Yunus Centre growing steadily

Huge progress has been made in the year since the official launch of the Yunus Centre for Social Business and Health when Professor Cam Donaldson gave his inaugural lecture on ‘Markets and Health in the Home of Smith and Yunus’.  The Centre has been busy building its portfolio of research projects.   Among recent successes, the team have been successful in a bid to the Medical Research Council Methodology Panel, where the Centre has received £322,000 funding for a 3-year project beginning in September 2011.  The project will develop methods and survey techniques to study the value to society of end-of-life health care technologies.  Dr Rachel Baker, Reader in Health Economics, will be the principal investigator in this project, with co-investigators from the GCU’s Yunus Centre, and Job van Exel from Erasmus University, Rotterdam and Cathy Hutchison from NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde.

The Yunus Centre has steadily grown with new members in the team, including health economics lecturer Dr Helen Mason who was on an ESRC funded post doctoral fellow at Newcastle University’s Institute of Health & Society.  Dr Mason will also be collaborating closely with the Glasgow Centre for Population Health. 

In addition to this, the Centre will welcome two new PhD students who will commence in September.   Clementine Hill O’Connor, a social anthropology graduate from Edinburgh University, who originally came as a Yunus Intern in early 2011, will begin her studies on the Passage From India project.  Involving thirteen female community leaders from the six most deprived postcodes in Glasgow; this Church of Scotland-managed project takes the group on a study tour of women’s self-help initiatives in India to learn about various aspects of microcredit and social business.  The aim is for these women is to disseminate the principles and practices learned in India amongst their communities back in Glasgow.  The scheme is funded by the Church of Scotland.

Michael Roy, a GCU graduate, will also commence his PhD studies in September, working with Renfrewshire Community Health Initiative to study its transition to social business status. He will work part-time on this project prior to embarking on his PhD.

The Centre welcomes a new Yunus intern this month.   Bobby McCauley who has just completed his politics degree at Glasgow University is working on two tasks: using Scottish Neighbourhood Statistics to describe socio-economic features of six deprived areas of Glasgow and looking into a measure of “ego development”.  The project is funded by the Innovation Voucher Scheme of the Scottish Funding Council to work with Renfrewshire Community Health Initiative on ‘Measuring the social and economic impact of community health initiatives in a changing fiscal climate’.

The Yunus Centre has received several generous donations.   Carolyn Smyth, a resident of Glasgow was inspired by the work of Professor Yunus and the Grameen Bank and gave a donation to support interns to work at the Centre.

To find out more about what the Yunus centre for Social Business has done, please visit their website.