Kent Health News and Events

Are you interested in health and health services? Would you like to know more about research in health and social care?

Then why not come to our ‘Let’s talk about Health Research!’ event?  Just register and then pop into the Westgate Hall, Canterbury on Wednesday 9 September anytime between 11.30am and 2.00pm to meet health researchers, enjoy talks, take part in activities and watch films.  Find out if you would like to be involved in the research that we do at CHSS.  It will be an informal opportunity to talk with others who are interested in health research, to learn about what’s happening on your doorstep and to have a light lunch with us!  Come along on the day and you’ll be entered into our free prize draw to win a £25 Love2Shop High Street shopping voucher!

To register your interest or if you have any questions, please e-mail engage-chss@kent.ac.uk or phone 01227 823940.  For more information download our pdf flyer and here are directions to the Westgate Hall http://www.westgatehall.org/contact/.

Who is involved?
Amanda Bates
Sarah Hotham
Kate Hamilton-West
David Lowery
Stephen Peckham

Success for students in the School of Biosciences with two undergraduate students being awarded bursaries in the 2015KentHealth Student Vacation Scheme to undertake clinical placements during the summer vacation. This competitive scheme provides support at a rate of £150 per week to allow students to undertake a piece of clinical work over the summer.

Emma Betts is working in East Kent Hospitals University NHS Foundation Trust on the project ‘Diagnosis of carcinoid syndrome- measurement of 5-hydroxyindoleacetic acid’. She is supervised by Alan Dodd and based in the biochemistry department at the William Harvey Hospital, Ashford.

Isabelle le Bailly will be placed in Medway Foundation Trust conducting an audit of compliance of NICE guideline CG177 and inputting data for the ongoing National Joint Registry and National Hip Fracture Database. She will be working with Mr Sunil Jain in Orthopaedics.

For more information on the scheme and to read this years’ student blogs see the Student Vacation Scheme page.

People with low self-esteem use a variety of escape mechanisms to avoid thinking about their own mortality, new Kent research reveals.

Researchers led by Dr Arnaud Wisman, of the University’s School of Psychology, found evidence in five studies that people with low self-esteem respond to reminders of their own mortality by directing their focus away from the ‘self’.

The research found an empirical and causal link between people with low self-esteem having unconscious concerns about their own mortality and then employing a variety of ways to escape from self-awareness. The study demonstrated this link both inside and outside the laboratory.

For more details, please see the full press release.

In late August MSoP welcomed almost 40 graduate students, researching in eight different EU countries, to the latest incarnation of this series of meetings, initiated by Dr. Hall, together with Prof. Börje Sellergren (Malmö University) and Dr. Panagiotis Manesiotis (Queen’s University Belfast) in 2002.

Molecularly imprinted polymers (MIPs) are synthetic polymer receptors designed to be capable of selective recognition of entities from small drug molecules and environmental pollutants to large proteins and even cells! Their tailored recognition properties make them attractive as selective sorbents in a diverse range of applications, such as separations, sensing and drug discovery/delivery.

Over the course of the two-day meeting, there were 26 oral and 13 poster presentations, all of very high quality, spanning a wide range of imprinting topics.  As befits current trends in the field, many lectures concerned the areas of peptide/protein imprinting and the incorporation of imprinted polymers with electrochemical sensors.  However, there were also lectures on diverse such topics as the use of MIPs in the analysis of boar taint and the incorporation of MIPs in cosmetic products!

Two plenary lectures were also delivered. Prof. Goreti Sales (BIOMARK, Porto, Portugal) highlighted strategies “Towards successful protein imprinting”, while our own Dr. Gubala posed the following, thought-provoking question: Nano-engineered material: Have we promised too much?

The organisers wish to express their gratitude to the Materials Division of the RSC for the financial support which allowed this meeting to take place as a free event. We also thank all the graduate students who attended for their contribution to the success of the meeting and look forward to the next Symposium, which will be hosted by Prof. Sales in Porto in 2017.

For more information on this event as well as the next Symposium, please contact us at gssmip@gmail.com.

Tania Saheed, a fourth year MPharm student attended the annual NHS Expo in Manchester with NHS Citizen in 2014. She said “it was a great experience and networking opportunity as I was able to network with healthcare professionals across the NHS and form meaningful relationships”.

Off the back of attending last year’s event, she was then invited to write a blog post for NHS England which was published on the 6th August 2015 and has been viewed by over 1000 people so far. You can read Tania’s blog post here: http://ow.ly/QzUEB

She was also introduced to Dr Keith Ridge, the Chief Pharmaceutical Officer by Olivia Butterworth (NHS Head of Public Participation) and was invited for a private meeting with him at Department of Health, Skipton House which she attended in August.

She has now been invited to attend this year as a delegate on the 2,3rd of September and has also managed to secure a meeting with a lady from the ABPI Monday morning. NHS England has been kind enough to waive the £180+VAT that it usually costs to register and attend. The University of Kent’sStudent Success team have decided to help pay for Tania’s hotel expenses. The school would hate for Tania to miss the event as it is an amazing opportunity and a great way to represent the school.

Congratulations Tania, thank you for being such a great ambassador for the school.

Habiba Akhtar has been named as a finalist in the Daily Telegraph’s STEM Awards, a competition which gives ambitious students an opportunity to prove themselves to leading industry experts.

The 23-year-old, who is in the third year of her MPharm programme, was named as the winner of the pharmaceutical category for her creation. Habiba’s plan is for her bionic woman – still at the initial development stage – to be used in clinical trials, as an in-between step before drugs are trialled on humans. Her creation will include lab-grown blood vessels and artificial lungs to create a complete ‘body’, which can then be controlled by a computer to mimic the effects of different diseases.

The student now goes forward to the final round, in which she faces competition from the winners of the four other categories in the areas of technology, automotive, design in the built environment, and energy.
The overall winner will be announced at a ceremony in June, after a panel of expert judges – which includes Countdown’s Rachel Riley – has assessed the category winners’ proposals.

Habiba says: “People are living longer and diseases aren’t always easy to predict or eradicate, and so we need innovative technology to help meet the demand. I believe this model will greatly decrease the time for new drugs to come to the market and perhaps allow the discoveries of new blockbusters.

“I didn’t imagine I’d get this far. It’s made me more confident and I’m very excited for what the future holds,” Habiba adds. “This competition has taught me so much more about opportunities that are available to us as students and I’ve acquired valuable skills that will help my transition to life as a professional.”

A Daily Telegraph STEM Awards spokesperson says: “If the response to the awards is anything to go by, the future of the sector is in good hands. Now in its second year, the competition is going from strength to strength, with an impressive number of high quality entries received.”

Jointly run by the universities of Greenwich and Kent, Medway School of Pharmacy is based at the institutions’ shared campus at Chatham Maritime. The School opened its doors to its first students in 2004: today it has more than 650 undergraduate and 150 postgraduate students, runs a range of programmes for healthcare professionals, and has extensive laboratories and research facilities.

For more about the STEM Awards 2015:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sponsored/education/stem-awards/11590101/2015-category-winners.html