CV19 Heroes Project – I highly recommend checking out this project which I was privileged to play a small role in through carrying out some interviews with frontline workers. Starting with no funding and on their own time, Dr Rachel Sumner and Dr Elaine Kinsella set up this project to track the wellbeing of frontline workers in the UK and Ireland through Covid19 and beyond.
Rachel and Elaine at the start of the first wave of Covid-19 in the UK and Ireland were concerned about how the pandemic might impact the frontline workers in both countries who were being asked to carry on with their jobs at the risk of exposure whilst most people were being told to stay at home to stay ‘safe’.
This project is a great example of how psychological research can be used to understand and then highlight the experiences and impacts of events on groups of people, providing a valuable understanding of potential mental and physical long term implications. Rachel and Elaine have been passionate in advocating for the frontline workers in their respective countries and are actively engaged with public bodies and organisations working to drive change for the better.
HERA LAB – ” The Health, Environmental Responsibility and Action (HERA) Lab seeks to carry out research in understanding how human health can be affected by our interactions with our environments. From studying health impacts from environmental stressors (such as work stress and climate change), to exploring factors that support health and wellbeing in engaging with creativity and nature, the lab focuses its work on understanding the mechanistic pathways of health and its improvement”.