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  • Introducing Dr Kate Horner as our new Editorial Board Chair

    Introducing Dr Kate Horner as our new Editorial Board Chair

    Posted by Emily Oliver on 2025-08-20


We are delighted to introduce our new Chair, Dr Kate Horner.  Kate is from the UK and has an extensive background in teaching first aid to a diverse variety of populations and writing guidelines to support learning. Her enthusiasm for the IJFAE is clear.  She says “I have seen how vital first aid knowledge is for absolutely everyone and I also know how essential it is to research and develop the very best methods for learning. This journal combines both of those topics. If we want everyone to know first aid, then we have to be able to provide first aid education that works for every single person.

Kate’s passion for inclusion and accessibility for all stands out. She has pledged to improve the IJFAE’s accessibility and to ensure that every author, reviewer and reader feels welcome and is able to participate to the fullest extent.  Read more about Kate and her plans for the IJFAE below.

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My name is Kate and I am the new Chair of the Editorial Board for the International Journal of First Aid Education. I am based in the UK and have an extensive background of teaching first aid over the last 18 years for several large charities. I have taught basic first aid to a huge range of audiences, including children, disabled young people, rurally-isolated communities, carers, teachers, elderly people and refugees. I have also trained event first aiders for two national charities and, most recently, have trained frontline ambulance crew. This role also involved writing and developing the training for ambulance crew and first aiders. I am now a specialist in education and my day job involves training new teachers. I still teach first aid in the community but I now also train Paediatric First Aid to those going into the childcare profession.

I love supporting the IJFAE because I have seen how vital first aid knowledge is for absolutely everyone and I also know how essential it is to research and developing the very best methods for learning. This journal combines both of those topics. If we want everyone to know first aid, then we have to be able to provide first aid education that works for every single person. Which is, of course, no easy task. To do this, we need the most inclusive, accessible first aid education tools we can possibly create and we need to share these findings with everyone who is delivering first aid education. We recognise that every country and every community will have different needs in terms of both how first aid is provided, and how it is taught. As I begin in my new role as Chair, I want to continue this journey to ensure that we can provide high-quality, evidence-based education approaches that can be adapted or used in any community.

I am massively passionate about inclusion and accessibility for our authors, reviewers and readers too. For this reason, I will look for ways we can carry on improving our journal’s accessibility for the widest group of people and to ensure that every author, reviewer and reader feels welcome and is able to participate in our work to the fullest extent. I am excited to be able to support researchers from every country and background, including those who are writing their first ever paper, all the way through to those who have been publishing for many years. I want to hear about how first aid education works in a variety of places- from the large cities, to isolated, rural villages, islands, extreme wilderness settings and war zones. I also want to see how we can improve first aid education in all those places and what makes each location unique.

We have some fascinating special issues in the pipeline at the moment. One focuses on mental health and psychosocial first aid. For too long, first aid, and medical education in general, have mainly covered physical health issues. However, we know that mental health and wellbeing are essential for good overall health, and first aid for these issues has been hugely neglected. It is wonderful to see so many researchers across the world joining this special issue and helping to gradually rectify this. We also have a special series on Aquatic first aid which is an area I had not considered in much detail before working with IJFAE. It is amazing to learn more about this area and see the aspects of aquatics that I hadn’t thought about before. I am certain that our readers will be just as excited by the articles as they are released too!

If you teach first aid, if you have learned first aid, if you have never learned first aid but always wanted to, then this is a journal for you. If you have a passion for education or research (or both) or if you live somewhere where first aid is taught really well, or not at all, then again, this is a journal for you. If you have a paper or piece of work you are considering publishing, if you have a first aid story to tell from your country or community, if you have never published before and would like some help to start then please get in touch with our editorial team. We are here for everyone! We strongly believe that this sort of research will save lives and is absolutely vital. Share this with colleagues, peruse the latest articles with a cup of tea or coffee and tell your friends what you learned, consider whether you could add to this body of work. We cannot do it without you. I look forward to hearing from all our authors, readers and reviewers as I start this new journey with IJFAE.

 

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