15 min
Decolonising Research Series: Interview with Jemima Kola-Abodunde R, D and the In-betweens
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- Education
This series of podcast episodes will focus on Decolonising Research, and feature talks from the Decolonising Research Festival held at the University of Exeter in June and July 2022.
The fourteenth episode of the series features University of Exeter PGR Olabisi Obamakin interviewing researcher Jemima Kola-Abodunde.
Music credit: Happy Boy Theme Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
Transcription
Hello, and welcome to rd in the in betweens. I'm your host Kelly Preece. And every fortnight I talk to a different guest about researchers development and everything in between.
00:31
Hello, and thank you for tuning in to this online resource. My name is Bisi Obamakin and I'm a second year PhD student at the University of Exeter. Today we are joined in discussion by my really good friend Jemima Kola-Abondunde she has nearly 10 years of experience in the NHS. She's a physiotherapist by background and has worked across various settings as a clinician. She's me, MSc in public health, from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. And she's also worked in South Africa. Currently, she works in digital transformation and primary care, exploring how patient outcomes can be improved using digital tools. So thank you so much for joining Jemima. I really appreciate it.
01:14
Thank you. Thanks for having me.
01:16
So yeah, tell us a little bit more about your work. Yeah. what your interests are.
01:21
Yeah, I think you've kind of summarize really well. I think ultimately, my interests are wide and all within health care. And I guess the main focus is about optimizing health care delivery on a global scale for patients and ensuring that those that are most vulnerable are not left behind.
01:46
So that sounds amazing. Yeah, thank you for joining this decolonial festival. So yeah, what does decolonization mean to you?
01:57
Yeah, so this is a really big question. I think when I was looking up what it meant in terms of its definition. You know, the internet said, it's a process by a kind of which colonies become independent of the colonizing country. But for me, personally, I think it's really just going back to one's original roots, and identity. So whilst you know the colonizer might be absent, physically, in some places, to me, decolonization refers to the kind of the mental, social, and cultural independence and sort of disentanglement from invaders and reestablishment to one's original identity. Thank you so much. So,
02:47
so you're working in the field of public health in the NHS. And so why is decolonization important specifically in your field?
02:58
So, I think, when we talk about decolonization in the NHS and in the public health, I think, for me, kind of a refers to a lot, it has a lot to do with health inequalities. And it refers to, you know, inclusion refers to diversity of voices, ensuring that everybody has the same level of care. And that's not happening at the moment, you know, if we think about kind of the workforce in itself, the kind of the beam brackets, I appreciate, not everybody likes that terminology, but about 22% of the NHS staff are within, you know, would kind of classify themselves as beam and that's quite significant. So, you know, their voices need to be heard, as well as they need to be treated fairly. But we've seen kind of in the past that that hasn't always been the case. If we take the case study of COVID. That, in itself, showed us glaringly the health inequalities amongst minority ethnic groups with higher rates of death amongst, you know, black Africans, Bangladeshis because of a lack of understanding, lack of trust from patients public side. So yeah, there was a lot of thing happening, lots of things happening there from a kind of a public health and NHS perspective that ties back to kind of colonial roots, you'd say.
04:40
Yeah, and you know, just thinking abou
This series of podcast episodes will focus on Decolonising Research, and feature talks from the Decolonising Research Festival held at the University of Exeter in June and July 2022.
The fourteenth episode of the series features University of Exeter PGR Olabisi Obamakin interviewing researcher Jemima Kola-Abodunde.
Music credit: Happy Boy Theme Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
Transcription
Hello, and welcome to rd in the in betweens. I'm your host Kelly Preece. And every fortnight I talk to a different guest about researchers development and everything in between.
00:31
Hello, and thank you for tuning in to this online resource. My name is Bisi Obamakin and I'm a second year PhD student at the University of Exeter. Today we are joined in discussion by my really good friend Jemima Kola-Abondunde she has nearly 10 years of experience in the NHS. She's a physiotherapist by background and has worked across various settings as a clinician. She's me, MSc in public health, from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. And she's also worked in South Africa. Currently, she works in digital transformation and primary care, exploring how patient outcomes can be improved using digital tools. So thank you so much for joining Jemima. I really appreciate it.
01:14
Thank you. Thanks for having me.
01:16
So yeah, tell us a little bit more about your work. Yeah. what your interests are.
01:21
Yeah, I think you've kind of summarize really well. I think ultimately, my interests are wide and all within health care. And I guess the main focus is about optimizing health care delivery on a global scale for patients and ensuring that those that are most vulnerable are not left behind.
01:46
So that sounds amazing. Yeah, thank you for joining this decolonial festival. So yeah, what does decolonization mean to you?
01:57
Yeah, so this is a really big question. I think when I was looking up what it meant in terms of its definition. You know, the internet said, it's a process by a kind of which colonies become independent of the colonizing country. But for me, personally, I think it's really just going back to one's original roots, and identity. So whilst you know the colonizer might be absent, physically, in some places, to me, decolonization refers to the kind of the mental, social, and cultural independence and sort of disentanglement from invaders and reestablishment to one's original identity. Thank you so much. So,
02:47
so you're working in the field of public health in the NHS. And so why is decolonization important specifically in your field?
02:58
So, I think, when we talk about decolonization in the NHS and in the public health, I think, for me, kind of a refers to a lot, it has a lot to do with health inequalities. And it refers to, you know, inclusion refers to diversity of voices, ensuring that everybody has the same level of care. And that's not happening at the moment, you know, if we think about kind of the workforce in itself, the kind of the beam brackets, I appreciate, not everybody likes that terminology, but about 22% of the NHS staff are within, you know, would kind of classify themselves as beam and that's quite significant. So, you know, their voices need to be heard, as well as they need to be treated fairly. But we've seen kind of in the past that that hasn't always been the case. If we take the case study of COVID. That, in itself, showed us glaringly the health inequalities amongst minority ethnic groups with higher rates of death amongst, you know, black Africans, Bangladeshis because of a lack of understanding, lack of trust from patients public side. So yeah, there was a lot of thing happening, lots of things happening there from a kind of a public health and NHS perspective that ties back to kind of colonial roots, you'd say.
04:40
Yeah, and you know, just thinking abou
15 min