Increasing awareness of allied health disciplines

The University of Brighton has played its part in a project commissioned by the Office for Students aimed at increasing awareness of small and specialist allied health disciplines.

The three-year Strategic Interventions in Health Education Disciplines (SIHED) consisted of a series of ambitious activities to promote careers in podiatry, orthoptics, therapeutic radiography, and prosthetics and orthotics.

Launching in 2018 the project consisted of activities including:

• The I See The Difference awareness raising campaign
• Over 450 outreach activities which engaged more than over 25,000 young people
• research projects exploring barriers to mature student recruitment and male student participation
• 15 smaller innovation projects

To support the campaign the university developed More than Feet a website aimed at secondary school pupils. The website dispels the myths that podiatry is just about feet and highlights the many career opportunities that graduates can explore.

The university also contributed to a project to design a digital national document supporting podiatry clinical placement activity – a pilot of this will take place in the 2021/22 academic year.

Principal lecturer Simon Otter said: “We were privileged to be involved in this important project which has seen enrolment increases of 31% across the four subjects during its duration.”

Download a copy of the SIHED report. 

Interested in a career in health? Find out about opportunities at the University of Brighton on our website.