Virhia, J., Gilmour, M., Russell, C., Mutua, E., Nasuwa, F., Mmbaga, B.T., Mshana, S.E., Dunlea, T., Shirima, G., Seni, J. and Lembo, T., 2023. “If You Do Not Take the Medicine and Complete the Dose… It Could Cause You More Trouble”: Bringing Awareness, Local Knowledge and Experience into Antimicrobial Stewardship in Tanzania. Antibiotics, 12(2), p.243.

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is a global health issue disproportionately affecting low- and middle-income countries. In Tanzania, multi-drug-resistant bacteria (MDR) are highly prevalent in clinical and community settings, inhibiting effective treatment and recovery from infection. The burden of AMR can be alleviated if antimicrobial stewardship (AMS) programs are coordinated and incorporate local knowledge and systemic factors. AMS includes the education of health providers to optimise antimicrobial use to improve patient outcomes while minimising AMR risks. For programmes to succeed, it is essential to understand not just the awareness of and receptiveness to AMR education, but also the opportunities and challenges facing health professionals. We conducted in-depth interviews (n = 44) with animal and human health providers in rural northern Tanzania in order to understand their experiences around AMR. In doing so, we aimed to assess the contextual factors surrounding their practices that might enable or impede the translation of knowledge into action. Specifically, we explored their motivations, training, understanding of infections and AMR, and constraints in daily practice. While providers were motivated in supporting their communities, clear issues emerged regarding training and understanding of AMR.

https://www.mdpi.com/2079-6382/12/2/243 Open Access

Piacentini, T., Gilmour, M., Joy, A. and Aksu, P., 2022. “How about asylum seekers who are homeless?” State designed strategies of containment during Covid-19 and anti-racist alternatives: a Glasgow case study. International Journal on Homelessness

This paper asks two questions: How has the Covid-19 pandemic been experienced by people seeking asylum who are subjected to United Kingdom (UK) State designed-in destitution? And what might be the alternatives to State produced destitution? To answer these questions, we draw on two case studies from Glasgow, a city unique in the UK for its long history of asylum dispersal and its deeply embedded ecology of third-sector support and asylum advocacy work. We argue that to understand the segregatory power of dispersal and tiered welfare provision as forms of violent migration governance, centring the racialised logics at play is imperative. This provides the framework for developing anti-racist approaches to supporting people made homeless through destitution by design. Using case studies, we explore how the UK Government’s use of ‘emergency hotel accommodation’ for people seeking asylum who are already homeless or are at risk of homelessness, are becoming normalised strategies of containment for racialised others and an extension of the distributed violence of dispersal accommodation that long pre-dates the pandemic. We offer an alternative advocacy-led and rights-based approach to secure refuge for people made homeless by the State.

https://ojs.lib.uwo.ca/index.php/ijoh/article/view/14969 Open Access

Piacentini, T., Mirza, N., & Gilmour, M. (2022). Challenges of language, accessibility, and ethics when conducting digital interviews in the virtual space. In SAGE Research Methods Cases.

Qualitative interviews are embedded within a diverse ethical and practical landscape which needs to be managed, navigated, and re-negotiated throughout the research endeavor. This landscape becomes much more complex and multilayered when the research environment has been shifted from in-person face-to-face to the virtual space, particularly in the era of COVID-19. While methodological literature exploring online interviews provides how-to guides in designing and maneuvering the research process, language is rarely attended to, particularly the messiness of doing social research with speakers of a nondominant language. Using the multimethod qualitative research project, Scotland in Lockdown, this case study aims to focus on three aspects: (i) digital interviews in virtual spaces; (ii) making language visible in interviews; and (iii) ensuring language accessibility in the digital context. While aiming to develop a digital research design that ensured participation is inclusive, accessible, and dignified, the Scotland in Lockdown project was not without its methodological challenges. In this case study, we argue that online multilingual research increases accessibility, inclusivity, and affords research opportunities that centralize the voices of the vulnerabilized in society. In doing so, the hierarchy and power dynamics omnipresent within qualitative research can be more readily sidestepped. However, we proceed with caution, recognizing this as a demanding endeavor, both ethically and practically. Digital poverty, exclusion, poor internet connection, and ensuring voices and meaning are not lost in translation cannot be overlooked. If not approached cautiously and carefully, we risk reinforcing the limitations and silences we hoped to evade.

Available at: https://methods.sagepub.com/case/language-accessibility-ethics-conducting-digital-interviews-virtual-space

This blog explores how, in the city of Glasgow, one organisation has been working since 2011 to prevent homelessness among this community of people refused asylum. Safe in Scotland, (originally named Glasgow Night Shelter for Destitute Asylum Seekers) was founded as an urgent humanitarian intervention.

Cite as: Joy, A., Piacentini, T., Gilmour, M., & Aksu, P. (2022). Safe in Scotland: A pandemic-era alternative to institutional asylum accommodation.

Available at: https://rli.blogs.sas.ac.uk/2022/09/02/safe-in-scotland-a-pandemic-era-alternative-to-institutional-asylum-accommodation/

This blog explores Glasgow’s unique position in the UK and how it responded to asylum housing in the pandemic. Glasgow is Scotland’s largest city and has, since 1999, also been the UK Home Office’s largest and only Scottish dispersal area. Dispersal is a system of accommodation that distributes people seeking asylum across the UK on a no-choice basis. When people seeking asylum are dispersed, they are provided with basic accommodation and meagre financial support while their claims are assessed. Combined with the removal of the right to work and to access mainstream welfare, as well as an extended decision-making process on asylum claims, this set-up produces isolation and perpetuates poverty.

Cite as: Gilmour, M., Aksu, P., Piacentini, T. and Joy, A., 2022. Destitution, hotels, and pandemic responses to

asylum housing in Glasgow, Scotland.

Available at: https://rli.blogs.sas.ac.uk/2022/07/11/destitution-hotels-and-pandemic-responses-to-asylum-housing-in-glasgow-scotland/

CERT (Contraception Education Reform Team) are a student-led policy research group based at the University of Edinburgh. We aim to improve contraceptive care and education for all contraceptive users through research and policy-based change. Our research team, comprising of multidisciplinary university students from across the UK and Europe, was recently tasked with researching ‘what constitutes a positive contraceptive experience?’.

Cite as: Gilmour, M. et al. (2021). What constitutes a ‘positive’ contraceptive experience? British Medical

Journal Sexual & Reproductive Health Blog

Available at: https://blogs.bmj.com/bmjsrh/2021/10/08/what-constitutes-a-positive-contraceptive-experience/

The research focused on the perceived structural, strategic challenges facing, and potential opportunities awaiting, the third sector in Scotland in addressing the Hostile Environment policy and its consequences. The study had two principal aims. First, to collate views from across the third sector in Scotland, incorporating large, medium and small organisations in order to consult a wide, diverse range of perspectives. Second, to provide greater clarity regarding perspectives on the strategic challenges and opportunities facing the third sector, to support greater collective understanding across the asylum and refugee sector more broadly, identify potential pathways forward, and assist efforts to create a more hospitable environment in Scotland (and beyond), where outcomes are improved for communities of refugees and people seeking asylum.

Available At: https://eprints.gla.ac.uk/253013/2/253013.pdf

After nearly 40 years of conflict and displacement, Afghanistan remains one of the world’s most complex humanitarian crisis. Shelter needs of displaced, host, and shock-affected populations remain at the forefront of this crisis with over 6.6 million people in need of Emergency Shelter and Non-food Item (ES/NFI) assistance, according to the Humanitarian Needs Overview for 2021. Of these, 2.9 million are projected to be in need of emergency shelter assistance, 2.2 million in need of transitional shelters, and 5.8 million of shelter repairs or NFI assistance. Previous studies have highlighted how many emergency ES/NFI needs are linked to an overall lack of resilience and heightened vulnerability, where many poor families lack the resources to repair their homes following a major shock, often forcing homeowners into debt that limit their ability to recover. The humanitarian community has taken note of this link, highlighting in the Humanitarian Response Plan that transitional shelter responses can play a critical role in building homeowner resilience and keeping them both out of debt and of other, broader needs.

Available At: https://www.academia.edu/86538819/Afghanistan_Local_Architecture_Review_Key_Findings_on_vernacular_shelter_designs_materials_and_local_building_practices_in_Afghanistan

The research focused on the impact of Covid-19 restrictions (‘lockdown’) for four groups already experiencing exclusion, isolation and marginalisation: people having a disability or long-term health condition (DHC); People involved in criminal justice (CJS); Refugees and people seeking asylum who were at risk of destitution (RAD); People surviving domestic abuse or sexual violence (DASV). • As a rapid research project, the study aims to understand and report on the impacts of Covid-19 restrictions as they are happening, in order to contribute to better responses to it; the analysis presented may be further developed and modified.

Available At: http://eprints.gla.ac.uk/2364

In March 2020 Scotland went into lockdown in response to the Covid-19 pandemic. We were all asked to ‘stay at home’, ‘stay safe’ and ‘protect the NHS’, and were told that we were ‘all in it together’. This was not the case for people who were already marginalised and isolated, who faced even more hardship and inequality as a result of the pandemic restrictions. The research team worked collaboratively with ethnographic illustrator Sophia Nelson and many of the project partners to produce powerful graphic novellas that tell the stories of research participants in composite form. Digital and downloadable versions in multiple languages are available at the link below.

Available at: https://scotlandinlockdown.co.uk/graphic-books/

This animated video stems from my PhD research findings. It tells the story of the healthcare journeys of Syrian parents who supported their children in seeking thalassemia care. It details the role of humanitarian healthcare organisations and how they both facilitate and hinder equitable treatment.

Coming soon.