Every time the story of an organ donation is told, that path is more fully trodden […]
Mary E Black: Creating a path for organ donation
Category: Mary E Black
Mary E Black: New Year’s resolution—a smoke-free NHS
My doctor father used to regularly set his trousers on fire. Born in 1924, he started smoking cigarettes as a teenager. He died of a smoking related cancer in 2003. My doctor grandfather served in the Royal Army Medical Corps in the first world war and died, when my father was 14, of smoking related […]
Mary E Black: Stik—My NHS Homerton hero
What inspires me? People who think differently, public spaces that are beautiful, art in unexpected moments. So when an enormous blue painting of a sleeping baby appeared on an outside wall by the cafe of the Homerton University Hospital NHS Foundation Trust in 2015, I took notice. This video tells the story. The work was […]
Mary E Black: How data science will change public health
We are living in a perfect storm: vast amounts of data and rapidly increasing, cheap computing power. The world is shifting towards basing decisions even more on data. I believe, to paraphrase Billy Bosworth, that “10 years from now when we look back at how this era of big data evolved . . . we […]
Mary E Black: Data—a love story
I remember my first data extraction. As a clinician I enjoyed creating good clinical notes, and was adept at digesting fat files of written scrawl, laboratory records, and referral letters—for complex or very ill patients, they often came in falling apart volumes stacked inches high. How then was I meant to scan them for a […]
Mary E Black: On public health—Roy Lilley gets it wrong
Roy Lilley—blogger, NHS and social care agent provocateur, fettered by none, master of the timely hyperlink, and coiner of deliciously irreverent names for the great and the good. I do chuckle when he refers to Simon Stevens as Tarzan. I read all his blogs—his often acid shots are compelling . . . unless they are […]
Mary E Black: Data is really beautiful
My whine of the week, if not the decade . . . Given that data, and in particular big data, is inevitable, exciting, inspiring, unlocks potential, has fabulous hidden patterns, is a game changer, is a huge business opportunity, can mobilise resources, can change our organisations and our lives forever . . . why does […]
Mary E Black: Look at me
I was a bit of a star in my early 30s at Harvard’s School of Public Health. On a fully funded and prestigious Harkness Fellowship (so a treasured person in the Harvard lexicon), I was bubbly, thin, well dressed, elected to student government, volunteering for just about everything, and winner of the competition to represent […]
Mary E Black: Essential reading for new NHS Executives
I have just joined the NHS Executive fast track programme. There will be 51 of us in total—36 clinicians from within the NHS and 15 application from outside the NHS. We will need to get up to speed fast on understanding the NHS in England. Here is my starter list of ten key sources of information […]
Mary E Black: Save our national statistics
That old chestnut about “lies, damned lies and statistics” always raises a laugh. But something is about to happen that is not funny at all. The Office for National Statistics has published a consultation on proposals to STOP producing a wide range of statistics related to health and health inequalities. This is an important issue […]