Dee
And it's time for Beckett Talks, Research - I'm Dee Grismond and each week we will be showcasing the interesting and innovative research community here at Leeds Beckett as part of this podcast series. In this week's episode, we look back at an interview recorded before the COVID 19 pandemic with Dr. Maria Maynard from the School of Clinical and Applied Sciences here at Leeds Beckett University.
Dee
Dr. Maynard researched themes around ethnicity in health and community based communication, engagement and intervention. Her work is theory driven, including socio ecological theory and behavioural change theory. Welcome to the podcast, Dr. Maria Maynard. So, Professor Maynard, first of all, can you tell me a little bit about your background and how you got into this particular field of research?
Dr Maynard
Well, my journey into research started with a very early interest. I studied nutrition at undergraduate level, and it was there that I began to become interested in perhaps having research as a career. Once I graduated, I wasn't really sure how you go about that. And so actually, after a few roles, I took a risk and decided to just try this part time or temporary roles in research.
Dr Maynard
And so I did data collection, data entry jobs, and that all sort of pulled together to then build my my research knowledge and my understanding of how you get into research. And so from then, that led me to being awarded a scholarship at the University of Bristol, and that's where I did my PhD in nutritional epidemiology. And that was the really big start to my research career.
Dr Maynard
And thereafter, then I continued as a research assistant research associate just growing in the roles. And now as a reader here at Leeds Beckett.
Dee
That's great. So tell me a little bit about the passion you have for your research subjects.
Dr Maynard
My passion for my research really is about how it's such a privilege to engage with, to interact with, people. It's a privilege to hear their stories. Our research topic is a serious one. We focus on health inequalities But actually it's the humour with which people tell their stories, which they share their lives with us, which makes it a real privilege.
Dr Maynard
And that's really inspired the passion for my work.
Dee
So, Dr. Maynard, tell me a little bit about your teaching at Leeds Beckett University.
Dr Maynard
My teaching is mostly around research methods, and I run the module for research projects in the final year for nutrition students and for dietetics students. And at postgraduate level I teach nutritional epidemiology.
Dee
That sounds really interesting, but how do you enthuse your students about your subjects? How do you get them as passionate as you are.
Dr Maynard
To enthuse our students about research methods, I always make sure that I reflect back to them how important their research contributes and is. They do real research and it contributes to the research that we do as a research team. We always use past examples of students work to demonstrate that, and because it is often of such high quality, that work goes into further dissemination.
Dr Maynard
So students do presentations at conferences. And students have also contributed to research papers. So we can put all that back into our teaching and demonstrate really how important their research is and how well they can they can do it even though they are they are novice as researchers.
Dee
So your research sounds incredibly interesting, but if you were to explain it to me in one sentence, what would that sentence be?
Dr Maynard
One of the most important questions for us that we want our research to address is what are the key challenges, health challenges, that people feel that they face when living in deprived communities, and how can we work collaboratively to design and to deliver interventions which will address those challenges?
Dee
And what's the value of your research to the community, to the everyday person out on the street?
Dr Maynard
Well, health is not on a level playing field for everyone. And so if we address the health issues amongst those who are at greatest risk, that has the biggest impact on dealing with that inequality. And then that also then improves health for all because, for example, there's more resources available for everyone. If we tackle those who are at greatest risk.
Dee
And what direction do you see your research going in the future and why?
Dr Maynard
The direction we want to take our research in the future is to focus less on the individual, and what the individual does, and putting responsibility on them and focus more on the wider determinants of health. So people's environment that they live in has a huge impact on their behaviours and directly on their health. So we want to work collaboratively with other disciplines outside of nutrition and dietetics, could be geographers, could be town planners and so on to make sure that people have access to healthy food.
Dr Maynard
For example, in their neighbourhoods, green space to do physical activity. And therefore when we tackle those wider issues, we can then join that with the activities that people do. So that that matches what we ask people to do in terms of changing their behaviours. They have the opportunity to do that if they have the right environment.
[Break]
Dee
Thanks so much for that. And now we're back in the studio with Dr. Maria Maynard. Tell me a little bit about the impact your research has had to date.
Dr Maynard
The impact of the research. Well, it's one of the things which are which can be hard to measure. We are a new research group, we've only been going for about three years, and the sorts of health issues that we tackle can take a long time to shift that. They're very well embedded. However, what we can say already is that we have improved engagement with our group, with the local communities, They see us as individuals, as a group and as an institution, as a place which is interested in their health that they can share their ideas, and that we're interested in their perspective because they are the most sensible people to know what they need
Dr Maynard
and how to how to tackle it. We do already see changes in behaviours and the way that we know that, changes in eating habits and changes in increasing physical activity, for example, and the way we know that is that when we do our public engagement activities and we evaluate those, we can see change in behaviour. So we are beginning to have that impact of our research there.
For our more longer standing projects and work that I've done prior to coming to Leeds Beckett. We were able to identify key stages in the life course, particularly early on, for example, in adolescence where we should intervene early. For example, there's a rise in blood pressure amongst certain minority ethnic groups in adolescence and that is a stage where we can tackle that so that they then go on to have hypertension in later life.
Dee
Your research seems to have a lot of impact, but tell me about the one thing you would like to change about your particular field of research.
Dr Maynard
The one thing we would really like to change is the speed at which our research findings are then translated into practise. It can take a very long time in all research fields, and we want to for that to be speedier. So the larger we grow, the more that we do, the more that we collaborate, will increase the speed of translating what we find into practical help for people.
Dee
Can you just expand on that? And explain a little bit about what that means?
Dr Maynard
Our work aims to contribute to tackling health inequalities. And what that means is tackling those areas where people have different access to health. They have different health outcomes depending on their own background, and where they live. And so we focus on the way in which migrant status and ethnic identity shape health patterns. And that's because that is one of the main drivers of health inequalities.
Dr Maynard
So if we tackle health amongst these groups, who have greater risk of poor health outcomes, particularly when we're thinking about nutrition related health, and also because they tend to live in the poor neighbourhoods, then that tackles health inequalities for everyone in those areas and therefore has an impact on health for all.
Dee
Thank you, Dr. Maria Maynard. The Beckett Talk podcasts are released every Tuesday so don't forget to check our social media channels on Instagram, Twitter or Facebook to find out more details on our next episode. See you next week.
