ASSIST is an effective theory-based early secondary-schools-based smoking prevention intervention implemented in UK and France. Drawing on Diffusion of Innovation Theory, ASSIST trains students voted as influential by their year group, to support/promote anti-smoking messages and norms among peers.

This project involves a team of researchers in the School of Education with Professor Kay Livingston as PI and is co-led by Professor Catherine Doherty with Professor Trevor Gale, Dr Stephen Parker, and both Dr Ria Dunkley and Dr Catherine Lido of CR&DALL all as co-Is. They have been commissioned to conduct a study for the British Council to assess the impact of their programmes in Scotland. The British Council currently work with approximately a third of all schools in Scotland, through their Erasmus+, Connecting Classrooms, eTwinning and Modern Language Assistants programs.

Following the National Coastal Change Assessment in Scotland, this project has been part of the next phase of the progamme Dynamic Coast. This phase of work mapped and categorised the resilience of Scotland’s natural coastal defences, identifying where low dunes may breach. It estimated how future climate change may exacerbate erosion on our soft (erodible) coast.

This is a GCRF AHRC-MRC global partnership grant funded from Dec 2017 – Jun 2019. Among the 160 million population of Bangladesh, it is estimated that 2.23 million people are currently living in over 9,000 slums. In the urban slums of Bangladesh, poverty makes the impact of life-limiting conditions devastating on family and community members. Communities that are already impoverished and marginalised are caring for each other without support. There are very few, if any, community palliative care projects focused on older people in urban slums around the world.