffered during the pandemic and have not returned to pre-pandemic levels (e.g. Diphtheria tetanus toxoid and pertussis uptake is 88.9% down from 94.5% in 2019). Disease outbreaks affecting Azerbaijan and neighbouring countries are putting children at risk.

Health workers are the most trusted information providers for caregivers. Their recommendations and ability to navigate conversations with hesitant parents plays a vital role in childhood vaccine uptake. There is evidence that effective communication techniques for conversations about vaccines improves trust and vaccine acceptance. While these techniques are teachable, health workers lack such training so are ill-equipped to address vaccine hesitancy and misinformation held by caregivers. Children miss out on life-preserving vaccines as a result.

Emma Anderson has been working on research in paediatrician training and evaluation is underway to assess training feasibility and acceptability and effectiveness. The next phase is designed to support and evaluate initiatives to embed communication training into medical education and in-service training of health workers. This will involve working with the Ministry of Health, medical educators, paediatricians and other key stakeholders in Azerbaijan. The aim is to support key stakeholders in Azerbaijan to become self-sufficient in training paediatricians and other healthcare professionals to communicate effectively about vaccination with caregivers in order to improve childhood vaccination rates and reduce inequity of coverage.