Five-year trajectories of prescription opioid use

JAMA Network Open

Peer-Reviewed Publication

JAMA NETWORK

About The Study: The results of this study of 3.4 million adults suggest that most individuals commencing treatment with prescription opioids had relatively low and time-limited exposure to opioids over a 5-year period. The small proportion of individuals with sustained or increasing use was older with more comorbidities and use of psychotropic and other analgesic drugs, likely reflecting a higher prevalence of pain and treatment needs in these individuals. 

Authors: Natasa Gisev, Ph.D., of UNSW Sydney in Sydney, Australia, is the corresponding author. 

To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ 

(doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2023.28159)

Editor’s Note: Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, conflict of interest and financial disclosures, and funding and support.

http://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2023.28159?utm_source=For_The_Media&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=ftm_links&utm_term=081023

About JAMA Network Open: JAMA Network Open is an online-only open access general medical journal from the JAMA Network. On weekdays, the journal publishes peer-reviewed clinical research and commentary in more than 40 medical and health subject areas. Every article is free online from the day of publication. 

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JOURNAL

JAMA Network Open

Alcohol consumption among adults with a cancer diagnosis

JAMA Network Open

Peer-Reviewed Publication

JAMA NETWORK

About The Study: The findings of this study of 15,000 adults suggest that alcohol consumption and risky drinking behaviors were common among cancer survivors, even among individuals receiving treatment. Given the adverse treatment and oncologic outcomes associated with alcohol consumption, additional research and implementation studies are critical in addressing this emerging concern among cancer survivors. 

Authors: Yin Cao, Sc.D., M.P.H., of the Washington University in St. Louis School of Medicine, is the corresponding author. 

To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ 

(doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2023.28328)

Editor’s Note: Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, conflict of interest and financial disclosures, and funding and support.

 http://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2023.28328?utm_source=For_The_Media&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=ftm_links&utm_term=0810          23

About JAMA Network Open: JAMA Network Open is an online-only open access general medical journal from the JAMA Network. On weekdays, the journal publishes peer-reviewed clinical research and commentary in more than 40 medical and health subject areas. Every article is free online from the day of publication. 

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JOURNAL

JAMA Network Open

Next-day effects of heavy drinking on young adults the focus of NIH grant

PENN STATE

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Nausea, headaches and difficulty concentrating are just a few of the hangover symptoms that can besiege young adults who drink alcohol to excess. To gain a greater understanding of how heavy drinking impacts young adults, Ashley Linden-Carmichael, Penn State associate research professor of health and human development, is leading a two-year study funded by a $421,000 grant from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, one of the National Institutes of Health. She will examine the effects of alcohol use on young adults’ daily cognitive functioning the day after a drinking episode.

According to the 2021 National Survey on Drug Use and Health, 2.4 million adults ages 18-25 reported heavy alcohol use in month prior.

“Since heavy drinking can affect work or school performance, we hope our research will shed a light on who is in need of monitoring and early intervention,” said Linden-Carmichael, who is a multiple-principal investigator on the study.

The researchers will collect intensive self-reported data from 250 young adults over the course of 21 days to explore the effects of alcohol use on cognitive functioning. Participants will be asked to complete brief surveys sent four times per day via text and complete tests to gauge their memory and other cognitive functions.

Analyses will include how much the participants drank the previous day and how long the effects of alcohol use lasted throughout the three weeks of the study. The researchers will also factor in demographic data and whether the participants also used cannabis the previous day.

The research team is also concerned about possible damage to the brain and nervous system caused by drinking over the course of years.

“Depending on findings from our current study, we would like to follow young adults to understand whether the link between alcohol use and cognitive functioning persists over the years — if there is impact on the brain, do these effects accumulate?” Linden-Carmichael asked.

Jacqueline Mogle, associate professor at Clemson University, is multiple-principal investigator on the study with Linden-Carmichael. Stephen Wilson, Penn State professor of psychology, is collaborating on the study.

For more information about the study, visit the Edna Bennett Pierce Prevention Research Center website.

Perceptions of safety of daily cannabis vs tobacco smoking and secondhand smoke exposure

JAMA Network Open

Peer-Reviewed Publication

JAMA NETWORK

About The Study: This survey study of 5,035 adults found that adults increasingly perceived daily smoking and secondhand exposure to cannabis smoke as safer than tobacco smoke from 2017 to 2021. Given that these views do not reflect the existing science on cannabis and tobacco smoke, the findings may have important implications for public health and policy as the legalization and use of cannabis increase. 

Authors: Beth Cohen, M.D., M.A.S., of the University of California, San Francisco, is the corresponding author. 

To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ 

(doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2023.28691)

Editor’s Note: Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, conflict of interest and financial disclosures, and funding and support.

 http://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2023.28691?utm_source=For_The_Media&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=ftm_links&utm_term=081123

About JAMA Network Open: JAMA Network Open is an online-only open access general medical journal from the JAMA Network. On weekdays, the journal publishes peer-reviewed clinical research and commentary in more than 40 medical and health subject areas. Every article is free online from the day of publication.

  

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JOURNAL

JAMA Network Open

 

Education program tackles race-based cancer health disparities

Project aims to ‘move the needle’ on Black students’ STEM participation, engagement

Grant and Award Announcement

RICE UNIVERSITY

 

IMAGE: CAROLYN NICHOL IS AN ASSOCIATE RESEARCH PROFESSOR OF CHEMISTRY, DIRECTOR OF THE RICE OFFICE OF STEM ENGAGEMENT AND EDUCATION DIRECTOR FOR THE NSF NANOENABLED WATER TREATMENT (NEWT) ENGINEERING RESEARCH CENTER. view more 

CREDIT: (PHOTO BY JEFF FITLOW/RICE UNIVERSITY)

HOUSTON – (Aug. 10, 2023) Rice University chemist Carolyn Nichol has won a competitive Science Education Partnership Award (SEPA) from the National Institutes of Health to address race-based cancer health disparities by increasing underrepresented minority student populations’ engagement and participation in biosciences education.

The 5-year, $1,038,544 award will support Nichol’s Cancer Health Activism Network for Greater Equity (CHANGE) project in bringing together cutting-edge cancer research with insight on race-based healthcare disparities from the social sciences in a series of transformative high school biology lessons aligned with both state and national standards.

“Our goal is to affect students’ interest in bioscience careers and studies by working with their teachers,” Nichol said. “We're recruiting high school biology teachers to do research in university labs working on projects led by faculty at Rice and at Texas Southern University who are Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas (CPRIT) scholars.

“On the one hand, teachers will learn about the latest innovations in cancer research while, on the other hand, they’ll get to hear from researchers in the social sciences about health disparities affecting Blacks ⎯ it’s a two-pronged approach.”

Nichol hopes that time in the lab will be a “transformative experience for teachers, who will return to classrooms feeling empowered and with a renewed sense of leadership:”

“The research internships could bring a spark to their teaching,” Nichol said. “They'll get hands-on knowledge on topics like CRISPR or epigenetics ⎯ things they may not have learned about when they were in school or that have changed significantly in recent years. They'll also learn about health disparities issues that disproportionately affect minority Black populations, and ways that we can teach science more holistically and more student-driven versus teacher-driven.”

In addition to lab work, the first three years of the program will bring together high school science teachers from Houston-area schools with relatively large Black student populations for a series of workshops where participants will work on developing and refining a portfolio of lessons meant to encourage and motivate students to pursue STEM education and career paths.

“It’s one thing to teach a kid who is already interested in biology and wants to learn about the cell cycle and DNA, for instance, and another thing altogether to try to do that for someone who thinks that’s not for them or that they can’t do that,” Nichol said. “For decades, we've been trying to bring more underrepresented minorities into STEM, but the numbers really haven't changed. Moving that needle has just been really hard.

“This approach of showing kids both the exciting parts of science while letting them know that they have a role to play in changing prevalent race-based disparities in healthcare access could really help break that stalemate.”

During the last two years of the program, participating teachers will attend a 4-day professional development workshop held both in-person and virtually where they will get to share their experience and learn about all the activities and lessons developed.

“One of the reasons it's so powerful to work with teachers is that, according to the Texas Education Agency, each high school teacher works with, on average, 130 students a year,” Nichol said. “So, if there are 187 teachers over the five years of this project, that would impact approximately 25,000 students overall. And, since biology is the only science class that’s required in the state of Texas, we hope to reach kids that might not otherwise self-select to take a science class.”

The program is designed based on a transformational leadership model that cultivates individuals’ strengths and self-worth to drive engagement.

“It’s really about teaching from a positive viewpoint,” Nichol said. “A lot of times when a student walks into a classroom, the teacher looks at their deficits and tries to correct them. Instead, this is an asset-based approach where teachers find positive things to reinforce in the students, build up their self-esteem and help them not feel alienated if they're different or have different skill sets.

“That's what this theory is about: It's this belief that every student has something of value they can bring to the classroom.”

Nichol hopes that a teaching approach based on the transformational leadership theory paired with cutting-edge developments in cancer research and studies on health disparities will engage more students in STEM careers.

“I would like to extend my gratitude to my colleagues in the Rice Office of STEM Engagement for their support,” Nichol said.

Nichol is an associate research professor of chemistry, director of the Rice Office of STEM Engagement and education director for the NSF NanoEnabled Water Treatment (NEWT) Engineering Research Center.

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This release can be found online at news.rice.edu.

Follow Rice News and Media Relations via Twitter @RiceUNews.

Image downloads:

https://news-network.rice.edu/news/files/2023/08/JWF_1888.jpg
CAPTION: Carolyn Nichol is an associate research professor of chemistry, director of the Rice Office of STEM engagement and education director for the NSF NanoEnabled Water Treatment (NEWT) Engineering Research Center. (Photo by Jeff Fitlow/Rice University)

Related stories:

Black girls benefit most when STEM teachers train up:
https://news.rice.edu/news/2023/black-girls-benefit-most-when-stem-teachers-train

Links:

Office of STEM Engagement: https://research.rice.edu/rstem/
Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas: https://www.cprit.state.tx.us/

Located on a 300-acre forested campus in Houston, Rice University is consistently ranked among the nation’s top 20 universities by U.S. News & World Report. Rice has highly respected schools of Architecture, Business, Continuing Studies, Engineering, Humanities, Music, Natural Sciences and Social Sciences and is home to the Baker Institute for Public Policy. With 4,552 undergraduates and 3,998 graduate students, Rice’s undergraduate student-to-faculty ratio is just under 6-to-1. Its residential college system builds close-knit communities and lifelong friendships, just one reason why Rice is ranked No. 1 for lots of race/class interaction and No. 4 for quality of life by the Princeton Review. Rice is also rated as a best value among private universities by Kiplinger’s Personal Finance.

THANK THE CONFEDERATE GOP

More than 2 million additional Americans faced food insufficiency following drawdown of pandemic-related SNAP benefits, Penn Medicine study finds

Food insufficiency can contribute to chronic diseases like high blood pressure, heart disease, and diabetes

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA SCHOOL OF MEDICINE

PHILADELPHIA— The recent discontinuation of pandemic-related food assistance benefits, known as the Supplemental Food Assistance Program (SNAP) Emergency Allotments, led to a substantial increase in food insufficiency in the United States, according to a new study led by researchers at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. The primary goal of SNAP, which distributes cash-like benefits to low-income families to buy food, is to combat food insecurity, which affects 10 percent of U.S. households. The findings were published in JAMA Health Forum today.

Comparing trends in food insufficiency in states that ended Emergency Allotments before the federal government ended them altogether in March 2023 with the rest of the U.S., the researchers found that after the temporary increases to households’ SNAP benefits ended, SNAP recipients experienced a 21 percent relative increase in both food insufficiency and food insufficiency among children. These findings imply that more than two million more American households faced food insufficiency when Emergency Allotments ended in all states.

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, food insecurity refers to the limited or uncertain availability of nutritionally adequate and safe foods, or the limited or uncertain ability to acquire acceptable foods in socially acceptable ways. Food insufficiency is a more severe condition than food insecurity and measures whether a household generally has enough to eat.

“To our knowledge, this is one of the first studies to evaluate the association between changes in SNAP benefit amounts and food insufficiency,” said Aaron Richterman, MD, MPH, an Instructor of Medicine in the Division of Infectious Diseases at Penn and the study’s lead author. “This study shows the severe consequences of reducing SNAP benefit amounts at a time when inflation was causing rapid rises in food prices, and is especially important because of upcoming federal negotiations surrounding SNAP’s renewal in the Farm Bill at the end of September.”

In addition to influencing chronic diseases like high blood pressure, heart disease, and diabetes, previous research found that mothers with school-aged children who face severe hunger are 56.2 percent more likely to have post-traumatic stress disorder and 53.1 percent more likely to have severe depression. Research has found that diet-related illness increased the risk for severe symptoms and death from COVID-19, with nearly two-thirds of COVID-19 hospitalizations in the U.S. were related to obesity, diabetes, hypertension, and heart failure.

Penn researchers analyzed data from more than 3 million survey respondents in the U.S. to assess the impact of losing the SNAP Emergency Allotment benefits. They focused on what happened in 18 states that discontinued the additional benefits earlier than other states in the U.S. by letting their formal public health emergency declarations expire.

“SNAP’s Emergency Allotments represented the largest-ever increases in benefit amounts for SNAP households,” added co-author Harsha Thirumurthy, PhD, a professor of Health Policy at Penn. “Our findings are particularly concerning given previous research linking food insecurity to numerous poor health outcomes. Reducing SNPA benefit amounts will have far-reaching consequences for public health.”

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Penn Medicine is one of the world’s leading academic medical centers, dedicated to the related missions of medical education, biomedical research, excellence in patient care, and community service. The organization consists of the University of Pennsylvania Health System and Penn’s Raymond and Ruth Perelman School of Medicine, founded in 1765 as the nation’s first medical school.

The Perelman School of Medicine is consistently among the nation's top recipients of funding from the National Institutes of Health, with $550 million awarded in the 2022 fiscal year. Home to a proud history of “firsts” in medicine, Penn Medicine teams have pioneered discoveries and innovations that have shaped modern medicine, including recent breakthroughs such as CAR T cell therapy for cancer and the mRNA technology used in COVID-19 vaccines.

The University of Pennsylvania Health System’s patient care facilities stretch from the Susquehanna River in Pennsylvania to the New Jersey shore. These include the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, Penn Presbyterian Medical Center, Chester County Hospital, Lancaster General Health, Penn Medicine Princeton Health, and Pennsylvania Hospital—the nation’s first hospital, founded in 1751. Additional facilities and enterprises include Good Shepherd Penn Partners, Penn Medicine at Home, Lancaster Behavioral Health Hospital, and Princeton House Behavioral Health, among others.

Penn Medicine is an $11.1 billion enterprise powered by more than 49,000 talented faculty and staff.

 

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JOURNAL

JAMA Health Forum

 

Malaria vaccine candidate appears safe and produces promising immune response in a cohort of Tanzanian infants

Peer-Reviewed Publication

CELL PRESS

 

IMAGE: GRAPHICAL ABSTRACT CREDIT MED SILK ET AL. view more 

CREDIT: MED SILK ET AL.

An experimental malaria vaccine appears safe and promotes an immune response in African infants, one of the groups most vulnerable to severe malaria disease. There is currently only one malaria vaccine, “RTS,S” that is approved by the World Health Organization and offers partial disease protection. However, in the results of the early-stage phase Ib trial conducted in Tanzania and published on August 11th in the journal Med, researchers find that targeting RH5 – a protein that the malaria pathogen Plasmodium falciparum uses to invade red blood cells – can generate a promising immune response that is most pronounced in an infant cohort.

"Anti-sporozoite vaccines such as RTS,S need to be 100% effective in stopping the parasite from invading the liver to prevent disease,” says senior author Angela Minassian, a clinician scientist at the University of Oxford. “Even if just one parasite slips through the net, this will then go on to multiply in the liver, burst out into the bloodstream, and then infect red blood cells where the parasites then grow at an exponential rate. Having a blood-stage vaccine like RH5 on board gives you a second line of defense once the parasite has entered the bloodstream, allowing a second chance to stop malaria before it causes illness.”

  A person is infected with malaria when bitten by an infected mosquito, which releases Plasmodium falciparum into the body. RTS,S and many other vaccine candidates teach the immune system how to target the parasite at this sporozoite stage, before it invades the liver. Once the parasite matures and is released from the liver into the bloodstream, Plasmodium falciparum displays RH5 and infects red blood cells, which causes disease. If an anti-sporozoite and an anti-RH5 vaccine were used in combination in the future, individuals could potentially experience more effective protection against malaria for a longer period of time.

“The data in the phase 1b trial reported here confirm, for the first time, that substantial anti-RH5 immune responses can be achieved safely by vaccination in infants from a malaria-endemic area,” say the authors.

The researchers conducted the vaccine trial in Bagamoyo, Tanzania, where the average malaria prevalence throughout the population is 13%. 63 participants aged 6 months to 35 years were enrolled and randomized to receive either the experimental malaria vaccine, called “ChAd63-MVA RH5,” or a control rabies vaccine. The trial was also double-blinded, meaning that neither the participants nor the vaccine administrators knew who received the malaria vaccine or the control. All participants were given the second dose of vaccine two months later and followed for four months after this.

The primary purpose of this study was to evaluate the safety of this vaccine in a population where malaria is endemic. Participants in both the control and treatment group reported pain at the injection site and a mild fever shortly after vaccination, but overall the vaccine was well tolerated and there were no safety concerns.

A secondary outcome of the study was whether the vaccine would promote an immune response. Researchers found that participants who received the malaria vaccine developed antibodies against RH5 in their blood upon follow-up. In the laboratory, these antibodies were able to inhibit the growth of the malaria parasite at high levels that are associated with disease protection. “These data justify onward progression to phase IIb field efficacy trials to determine whether parasite growth-inhibition levels of this magnitude can ultimately protect against clinical malaria.” say the authors.

The authors note that they observed the strongest immune responses in infants under 11 months, followed by children aged 1-6 years, then adults. “Why the infants and young children vaccinated with ChAd63-MVA RH5 induced such high levels of antibody remains to be fully understood,” say the authors. “Given that both anti-sporozoite and blood-stage malaria vaccine strategies necessitate very high levels of antibody to protect against parasite infection, current efforts remain focused on infants and young children.”

The researchers note that this was a small study that followed participants for only four months after receiving their full vaccine schedule. They recommend that additional phase Ia/Ib trials should be conducted to optimize the recommended age range, boosting schedule, and delivery platform for anti-RH5 vaccines. Currently, a phase 1b trial is planned in the Gambia which will look at the effects of combining an anti-RH5 vaccine with an anti-sporozoite vaccine.

###

This work was supported by the Medical Research Council.  Information about conflicts of interest can be found in the text of the paper.

Med, Silk et al. “Superior antibody immunogenicity of a viral-vectored RH5 blood-stage malaria vaccine in Tanzanian infants as compared to adults” https://www.cell.com/med/fulltext/S2666-6340(23)00226-X 

Med (@MedCellPress), Cell Press' flagship medical journal, publishes transformative, evidence-based science across the clinical and translational research continuum—from large-scale clinical trials to translational studies with demonstrable functional impact, offering novel insights in disease understanding. Visit: https://www.cell.com/med. To receive Cell Press media alerts, please contact press@cell.com.

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JOURNAL

Med

DOI

10.1016/j.medj.2023.07.003 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Superior antibody immunogenicity of a viral-vectored RH5 blood-stage malaria vaccine in Tanzanian infants as compared to adults

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

11-Aug-2023

 

Font size can 'nudge' customers toward healthier food choices

Peer-Reviewed Publication

WASHINGTON STATE UNIVERSITY

PULLMAN, Wash. -- Restaurants can persuade patrons to choose healthier foods by adjusting the font size of numbers attached to nutritional information on menus, according to a study headed by a Washington State University researcher.

Lead researcher Ruiying Cai, an assistant professor in the WSU School of Hospitality Business Management, said U.S. restaurants with more than 20 locations are already required to show the calorie content of food on their menus. By representing these values incongruously — using physically larger numbers on the page when they’re attached to lower-calorie options, and smaller numbers for high-calorie foods — Cai said businesses can successfully “nudge” customers toward healthier choices.

“When restaurants use a larger font size for the calorie content of healthy foods, even though the number itself has a smaller value, it will increase consumers’ preference to order the healthier item,” Cai said.

For the study, recently published in the International Journal of Hospitality Management, participants were asked to choose between a less healthy item like a smoked beef burger and a healthier option like a grilled chicken sandwich. They were then randomly assigned to two groups. In the first group, number values and font size rose and fell together. In the second group, the relationship between the numbers’ magnitude and their size was incongruent, meaning the font size became smaller as the number values rose and vice versa.

Researchers also posed questions to gauge how health-conscious participants were and gave varying time limits to some to measure the effect time constraints have on their decisions. Cai said the study results showed that participants in second group, who saw low calorie counts printed in large fonts, were more likely to lean toward the healthier option. Respondents who indicated they were less health-conscious were also the most affected, particularly when there was a tight timeframe to make the choice.

People who had a high level of health awareness were less likely to be swayed, Cai said, but this is likely because they already favored healthy food.

“Even if you use some of the smart tricks, it does not work as well as for those who are not so knowledgeable about health,” Cai said.

The study leverages a phenomenon called the “numerical Stroop effect,” which uses incongruity to emphasize the lower numbers and slightly slow the decision-making process, to help coax customers toward healthier menu options.

In its classic form, the Stroop effect is described as a delay in reaction time related to stimuli. For example, if the word “purple” is written in green font, it takes respondents longer to call out which color they’re seeing than if the word and the color match. Clinicians use this principle to measure attention capacity and processing speed in patients. Similarly, the numerical Stroop effect is observed when the physical size of the number does not match its actual magnitude — as when the number 50 is in a larger font than the number 80.

Restaurants have an interest in encouraging patrons to make healthier choices, Cai said. However, simply labeling the food as healthy may not have the intended effect.

“Healthy food items could be profitable for restaurants, but whenever a ‘healthy’ label is attached, people may assume it does not taste good,” she said. “We're trying to provide restaurants with subtle cues, rather than saying it out loud.”

Cai's coauthors were Laurie Wu and WSU alumna Lu Lu; both are associate professors at Temple University's Fox School of Business.

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JOURNAL

International Journal of Hospitality Management

DOI

10.1016/j.ijhm.2023.103528 

ARTICLE TITLE

The numerical stroop effect on consumer preference to order healthy food

Addressing sustainability in a round-about way

Nestled in the heart of the University of Warwick campus, lies Britain’s 2024’s Roundabout of the Year. It has been recognised for its colourful kaleidoscope of vibrant flowers that supports a flourishing ecosystem of bees, butterflies

Business Announcement

UNIVERSITY OF WARWICK

 

IMAGE: WARWICK UNIVERSITY CLOSE UP PIC 1 BY CHRIS HEADON view more 

CREDIT: CREDIT CHRIS HEADON

One of the University of Warwick’s picturesque roundabouts has been crowned Roundabout of the Year 2024, recognising its impact on promoting biodiversity and protecting the local ecosystem of bees, butterflies, and insects.

Featured in ‘The Best of British Roundabouts Calendar 2024’, the roundabout has captivated the UK Roundabout Appreciation Society judges with its design and the inclusion of diverse plant species of Centaurea cyanus, Bellis perennis, Narcissus, Camassia, and Alliums.

This recognition highlights the University of Warwick’s dedication to enhancing the overall appeal and functionality of its campus.  The Garden team has worked hard to combine design with practicality so that the University’s planted areas are both aesthetically pleasing and enhance the local ecosystem.

Warwick University, founded on farmland in 1965, has transformed into a cutting-edge 200-hectare campus that embraces biodiversity. Resembling a thriving mini city, the campus combines wildlife areas, including ancient woodlands and a specially planted nature reserve to mark the millennium.

As climate change challenges us all in the UK our wildlife needs places of shelter and resources to help it survive in extreme weather. Last summer’s heat wave and protracted winter caused stress on the ecosystem and gardeners at Warwick are working hard to ensure the University’s green spaces are designed to improve biodiversity while integrating nature into urban spaces.

The University of Warwick is committed to protecting and enhancing campus biodiversity and recognises the urgent need to provide suitable habitats for plants, insects, and animals to flourish amidst the challenges of climate change. The campus serves as a diverse patchwork of interconnected habitats, fostering wildlife through sensitive management.

Dr. Dave Chandler, a lecturer in entomology and ecology at Warwick’s School of Life Sciences, emphasises the importance of managing these green spaces for wildlife: “In many ways, the University campus represents much of modern Britain, where we need to manage green spaces in urban areas so that people in towns and cities can live alongside nature.

“Even in small spaces, such as roundabouts, the planting of diverse flowers, that attract insects, and other pollinators, are a crucial resource for the many species of bees and other insects that inhabit the campus and also act as food for a range of animals including birds and bats, which in turn affect the whole of the biodiversity in the campus area.”

Renowned for his remarkable contribution to celebrating British roundabouts, Kevin Beresford, President of the Roundabout Association and creator of the Best of British Roundabouts series, has been on a twelve-month quest to discover the nation's most extraordinary circular intersections.

He commented: “The University of Warwick roundabout stood out among the rest due to its unwavering commitment to environmental sustainability.

“Through meticulous planning and sustainable practices, this traffic circle serves as a reminder of the power of conservation and the beauty of nature in the UK. It is a vibrant testament to the harmonious coexistence of nature and human innovation.”

Kevin Beresford's latest creation, Best of British Roundabout Calendar 2024, serves as a captivating tribute to the artistry and enchanting beauty found in everyday landscapes. Featuring a diverse range of scenes, from awe-inspiring sculptures in Grimsby to the serene honey-coloured stone fountain in Bath, the calendar showcases the vibrant roundabout designs that are thriving across the UK.

Kelly Baker, Grounds and Gardens Manager, who leads the grounds and gardens team at the University of Warwick takes pride in the remarkable planting efforts that have contributed to this achievement.

She said, "We are deeply honoured to receive the Roundabout of the Year 2024 title, especially for our role in enhancing biodiversity."

"By initiating re-wilding efforts on our campus, creating wildlife-friendly areas, and restoring natural habitats, we are contributing to the preservation of our ecosystem. Our strategic selection and arrangement of plants and flowers ensure a continuous display of bloom and foliage throughout the seasons, promoting ecological balance and integrating nature into our urban spaces."

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Warwick university roundabout far zoom by Kingfisher Whisper Photographer