Felicity Jones
Academic and research departments
School of Health Sciences, Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences.Biography
I have worked full time as a Teaching Fellow at the University of Surrey since August 2012. I have a background in adult nursing and midwifery, qualifying as a Health Visitor in 1998. My health visiting experience has included working as a health visitor (GP attached and corporate team), a liaison health visitor for a Walk-in Centre and a practice development health visitor.
As a Practice Development Facilitator, I have worked both at a local and strategic level to develop practice for health visiting and school nursing services. My role included the setting up training programmes, the development of guidelines, service audit and service innovation. This work gave me a wide breadth of experience in developing evidence based practice to support service provision for identified local health needs.
Areas of specialism
University roles and responsibilities
- Director of Studies for Specialist Practice
- Lead for Recognition of Prior Learning.
- Programme Leader for MSc Public Health Practice (SCPHN) (Health Visiting)
Affiliations and memberships
Business, industry and community links
My teaching
I teach on MSc/BSc Public Health Practice with SCPHN programme.
I am Module Lead for:
- Early Intervention: Working with Children, Parents and Carers
- Public Health Assessment and Health Promotion Intervention
- Specialist Practice in SCPHN with V100
Courses I teach on
Postgraduate taught
My publications
Publications
Aim: To evaluate the effectiveness of prescribed postnatal exercise on postnatal
depression. Prescribed exercise was defined as any physical activity that was carried out in
the postnatal period with the objective of reducing postnatal depression, as determined by
identified scales.
Background: Research has identified that regular physical exercise interventions are
beneficial to mental health conditions such as depression and anxiety.
Design: A systematic review and narrative analysis of randomised controlled trials (RCTs)
reporting on the effectiveness of prescription postnatal exercise on postnatal depression.
Data sources: Selection criteria included full text, academic articles written in English
comparing exercise retrieved from MEDLINE, CINAHL, PsycINFO, EMBASE and SPORTDiscus.
Research focusing on postnatal or postpartum exercise or physical activity; depression or
mood swings, published between 2008 and 2016 was included. The search was refined to
include females aged eighteen years or more.
Review methods: Forty-seven articles were initially identified and full text analysis was
performed by two members of the research team. Twelve articles were identified as
meeting the inclusion criteria and were distributed for scrutiny and assessment amongst
the five members of the research team. Methodological quality was assessed using a
Quality Assessment Tool for Quantitative Studies published by the Effective Public Health
Practice Project (EPHPP) (1998). Finally the articles were redistributed amongst the team
for a second assessment and verification. Discrepancy of ratings for a paper between the
reviewers was resolved by a third reviewer through reassessment of the paper and further
discussion.
Results: Eight studies were included in the final systematic review carried out using the
EPHPP assessment tool; the review identified six quality RCTs meeting the inclusion criteria.
Conclusions: The findings indicate that a tailored exercise intervention can effectively
alleviate postnatal depressive symptoms, benefiting women both physically and
psychologically. Social support experienced by participants in relation to the exercise
intervention was seen to have a positive impact.
Background: Unintentional injuries are a leading cause of preventable death and a major cause of ill health and disability in children under five years of age. A health promotion mobile phone application, ?Grow up Safely?, was developed to support parents and carers in reducing unintentional injuries in this population of children.
Methods: A prototype of the mobile application was developed to deliver health education on unintentional injury prevention linked to stages of child development. In order to explore the usability of the app and refine its content, three focus groups were conducted with 15 mothers. Data were analysed using thematic analysis.
Results: The majority of participants reported previous use of health apps, mainly related to pregnancy, and recommended by health professionals. The app was considered user?friendly and easy to navigate. Participants in two focus groups found the app informative, offered new information and they would consider using it. Participants in the ?young mum's? group considered the advice to be ?common sense?, but found the language too complex. All participants commented that further development of push?out notifications and endorsement by a reputable source would increase their engagement with the app.
Conclusion: The ?Grow Up Safely? mobile phone app, aimed at reducing unintentional injuries in children under five, was supported by mothers as a health promotion app. They would consider downloading it, particularly if recommended by a health professional or endorsed by a reputable organisation. Further development is planned with push?out notifications and wider feasibility testing to engage targeted groups, such as young mothers, fathers and other carers.