A lecturer at NUI Galway’s School of Medicine has been awarded a €3 million grant to head up a major research project into migrant health.
Dr Anne MacFarlane, a lecturer in primary care, says the RESTORE (Research into implementation strategies to support patients of different origins and language backgrounds in a variety of European primary care settings ) research is of immense importance.
“In Ireland and other parts of Europe service users from migrant communities who have limited English, and their general practitioners, face significant challenges on a daily basis in their consultations together because they do not have a shared language or cultural background.
“This results in frequent misunderstandings and communication breakdowns which is distressing and frustrating for all concerned. RESTORE focuses on implementing evidence-based solutions to this problem in primary care consultations.”
RESTORE is funded under the EU Health 2010 theme which focuses on better understanding of dissemination and implementation strategies and aims to address gaps in the translation of research evidence into day-to-day clinical settings.
The RESTORE consortium includes partners from Scotland, England, the Netherlands, Austria and Greece - countries which have different patterns of migration and a range of experiences of intercultural health policy and service development. This means that the scope for transnational learning and development is significant.
Mary O’Reilly de Brún and Tomas de Brún, co-founders and directors of the Centre for Participatory Strategies (CPS ), Galway, were instrumental in the co-design and development of the proposal and are now involved as senior researchers in the general practice for the research project.
“As cultural anthropologists, who specialise in PLA approaches and techniques for academic-community based research, we are excited by the prospect of exploring, with our European partners, the application of PLA across culturally-diverse research settings, a participatory approach is capable of giving service users from migrant communities a genuine voice alongside other key stakeholders in the assessment of implementation strategies to support communication in cross-cultural consultations.”
Terry Smith, the vice president for research at NUI Galway, says the university is delighted to be part of this investment by the EU for research led by Dr MacFarlane.
“It is an affirmation of the quality of community engaged research conducted at NUI Galway and promises to further our commitment to academic-community partnerships for research and development projects.”.
Welcoming this funding success, NUI Galway president Dr James Browne says this is very significant funding development for the college.
“It highlights the quality of research being conducted at the university in the areas of general practice, clinical care, health policy and promotion. I congratulate Dr MacFarlane and her team on their success to date and look forward to the outcomes of this project.”
NUI Galway is one of Ireland’s foremost centres of academic excellence. More than 17,000 students undertake an extensive range of degrees and diplomas at the college, which is renowned for the quality of its graduates.
It is a research-led university with internationally recognised expertise in areas including biomedical science and engineering, web science, human rights, marine science, energy and environmental science, applied social sciences and public policy, and humanities, in particular literature, theatre and Irish studies.
