Fit for travel

Undertaking research that has an impact on people and communities is a prime focus for Northumbria. A new study has uncovered how healthcare providers can improve the ways they deliver services to Travelling communities who face particular struggles accessing healthcare.

Due to their transient lifestyle, Travellers such as Romani Gypsies, boat dwellers and circus people tend to have low incomes, poor housing conditions and little continuity with healthcare providers. As such, they often have high ‘socioeconomic inequalities markers’ meaning they are more likely to suffer from poor health and have a lower life expectancy. According to one government statistic, just 30% of Irish travellers live beyond their 60th birthday.

The National Institute for Health Research was keen to improve access to healthcare for this ethnic minority group and commissioned a £300,000 project to understand how services had been provided in the past and recommend ways to improve it in the future.

Researchers from Northumbria and Fuse, a virtual research centre that brings together staff and students from the North East’s five universities, found that if Travellers were provided with outreach workers who understand their unique needs and culture, they would be more likely to increase their participation with healthcare providers, leading to improvements in their health. Evidence also suggested that the more the outreach worker is trusted by the community, the more likely they are to be successful at promoting healthier behaviours.

Following publication of their report in The Journal of Public Health Research, the team will now work with healthcare providers to help them design and commission the most effective kind of outreach support.

Susan Carr, a Professor of Public Health Research at Northumbria and Associate Director of Fuse, explained: “Our research has shown that developing trust between Traveller communities and healthcare providers is at the absolute core of improving access to services. Due to past experiences of discrimination or rejection, many Travellers are deeply suspicious of any form of authority, particularly when this comes from outside their community. This is particularly crucial when they need to talk to healthcare workers about personal issues they would not normally share with anyone outside of their very close circle of friends and family.

“Travellers want to have trust in the people they deal with and will sometimes travel great distances to see a contact they have a rapport with. Taking the time to develop these relationships is crucial to ensure the effectiveness of new outreach interactions and interventions.”

Crowdfunding is a way of raising finance by asking a large number of people to each donate or invest a small amount of money to collectively fund a project.

Project founders design an online campaign, tell their stories in promotional videos and promote their project more widely through social media in the hope of inspiring and motivating people to donate or invest.

Dr Briggs said: “The largest and most well-known crowdfunding website is US-based Kickstarter. Launching a campaign for a new product or service on this platform is a great way to test the market and generate pre-sales before having to invest time and money in developing a product or exhibition.

“However, this shift in the project lifecycle means that seemingly successful artists or small businesses don’t always anticipate the number of pledges and end up working laboriously for two or three years to create and distribute promised rewards to thousands of funders.

It is important not to overpromise during the money-raising campaign and to price everything meticulously, factoring in postage and packaging and platform and payment systems at around 10%.”

Northumbria researchers will look at the reasons why investors give money to some projects over others, considering factors such as trust and empathy.

Dr Briggs added: “There are now literally hundreds of crowdfunding platforms, and whilst there are some challenges within the competitive sector there are huge opportunities for founders and funders which I want to explore, both in a UK and specifically North East context.”

Crowdfunding campaigns to generate money for cultural projects, social innovation, business start-ups and lending have been reported widely in the media. Last year a crowd-funding campaign to bring back 1970s clay character Morph for an online series reached its target after just eight days. Aardman Animations set up the £75,000 campaign on Kickstarter to help fund 12 new one-minute episodes. Other crowdfunding projects have financed major art projects or new businesses, filling a crucial gap where public sector funding and bank loans are increasingly restricted.

Commenting on the successful funding proposals, ESRC Chief Executive Professor Paul Boyle said: “As a new generation grows up in a world where digital interaction is the norm, there is so much to understand about how our identities and relationships are shaped by our online activities. I’m delighted that the ESRC is funding these projects, backing researchers from a variety of disciplines and institutions to address these fascinating issues, and building UK research capacity in these areas for the future.”

Dr Briggs’ team brings together experts from various fields to examine this new technoeconomic/business model. Her co-investigator in the research is Dr Patrick McCole, an online trust in e-commerce and marketing specialist, based at Queen’s University Belfast. Northumbria offers a range of courses in media and communication.