After years in obscurity, those of us concerned about chronic disease are about to have our moment in the spotlight—at the United Nations High Level Meeting in New York next September. The last comparable meeting was on AIDS in 2001 and led to the Global Fund. Next year’s meeting is described as a “once in a […]
It is a joy to be back in Guatemala amongst staff and friends at the hospital and in the town of Santiago. I have fallen straight back into old habits of greeting strangers in the street without receiving the strange looks you get on the streets of Newcastle. I find that in the UK, we rarely […]
The First Global Symposium on Health Systems Research ended on a crescendo of upbeat promise on the 19th of November, but amid all of the excellence of organisation, content, energy and enthusiasm, there was a murmur of methodological tension between the positivists and social scientists. […]
Sports medicine’s top ten. The keynote speaker had to drop out – could I give a talk about the top papers in 2010 at the UK sports and exercise medicine meeting (UKSEM) …this is a selection of papers that caught my eye with some additional suggestions from colleagues. See what you think: […]
Thursday 18 November. To BMA House to celebrate the publication of the 60th issue of the British National Formulary (BNF) and the 6th issue of its paediatric counterpart, the BNF for Children (BNFC). The word “formulary” was first used to describe Charles Thomas Haden’s translation of François Magendie’s Formulaire pour la préparation et l’emploi de […]
Far too few people Tweet. I’ve just been teaching a class on getting published in Buenos Aires, and only one of 60 researchers Tweeted. “Writing and publishing the paper,” I say, “is the easy part. Getting an audience is the hard part, and Tweeting can help, especially if like Ben Goldacre, you can accumulate 50 […]
Every year I lead a group of health care leaders on a study trip of medical and other organisations in Seattle, an American city with a rich and diverse health care economy. This year the trip threw up some interesting comparisons between our two nations’ health systems, and helped to shed light on the current situation […]
It is sad that the memory of Lord Denning, the eminent jurist, will always be associated with the unhappy phrase “appalling vista,” pronounced during the appeal hearing of the Birmingham Six. By this he meant that prolonged, pervasive, and systematic wrongdoing by agencies of the state was inconceivable: unfortunately, subsequent scrutiny was to prove him […]
So the time has come for junior doctors to plunge themselves into a specialist career. Should this be time for excitement? Time to step up to commitment? Or time to reflect on my plan E or F, as what follows may highlight that having a plan B in this game may not be enough. […]
We live in momentous times. Foundations are being shaken; long-held assumptions overthrown. The relationship between citizen and state is being redrawn. Consider only the health service. So much that seemed immemorial put to the sword. PCTs on their way out. Quangos to be torched. All that seemed solid melting into air…Time then for men and […]