Health and Social Care - OU Community Online

NCDs such as diabetes, heart disease, strokes, cancers and chronic lung conditions kill 36 million people a year - that is more than half of all deaths worldwide.

And these conditions are rising rapidly in many low- and middle-income countries in South East Asia, sub-Saharan Africa and South America.

The OU and C3 are supporting the development of freely available open educational resources, to increase in the numbers of effective NCD-trained health professionals. 

The project is being piloted in india. For more information see International Development Office news.

Posted 14 May 2013

The new partners are joining FutureLearn, which was launched in December 2012 and includes several universities as well as the British Library and the British Council. Each is committed to providing engaging and entertaining courses through the online site.

FutureLearn was founded in December 2012 and now has 24 partners including those announced today.
FutureLearn CEO, Simon Nelson, said:

“We are delighted that more of the UK’s leading universities, along with one of its most popular cultural institutions, have agreed to work with FutureLearn and will join the growing ranks of institutions that will offer high quality, entertaining and enjoyable courses to people across the world. We are committed to removing the barriers to education by making learning more accessible, inspiring and useful to people, no matter what stage of life they are at. These partnerships will enable us to open up access to the best academics from world-class universities and cultural institutions and deliver new forms of social learning at large scale.”

Professor Frank Coton, Vice-Principal for Learning and Teaching at the University of Glasgow said:
“We are delighted to be joining the strong grouping of other leading UK universities that have already joined with FutureLearn. Our partnership with FutureLearn will allow us to reach out to a whole new group of learners and underlines the commitment of this University to widening access to education. The prospect of doing this through the innovative delivery platform that FutureLearn has developed is a very exciting one that we hope will inspire and engage those who choose to study with us.”

Professor Colin Grant, Associate Deputy Principal at the University of Strathclyde, said:
“As a leading international university with students from more than 120 countries, we have great pleasure in joining a programme which opens access to our learning to students around the world. Our Centre for Forensic Science is internationally renowned in its field and is an ideal starting point for our participation in FutureLearn.
“Teaching is one of the key pillars of Strathclyde’s strategy and FutureLearn also offers an ideal opportunity for us to explore innovation in learning. We look forward to a successful programme alongside our partners around the UK.”

Professor Morag Bell, Pro Vice Chancellor for Teaching at Loughborough University, said:
“We are delighted to be working in partnership with FutureLearn. Loughborough has a well-established reputation for providing its students with a first-class education. Through these online courses, we will be able to make these outstanding learning opportunities available to even greater numbers of students.”

Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Learning and Teaching at the University of Sheffield, Professor Paul White, said:
"The digital world is the future. Online education provides a means for the University of Sheffield to engage with learners from around the world and in circumstances we would otherwise never be able to reach out too. The courses are an important way for more people to access the high quality education that the University of Sheffield delivers."

More on Futurelearn
FutureLearn will make it possible to learn for life, offering unique access to some of the most inspiring learning opportunities from the world’s greatest learning centres.

FutureLearn.com will offer free, accessible courses to people wherever they are in the world. Courses will be created by the Universities of Bath, Birmingham, Bristol, Cardiff, East Anglia, Exeter, Glasgow, Leicester, Loughborough, Kings College London, Lancaster, Leeds, Nottingham, The Open University, Queen’s Belfast, Reading, Sheffield, Southampton, St Andrews, Strathclyde and Warwick. In addition, the British Museum, British Library and British Council have all signed MoUs to share content and their expertise and collaborate in the development of courses through FutureLearn.com.

Danny, who’s working towards an OU degree in Sport Fitness and Coaching, is planning to run more than 60 miles competing in four races to raise money for his local hospice – all within a single week.

More information

• BSc Honours Sport, Fitness and Coaching
• Foundation degree in Sport and Fitness 
• Introduction to sport, fitness and management E112

Edward Lawrenson reviews The Spirit of '45, the film which has triggered a debate nationally about the kind of society we have become and the kind of society we want to be.

Ken Loach has just directed a documentary called The Spirit of '45. It is a stirring portrait of the founding of the welfare state by the post-war Labour government. It's thanks to the film that I have a credible version of the life I'd be leading if I were the age I am now back in 1945. 

Feeding my details into the film's accompanying website, I learned that I'd probably live in a house without a bath or a shower, a visit to the doctor would have cost me about seven per cent of my weekly wage, and that I only had 30 years to live. 

It's not the cheeriest news, but it did bring home sharply the everyday hardships people had to endure before such things as the National Health Service. Funded by the British Film Institute initiative to support forms of digital storytelling, the online arm of The Spirit of '45 is a provocative exploration of many of the concerns of the film. You can watch interviews from the film as well as those that did not make the final cut, and there's quaint footage, as well as a thoughtful timeline of the past 60 years of British social history (see Timeline Health).

Still, it's the film where my and Loach's priorities lie (speaking at a screening I attended a few weeks back, Loach professed to be unfamiliar with the internet). What Loach does best is make films, and The Spirit of '45 reveals the director in commanding form, telling of the massive programme of nationalisation by the incoming Labour government of 1945. It's an expert assemblage of archive material revealing just how bad life was for ordinary people immediately after the war, incorporating interviews with men and women who were involved in the first nationalised industries.

'After the war', writes Ken Loach, 'people had a sense that they had won the war together as a collective, and that brought a sense of unity in the country. They remembered the '30s, which was a time of great poverty and depression – between two and three million people unemployed, rather like now – and people didn't want to go back to those days. They wanted to use the same methods they had used to win the war to win the peace. So that was the spirit, really, that they would build a better world and do it together.'

The emotional impact of this is extraordinary. Among many testimonies is the childhood memory of a man called Ray, now in his eighties, of his mother dying from a preventable ailment the family doctor lacked the resources to cure. What emerges is a heartfelt tribute to a generation of activists who ensured an end to needless deaths, such as that of Ray's mum. 

Of course, there's a loud and resolute political edge to all of this. If the first half of the film, which charts the heroic work of building the welfare state, inspires admiration, then the second part of it, devoted to the steady dismantling of nationalised industries, provokes anger. When archive footage of Margaret Thatcher flashed up on-screen, I could feel the audience greet the image with a collective and involuntary hiss.

It is unashamedly partisan stuff, and the film does glide over uncomfortable realities to advance its argument. A rosy glow, for instance, settles over the references to post-war town planning that ignores the ugly effects of so much centralised architecture.

Speaking on why he made the film, Loach concluded: 'The narrative is particularly apposite because we have two and a half million people unemployed, a million of them are young people. We are told there is no alternative, but if this is the only society we can imagine building it is a poor effort.' (see the interview). 

The blurb of film states it is 'an impassioned documentary about how the spirit of unity which buoyed Britain during the war years carried through to create a vision of a fairer, united society'.

If it is at a cinema near you, do go and see it. For local listings see here. 
Edward Lawrenson 12 April 2013

Edward Lawrenson's review originally appeared in The Big Issue, No 1043, March 18-24, 2013. It is reprinted here with thanks.

Find out more

Watch the Spirit of '45 trailer.

The views expressed in this post, as in all posts on Society Matters, are the views of the author, not The Open University.

Cartoon by Catherine Pain

Around the world there are a number of professions in high demand. The BBC Business website has compiled a list of the top 20 most wanted professions internationally, and the countries that want them.

The list includes psychologists, physiotherapists and chefs, and there are case studies.

Is your profession there? Check it out on Global migrants: Which is the most wanted profession?

He calls for urgent changes to Britain's 'flawed' drinks advertising regulations in an editorial in the British Medical Journal, which is published to coincide with a major report calling for all alcohol advertising to be banned.

The editorial cites research by the Rand Corporation for the European Commission which shows that 10-15 year olds in the UK see 10% more alcohol advertising on TV than their parents do. When it comes to alcopops, they see 50% more.

And the situation is set to worsen as advertisers increasingly spread their messages via digital media, say Gerard Hastings and co-author Nich Sheron, clinical hepatologist at the University of Southampton.

Their comments coincide with the publication of Health First: an evidence-based alcohol strategy for the UK, a report which calls for a ban on all alcohol advertising, and minimum alcohol pricing. Gerard Hastings is a member of the strategy group which compiled the report.

To see Gerard Hastings discussing the proposed strategy with Professor Linda Bauld, University of Stirling, go to this link. 

Further information

Professor Gerard Hastings is a member of The Open University's Centre for Strategy and Marketing. He is founder/director of the Institute for Social Marketing and Centre for Tobacco Control Research based at Stirling University and The Open University. He is currently leading APISE, a major study of the effectiveness of alcohol control policies.

The British Medical Journal editorial Alcohol Marketing: Grooming the Next Generation was published on 1 March. Current OU students can access it via the OU Library using their Open University Computer Username (OUCU) and password. Its reference is BMJ 2013;346:f1227. For help in accessing electronic journals through the OU Library database go to How can I get access to a particular journal on the Library website.

Posted 26 March 2013

Image: Thinkstock

Following the Francis Report on the crisis at Mid-Staffs Hospital, world experts in the cultures and processes of keeping people safe have been asked to advise the NHS in England on how to prevent patients being harmed while receiving healthcare.

National Advisory Group
The National Advisory Group on the Safety of Patients in England will be chaired by Professor Donald Berwick, President Emeritus and Senior Fellow at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, an organisation that Professor Berwick co-founded and led as President and CEO for 18 years.

Members of the international group have been invited for their areas of expertise and interest covering all aspects of the culture and processes of minimising patient harm, healthcare management and nursing to sociology, psychology and the mobilisation of change.

Professor Hartley
Professor Hartley’s contribution will be on public leadership and on creating and learning from organizational change and innovation following her extensive research in these fields. She has also written six books including Leadership for Healthcare.

Speaking about her appointment to the Berwick Advisory Group Professor Hartley said: “I feel very privileged to be working with this panel of world-class experts in improvement of public services. This is a real opportunity to improve patient safety. We have seen several reports about what went wrong at Mid-Staffs NHS but the Berwick Advisory group goes well beyond this. Our collective aim is to advise on how problems can be prevented in the future, to enhance quality of care for patients and families, and to create a culture for staff that is focused on learning and continuous improvement.”

International experts
Professor Berwick, who will be leading the Group, was asked by the Prime Minster David Cameron to set up the advisory group following last month’s final report into the devastating breakdown of care at Mid-Staffordshire Hospitals. The team of 12 includes recognised experts from the US and the UK.

Prior to his service in 2010 and 2011 as President Obama’s appointee to head the US Medicare and Medicaid programs, Professor Berwick was a paediatric consultant, Professor of Health Care Policy and the Harvard Medical School, and Professor of Health Policy and Management at the Harvard School of Public Health. He is world-renowned for his expertise in patient safety, and advised NHS Scotland in the development of its first national patient safety approach.

Professor Berwick said: “Assuring patient safety and high quality care is never automatic. It requires the constant attention of leaders and continual support to the workforce. I have read, and been deeply affected by, the harrowing personal stories of individuals and families who were so badly injured when this commitment flagged at Mid-Staffordshire Hospitals.

“Our group will do whatever it can to recommend how the NHS in England take serious and profound action, learning from this tragedy to make patient care and treatment as safe as it can possibly be, and ever safer. Indeed, there is no reason why English health care cannot aspire to be and become the safest health care in the world.

“Making patient care as safe as it can possibly be, at all times, is a major challenge in any health care system. It involves leadership, training, staff culture, organisational structures, systems and processes, data capture and analysis, regulation, deep patient and family involvement, and much more.

“It is important to remember that England is in many ways an international exemplar in patient safety, but Mid-Staffordshire shows us that there is still a great deal of work to do. The national group includes English experts as well as some from the US, and with such formidable knowledge and talent on board, I am confident we will be able to set out clear, practical advice and leave a legacy of safer care in the NHS.”

The group will build on the work of Robert Francis QC, advising the NHS on how to deliver real change, based on the best available scientific evidence from across the NHS and from other industries and health services from around the world.

They will report their findings and advice to the NHS Commissioning Board and the Department of Health at the end of July.
 

Find out more
 

Professor Jean Hartley joins the OU Business School

This is one of three programmes – foundation, mid-level and senior level leadership – being developed by the NHS Leadership Academy to help leaders in the NHS support their staff in delivering caring and compassionate services.

The three programmes will see thousands NHS staff each year – including doctors, nurses, Allied Health Professionals, healthcare scientists, human resources and finance staff– learn how to lead their teams and/or services to achieve better patient care.

The Open University will be working with global management consulting firm Hay Group on the foundation level programme, which is for all NHS staff aspiring to a role which involves leading others. 

Karen Lynas, Deputy Managing Director of the NHS Leadership Academy, said: “Our goal is for patients, carers and families to be treated with compassion, dignity and respect, and this cannot be achieved if we don’t have appropriately-skilled leaders and decision makers at every level."

25 February 2013

Useful links

• The NHS Leadership Academy appoints the OU in its largest ever leadership programme 
• Health and Social Care at the OU 
• K313 Leadership and management in health and social care 

 Image:Thinkstock