Dr Mary McCauley from LSTM’s Centre for Maternal and Newborn Health (CMNH) has won an award from the Northern Ireland Medical and Dental Training Academy (NIMDTA) at their annual ‘Educational Excellence - Dare to Excel’ award ceremony in Belfast, Northern Ireland for the second year running.
“I am absolutely delighted to have been nominated for and then to win this award for Outstanding Contribution to Society, said Dr McCauley. “This award recognises the pioneering work that CMNH is implementing to improve the health of women and their babies in low resource settings. I am thrilled to be part of this fantastic team and am flattered to have been nominated for an award in relation to my role within the team.”
Dr McCauley is a senior registrar in Obstetrics and Gynaecology currently working at the Centre for Maternal and Newborn Health at the Department of International Public Health, at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, where she has been working as a Clinical Research Associate for the past two years. Mary is currently completing her PhD in International Maternal Health and has recently been promoted to a Senior Clinical Research Associate. Dr Mary Murnaghan (Head of School of Obstetrics and Gynaecology at NIMDTA) nominated her for an award in the Outstanding Contribution to Society in recognition for her involvement in the team in CMNH developing a multi-country research project entitled ‘Improving the quality of antenatal and postnatal care in low and middle income countries: an integrated approach with HIV, Malaria and TB services’.
As part of this implementation research, Mary is involved with the developed of an innovative evidence based training package, consisting of a participant manual, a facilitator manual and a five day ‘skills and drills’ training programme to increase the availability and improve the quality of routine and specialised antenatal and postnatal care in low resource settings. The new project uses innovative approaches to address the identified health needs of mothers and babies during and after pregnancy and provides a new focus on antenatal and postnatal care using a health systems approach to ensuring that care packages are integrated, evidence-based, meet the health needs of women and babies and are ‘women and baby-friendly’. This programme also provides supportive systems to monitor and evaluate the effectiveness of the outcomes of the training and changes in clinical practice of healthcare providers. Robust research methodology and systematic evaluation is integrated in this programme to generate new evidence for what works where and how. Lessons learnt will be disseminated widely and effective dialogue and clear messages will facilitate the translation of these into policy across six countries in Sub-Saharan Africa and Asia.