Global inequalities in health and healthcare never cease to amaze me. This week we published a large study from Sweden showing the negative effects of obesity in pregnancy, and we find a report telling us that for €20 ($25, £16) per year per woman we can reduce almost three quarters of unintended pregnancies and unsafe abortions […]
Sally Norton: Open your eyes to obesity
We know that we are in the middle of an obesity epidemic—and we know it is really difficult to treat. But it’s nigh on impossible to treat if we don’t identify it properly in the first place. Recent research shows that many of us don’t really know, or admit to knowing, how obese we really […]
Carl Heneghan: Evidence based medicine on trial
Evidence based medicine (EBM) should form the foundation of effective clinical decision making; however, growing unrest—and an awful lot of criticism—suggests the evidence bit of EBM is increasingly part of the problem, and not the solution. […]
The BMJ Today: Looking for general practitioner (GP) authors
In a recent BMJ Today, I explained that The BMJ maintains an educational section called Endgames aimed at junior doctors preparing for their postgraduate examinations. What I didn’t say was that most case reports and picture quizzes published so far are aimed particularly at hospital doctors rather than primary care doctors (GP’s/family physicians). […]
Nancy Devlin, John Appleby, David Parkin: Why has the PROMs programme stalled?
In 2009, the English NHS introduced a world leading initiative in the pursuit of quality healthcare: the measurement of patients’ views about their own health became a routine part of the delivery of NHS funded services. In an initiative led by the Department of Health, robust and reliable condition specific and generic (EQ-5D) patient reported […]
Yogesh Jain and Raman Kataria: The pathology of a public health tragedy
Lessons from the Bilaspur sterilization camp The recent deaths of 13 women in India operated on at a sterilization camp in Bilaspur, Chhattisgarh, has thrown up urgent questions on the delivery of these services. As doctors observing health systems for the poor from close quarters in Bilaspur for the last fifteen years, we are convinced this was […]
Zosia Kmietowicz: Why don’t hospitals share test results?
My sister nearly died of pneumonia earlier this year. Exceptional NHS care saved her life. But I have been left flummoxed by the lack of communication during her illness and in the subsequent months of her recovery between the hospitals involved in her treatment and rehabilitation. My sister has diabetes and rheumatoid arthritis, and doctors […]
The BMJ Today: Mediterranean diets and infant mortality
The Nurses ’Health Studies are long term epidemiological studies conducted on women’s health. They are among the largest investigations into risk factors for major chronic diseases in women ever conducted. Marta Crous-Bou and co-workers have published a new and interesting finding from it. Greater adherence to Mediterranean diet was significantly associated with longer leukocyte telomere length, […]
Joyce Lee: Social media, Google, and the internet are medical therapy
I have to thank my colleague @SusannahFox for alerting me to this Washington Post article—about a campaign by the government in Belgium to get people to stop Googling their symptoms. Check out the video that was made (below). In it the narrator states: “I have a deadly disease and I am going to die in six weeks. […]
Sanna W Khawaja: An NHS full of secret agents
While I enjoy the occasional spy movie, I always find myself irritated at the protagonist, who very often spends the film focused on a mission with little or no knowledge of the “bigger picture.” Quite often he or she knows little about the organisation they work for, and, at times, they even accidentally end up in a […]