Oh, you’ve been playing in the Sandpit again?

Posted by Avril Rhodes

When you mention to colleagues or to your nearest and dearest that you’ve spent your working day going around country hotels trying to find the best venue for the Fuse Sandpit residential training event some really sceptical looks are forthcoming. They don’t say it, but each is thinking “What a waste of time – hasn’t she anything better to do?” But, honestly, it really is hard work.

When M’Lord was building his country seat, he thought about creating spectacular grounds, rooms for an army of servants, stable blocks, fine dining rooms and a grand entrance. Strangely, he did not think about the post-aristocratic world of conferencing, or even imagine electricity and internet access. Consequently, whilst ambience, embossed wallpaper, log fires, wonderful views, and curtains that could be turned into seven man (sorry, person) tents are there in abundance, they do not necessarily make for suitable workshop or break out rooms. Country house eccentricity, whilst good for life-size Cluedo (was it Professor Plum in the drawing room with the digital projector or Research Assistant Scarlett in the library with the flip chart?), doesn’t always readily adapt to one’s conference needs.

The final decision: Linden Hall

Some of the country hotels adapted for conference purposes seem to have lost their individuality. The brochure might show a glorious Adam frontage or Palladian columns, but your event mysteriously turns out to be in a windowless, purpose-built block with polystyrene roof tiles, refreshment points (read rubbish coffee machines) or in a wing that separates you from other patrons as if you were somehow infectious.

Never mind, these monstrosities shouldered aside, we have a lovely venue which oozes individuality and charm. Now to envision our use of the space… Yes - the lounge makes a good plenary room, until you realise the public are going to troop through to the dining room. Yes – the library makes a good workshop, until you realise that it only has one socket. Yes – the so-and-so suite would be good until you realise that it’s the wrong shape or size, or might be cold, or doesn’t have enough clear wall space, or is miles away from the other workshop rooms. Debates break out like, “Well, if we use room A for B and space D for C, then we could use room E for G and that will still leave the informal seating area F untouched”, only for someone else to undermine everything you’ve said.

In the end if we’re going to invest properly in the Sandpit style of training, it is worth the effort to get things as right as possible, even if that involves some of us sinking, once again, into the period sofas, or forcing ourselves into yet another lunch in the conservatory. Get the venue right - then the creative juices will flow. The incisive ideas for responding to real problems out there in public health will come, and, everyone will be guaranteed a fun experience that truly beats your average university seminar room and is memorable for years to come!

Ahh… I think it’s time for afternoon tea. Earl Grey, Professor?

Coral Triangle Day

Posted by Duika Burges Watson

June 9th is Coral Triangle Day. The Coral Triangle is a region in South East Asia that covers just 1% of the world’s surface but contains 30% of its coral reefs, 76% of coral reef-building fish species, 9 of the 10 species of giant clam and is home to 100 million people. Celebrating Coral Triangle Day might not sound like an important public health issue for people in the UK, but my reading tells me it is fundamental. I am fortunate to have the opportunity to demonstrate how, as recipient of the 2012 Neville Schulman Challenge Award (with Dr Johanna Wadsley), through our Indonesian research exchange and expedition, Hugging the Coast.



Sometimes topics in public health leap out at you because you are motivated by an issue or concern that really grabs you. Hugging the Coast is a title that resonates on so many levels, and it is one that clearly touched not just us but the many supporters and sponsors that have provided gear, money, expertise, and time to help make the expedition possible.

In August 2012, our international team of six women sea-kayakers and social scientists will traverse the 250km length of the volcanic islands that reach from the northern tip of Sulawesi, Indonesia, to Sangihe in the Celebes Sea - at the edge of the Coral Triangle. We will be documenting and engaging with life in one of the world’s ‘liminal zones’, confronting key contemporary public health issues in relation to climate change and sea level rise, food security and ecology, and how what we ‘do’ at home is not isolated from what happens in other parts of the world.

Our project resonates with the major challenge to public health that is presented in Lang and Raynor’s recent publication Ecological Public Health: Reshaping the Conditions for Good Health. At its core, they argue that public health needs a major overhaul, we need to transform relationships between people, circumstances and the biological world of nature and bodies. They stress that we need better ways to understand and account for major transitions – be they demographic, epidemiological, urban, energy related, economic, nutritional, biological, cultural or political; any conditions involving interactions between human eco-systems and health.

Scenarios developed for the Coral Triangle suggest that in the next century the biological diversity of this ‘Amazon of the seas’ may be destroyed, the resilience of coastal environments will deteriorate and food security – already an issue with climate change and El Nino events – will force migration, urbanisation and even greater depletion of environmental resources. In Hugging the Coast we will confront the lived experience of transitions related to climate change.

But part of the Coral Triangle Initiative, and what Coral Triangle day is there to celebrate, is that there are opportunities to avoid this worst-case scenario – reducing greenhouse gas emissions and building resilience back in with new approaches to agriculture and aquaculture; international investment to ensure that economic growth, food security and natural environments are maintained. On this, a key focus for our expedition and research is the role that seaweed farming might play as an exemplar of ‘climate smart’ agriculture: as an alternative livelihood, reducing fisheries pressures and for carbon sequestration.

The seaweed farmed in the Coral Triangle, is not used there. The product ‘carrageenan’ is extracted from the seaweed and, amongst other uses, is employed in processed foods and fat-reduced products, in toothpaste, as an active ingredient in HIV/AIDs prevention technologies, as an anti-viral agent to protect against HPV and swine flu, and to encapsulate important drugs (for example for novel diabetes drugs). In many applications, public health is a driver of use. In Hugging the Coast we will be exploring a ‘liminal’ zone between land and sea, but also one between the global East and West.

Hugging the Coast offers us an opportunity to map out interactions between human eco-systems and health; to ‘test drive’ an ecological public health approach. It will inevitably be a complex picture, and one that you can follow and contribute to on our blog or on twitter @hugindo