IBRN 5th Forum

The IBRN hold their 5th Forum

The IBRN (International Blast Injury Research Network) comprises of members from the Clinical Informatics Research Unit and those team members have been busy organising their 5th event: Strengthening Resilience to Urban Explosive Violence. The forum took place last month on the 2-3rd July at the Shangri-La Hotel, Colombo, Sri Lanka.

The workshop had over 50 people attend from various fields including health, defence, engineering, academia, and NGOs aimed to gain understanding of Sri Lanka’s health system and emergency response strengths and challenges faced in relation to the 2019 Easter Sunday bombings. Alongside this, attendees explored the rebuilding in Colombo and lessons learnt across the last 5 years which has helped identify potential research and policy opportunities for further strengthening response and preparedness in Sri Lanka and elsewhere.

The two main themes of the event were the response to the 2019 Sri Lanka Easter Bombings and the rebuilding following the devastating event, covering topics such as explosive violence data collection and casualty reporting, patterns of blast injuries, communications and decision making and much more.

The two-day meeting included presentations, interactive activities and discussions facilitated by the IBRN team. We recently caught up with Dr Becky Glenny-Brown, our Senior Project Manager who shared the following feedback:

“We had a really successful workshop with our Sri Lankan colleagues. There is a huge appetite for collaboration, exploring research in this area, and building a local Sri Lankan network for the IBRN.”

You can learn more about the IBRN here.