Systematic reviews have something of an image problem. To the uninitiated, they can be considered too effete because they run on for hundreds of pages, with lots of forest plots and risk of bias calculations. And what is a GRADE table? I know that I generally head straight for the conclusion section of the abstract—does […]
Category: Tracey Koehlmoos
Tracey Koehlmoos: Martin Luther King day and health inequalities in the US
Martin Luther King day provides an opportunity to reflect on the civil rights movement as well as the broader issue of inequalities that face every nation. Because King’s “I have a dream” speech is so ubiquitously placed in two generations of middle and high school education, it is hard for many people my age or […]
Tracey Koehlmoos: Disaster preparedness and resiliency
This week I have had the pleasure of attending a workshop in Honolulu with the centre for excellence for disaster management and humanitarian assistance (CoE-DMHA). The CoE is interested in thinking about resiliency and support for relief and rebuilding from a multi-lateral perspective. With its partners from the Oak Ridge and Argonne National Laboratories, the CoE is […]
Tracey Koehlmoos: Climate change, health, and security
On 17 October, I was fortunate to attend a daylong seminar at BMA House on “the health and security perspectives of climate change.” Uniquely, this programme pulled together medical and military professionals along with climatologists, zoologists, and politicians. The morning focused on threats to global climate, health, and security whereas the afternoon sessions focused on […]
Tracey Koehlmoos: the 19th Cochrane Colloquium in Madrid
¡Hola! from Madrid where the 19th Cochrane Colloquium was hosted last week by the IberoAmerican Cochrane Centre. The theme of this year’s meeting was “scientific evidence for healthcare quality and patient safety.” As all of us – at one time or another – are patients of the healthcare system, the synthesis of interventions to reduce adverse […]
Tracey Koehlmoos: You are invited—and a thank you
It is hard to follow up from my last blog about the Colonel’s unexpected death on the streets of Jakarta so rather than charging into a vaguely academic or policy related blog, I want to pause and give thanks. Thank you to everyone who posted a comment to the blog for your willingness to so […]
Tracey Koehlmoos: Road traffic accidents in developing countries – farewell to the colonel
On 11 June 2011, 44 schoolboys died when the truck they were travelling in flipped into a canal in Chittagong, Bangladesh. The boys were from three villages and were riding in an open truck on their way back from a football competition. I was haunted by the image of the devastated village parents, who no doubt […]
Tracey Koehlmoos: Institute of Medicine’s workshop on country level decision making for NCDs
In a previous blog I mentioned that I attended the Institute of Medicine’s workshop on country level decision making for control of chronic diseases, which was held on 19-21 July at the House of Sweden in Washington, DC. However, I had promised more details of the meeting and then promptly disappeared for two weeks of vacation […]
Tracey Koehlmoss on being policy makers in our own lives
I am writing to you not from Bangladesh but rather from the Institute of Medicine’s workshop on country-level decision making for control of chronic diseases being held from 19-21 July at the House of Sweden in Washington, DC. On Wednesday I presented on “data availability and gaps in Bangladesh,” which I worked very hard to make […]
Tracey Koehlmoos: Internal conflict of interest bias?
If you work as a scientist, you also volunteer as a peer reviewer in the name of collegiality and service. I review about five or six manuscripts a month from a surprising array of journals–which always leaves me to ask, “How did they get my name and email address?” Generally these are journals in which I […]