Nadera

Age at interview: 39

Brief Outline:

Nadera is part of a cohort study which followed three of her pregnancies. She was motivated to join the study to give back to her community and to find out what was happening inside her body. 

Background:

Nadera is married and has five children. She is a self-employed sports coach and homoeopath. Her ethnic background is British Pakistani.

More about me...

Nadera is part of a cohort study which follows the health of children from pregnancy throughout childhood and adult life. Nadera first joined the study through her midwife in 2007 when she was expecting her third child. She has always been open to supporting medical research as she wants to give back to her community scientifically. Nadera is aware that the city she lives in has the highest levels of obesity than anywhere else in the UK. She hoped that her participation in the cohort study could potentially help answer questions about ways to improve the health of the community. She also took part in the study because she wanted to learn more about “where I am on their scale”.

 

Nadera received an information pack about the study when she was 28 weeks pregnant. She described the information she received as being very basic. She remembers filling out a questionnaire about her personal details including her age and her children’s birthdays. She did not answer any questions about food or lifestyle until after her third child was born. The research study appointments that Nadera attended were mostly about her baby, rather than about her own health and wellbeing, although she remembers having her weight taken. Nadera had a follow-up at one year after giving birth.

 

Nadera has been part of the cohort study for three of her pregnancies. For every pregnancy, she has been asked the same questions. She has also had blood tests and DEXA scans. She was happy to participate for each of these pregnancies because she understood what the researchers were looking for and she wanted to see what was happening within her body. Nadera says that most normal mothers may not want to participate for each of their pregnancies as it “would all be too much”.

 

Nadera’s message for people who are invited to take part in a study like hers is to do it if you have some extra time. She says “you don’t know [if] your good deed will help sow a seed in the health for the future generation”. Nadera thinks it would be good if researchers came from the communities that they study so that they have an idea of what may be happening. She also thinks that researchers should consider how homoeopathic therapies may help with some conditions.

 

Interview conducted in 2019.

Nadera had a DEXA scan as part of a cohort study. She was curious to find out what was happening inside her body.

I understood why they did the DEXA scan to see the subcutaneous fat, visceral fat, so I was happy to go along because it’s interesting for me to know as well what’s happening inside of me.

But that way I felt happy it was really straight forward that they could check my blood test; they could check my blood pressure; they could check my weight; they could check my fat inside me and the bone density, so actually was a good thing for me, yeah.

Nadera began participating in a cohort study when she was pregnant with her third child because she wanted to give back to her community and help future generations of mothers.

So again, being a dedicated Muslim and I always believe in serving mankind. So, it was not only a selfish thing or thinking, giving back to the community as well. So, if maybe my understanding, my, because I could speak, I could understand. If some mothers can’t speak but they have the same thing happening in their houses and with their health, it’s maybe through me, through my work or my impact, I can help feedback for the person’s wellbeing as well. So if the research find out something, it will also benefit directly the, my next door neighbour, my sister in law, my daughter later on in life. So that was think as well, so really giving back into the community, the work.

Nadera believes advancement in medical technologies, such as keyhole surgery, are beneficial but there should be less focus on using drugs to cure illness and more on simple approaches taken from nature.

Yeah, drugs and the other part I also mention, all the surgery is very good. They save so many lives. I had five caesarean myself and I did try all the naturopath, natural way to give birth and all this and I think surgeries are very, very, very, what do you call achievement medicine has done, you know, developing all this way of operating keyhole surgeries, all this quite interesting. So, I would say all medical science is not right. Just far as concerned by the drugs, yes, I am. I would not put so much drugs in anybody’s body because we know the body has a way of healing itself. Some bodies harder, takes longer, people are more susceptible. Again, it’s environmental factor but go back to nature as much as we can. We will have less plastic waste, less ozone, you know, less carbon dioxide problem because back that time people used to use banana leaves, you know, to use recyclable, like, doing something simple rather than high tech.

Mm, so you think medical research should be more interested in this kind of way of…?

Yeah, the resourcing, environmental friendly and go back into nature.

Nadera encourages researchers to work with patients and the public when designing and carrying out research.

We are all like building blocks of society, so we have a like a triangle, right, so most of the information should, is coming from the foundation people and people like yourself or doctors/professors, they are in the hierarchies. They will overlook it, but they have not all the answers unless you connect with the people at the bottom, so which is myself, mothers, children, parents, grandparents. I think that’s why it’s very important that the research team works closely with the population because at the end you will solve us, you will solve our problems. You will help us to understand future diseases, future problems so that’s why I believe research is a very good thing.

Nadera suggests giving people more explanation when they get their individual test results.

And do you know the results of these tests?

Yes with-, without explanation though…

Okay.

…which I would say would, they should do. But they’re, “Everything is normal”. ‘Yeah, okay, normal for them but which norm-?’ They had graphs as well, so I went back myself, researched it, looked up and what it means, my subcutaneous fat, there’s my visceral fat plus my bone density, yeah.

The feedback is the bigger thing that, as I say, again and maybe more written stuff I understand will be hard for the admin to do too much paperwork but just copy some of the end results maybe in a few lines in a summary, drop it back to the parents, drop it back.

Nadera thinks the research team should include people with a mixture of abilities and experiences who understand why the research is important to participants.

I think some of the people who do do the research should be coming from the family categories as well.

In what way?

In like a lot of people are youngster that are sitting there doing the research, but they don’t know what it actually happening. It would be nice to have a mixture of all abilities. Have some mothers on the research team as well; have some fathers; have some young people there as well. Does that make sense? Rather than making a research team out of just professionals/students or you are good in that? Develop the skills in them and they will be more empathy, understanding the research as well, understanding the person, so they will realise why they come out rather than just say, ‘Oh collecting data, like ten, twenty, forty, fifty people, that’s the answer, that’s it.’

So do you think there should be people from the community involved in…

Yes.

…actually running the research?

As well, yeah.

But again, they should be upskilled. I’m not saying just pick anybody up [laughs]. Train them. Give them the training to understand [laughs].