Barbara Hastings-Asatourian is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Nursing at the University of Salford, and an award winning Social Entrepreneur. She is a director of two very successful businesses, Contraception Education and Glosupplies Limited and a partner in a thriving Business Network, Glossop Business Network. Her professional career spans over 35 years and has provided her with considerable experience in the field of public health in general, and sex and relationships education in particular, having worked as a nurse, midwife, health visitor and most recently nurse teacher/lecturer. Her work has included working with teenage parents, developing parenting skills, sex and relationship education in school, delivering maternity care and parentcraft education to young parents. She has developed health promotion and public health programmes over many years, and received an honorary Senior Fellowship from the University of Manchester for her contribution to the MPHe.

One theme in Barbara's life has been her committment to equality and diversity. She has been widely cited from her MSc Dissertation, Single White Female, which was published by the Race Relations Research Unit in 2000 as Gatekeeping Inequity. Her most recent published reports include an Evaluation of Sure Start Plus in Manchester and Salford with Julie Wray in 2006, and a Workforce Development Report for the Greater Manchester Sexual Health Network with Lesley Greenhalgh in 2008.

Barbara is an enthusiastic and tenacious Social Entrepreneur who has combined her nursing, midwifery health visiting and nurse teaching background with business skills to innovate in sex education. She has been nominated for and won several awards for developing innovative sex education resources in English and localised in several languages. Her innovative work is featured as part of the University of Salford's Real world Focus project at www.rgc.salford.ac.uk/page/real_world_focus_vid and http://www.rgc.salford.ac.uk/page/contraception_board_game

One source of great pride and joy for Barbara was being highly commended by the University of Manchester for her volunteer work in preventing domestic abuse and supporting women through the Freedom Programme, as Chair and Trustee of Glossop Women's Aid from 2006-2009, through the Prince's Trust for supporting Prince's Trust Business Programme clients since 2006 as a mentor and helping with sex education in Glossopdale Community College in the Prince's Trust Excel Club.

Barbara is available to speak to groups large and small, and at conferences and seminars and can be contacted at this email address or at the telephone number at the bottom of this page

If you would like to access Barbara's publications, her contributions to three books have been posted here and 16 of her her published journal articles have been posted here

To access work uploaded to You Tube please visit Barbara's You Tube site