..:: AUTO REPORT AFRICA ::..
Related Articles
An international PhD student from the University of Huddersfield ‘s Department of Pharmacy in the School of Applied Sciences has won a prestigious award for her research on how community pharmacies can contribute to preventing suicide in low and middle-income countries, in particular within her home country of Nigeria.
Somto Chike-Obuekwe has been bestowed the Martin Lawlor Research Bursary Award, a prestigious bursary conferred by Martin Lawlor’s family and supported by the UK’s leading research programme into suicide prevention in clinical services, the ‘National Confidential Inquiry into Suicide and Safety in Mental Health’ (NCISH) and the mental health charity ‘State of Mind Sport’.
Supporting early career researchers
Dr Martin Lawlor was a Consultant Forensic Psychiatrist who specialised in self-harm and suicide research and was a friend and colleague of the NCISH. The award supports early career researchers in the UK and Ireland to expand their knowledge and improve wider understanding of and practice in self-harm or suicide prevention and provides an opportunity to engage with other researchers in self-harm and suicide prevention.
Somto will be using the award to attend the 32nd World Congress by the ‘International Association for Suicide Prevention (IASP)’ in Piran, Slovenia from 19 – 23 September 2023 and said she is looking forward to presenting her findings on the contribution of community pharmacists in suicide prevention in Nigeria with delegates at the conference.
Role of community pharmacy teams
The judging panel noted how Somto is the first researcher to consider the role of community pharmacy teams in suicide prevention in Nigeria, or indeed any low or middle-income country and that she recently collaborated with global experts in suicide prevention and pharmacy to submit a symposium for the IASP on the role of pharmacy in suicide prevention.
“My research aims to raise awareness of suicide and prompt the training of pharmacists to become knowledgeable about suicide signs and its risk factors. Community pharmacists are one of the easily accessible health care professionals and are stationed in the heart of the community, so they have the advantage of encountering those with suicide ideation” explained Somto.
in 2022, Somto co-authored a journal article with her PhD supervisors, Dr Hayley Gorton and Dr Nicola Gray, titled, ‘Suicide Prevention in Nigeria: Can Community Pharmacists Have a Role?’.
In it, she reveals how low and middle-income countries (LMICs), including Nigeria, account for 77% of global suicide mortality, with limited resources for its prevention. Following her PhD, Somto hopes to be able to influence the Nigerian government and policymakers in order to improve Nigeria’s suicide prevention strategy and include suicide prevention training in the pharmacy curriculum.
University of Huddersfield – Inspiring Global Professionals
The University of Huddersfield has a growing reputation as an inspiring, innovative provider of higher education of international renown. Researchers at the University of Huddersfield are dedicated to solving the problems and answering the questions posed by industry, science and society as a whole. The University’s research is showcased by world-leading applied research groups in biomedical sciences, engineering and physical sciences, social sciences and arts and humanities.
The University of Huddersfield achieved a Gold Teaching Excellence and Student Outcomes Framework (TEF) award in June 2017. This award expired in June 2021 and the scheme is currently being revised. We look forward to being reassessed when the awards are re-opened in 2023. We won the first Global Teaching Excellence Award recognising the University’s commitment to world-class teaching and its success in developing students as independent learners and critical thinkers (Higher Education Academy, 2017).
Triple proof of teaching excellence: our staff rank in the top three in England for the proportion who hold doctorates, who have higher degrees, and hold teaching qualifications (HESA 2022). We are joint second for National Teaching Fellowships which mark Britain’s best lecturers in Higher Education, winning a total of 18 since 2008 (2021 data).
In 2021, the University gained a Queen’s Anniversary Prize for its role in advanced measurement in smart manufacturing. The prize recognised the ground-breaking work of the Centre for Precision Technologies. In 2019, the University gained a Queen’s Anniversary Prize for the innovative work of the Institute of Railway Research. This followed the 2015 Queen’s Anniversary Prize for expanding global boundaries in new music.
Recognised as a leader in enterprise and innovation, the University has been the recipient of the Times Higher Education magazine’s awards for the University of the Year, Entrepreneurial University of the Year and Outstanding Leadership and Management and also a recipient of Queen’s Awards for Enterprise. The University has been awarded an overall 5 Star rating from QS Stars, which renders the university’s rating as world-class in Teaching, Employability, Facilities, Innovation, Internationalisation and Inclusiveness.
The University annually enrols over 19,000 students to an increasingly multicultural campus that welcomes students from over 120 countries on to a range of undergraduate and postgraduate programmes across subjects covering…
…the sciences, engineering and IT
…health, education and the social sciences
…business, management, law and accountancy
…architecture, design, humanities and the arts.
