Dave Humphreys

One of the biggest challenges in public health & environment-related fields is the miscommunication of population-scale results to the individual-level

This is often caused by the desire to formulate “action” relevant to people’s lives but ends up blaming individuals for things not in their control

Often come back to a talk by @jlynch13.bsky.social on how social policy is a mechanism for “containing inequality”… How much, for whom, under which conditions.

Our tolerance for inequality reflects something about society, values, ethics.

I’m over the moon to share that yesterday I completed my DPhil @dspi-oxford.bsky.social 🎉

There are so many thank yous, but firstly to my amazing and unbelievably supportive supervisors @gwshorter.bsky.social @bchrisinger.bsky.social @dkhumphreys.bsky.social

1/4

🚨 Proud supervisor alert 🚨
One my 1st PhD students just passed his viva!

Give @ben-scher.bsky.social a follow for rigorous qualitative + participant-centered #HarmReduction research.

s/o to amazing co-sup team @gwshorter.bsky.social @dkhumphreys.bsky.social @dspi-oxford.bsky.social
🛟 #academicsky

Very excited to share our new paper in @ijdrugpolicy.bsky.social 🎉

In this paper we look at experiences of people who use drugs in public and semi public drug consumption environments and the need for OPCs in England.

Bylines from America - Bylines Network Given the state of US lately, Bylines Network feels it is time to extend our platform for unheard voices from America

🇺🇸 Non-MAGA Americans - listen up!

At the Bylines Network (UK), we've a new project to amplify non-MAGA American voices at a time when US media are not adequately capturing the chaos, fear & disruption in people's lives.

But we're collecting the stories. This is citizen journalism. Take a look. 👇

If you are in the Oxford area and interested in drug policy, come catch @gwshorter.bsky.social who will be giving a guest lecture on the evidence-base surrounding overdose prevention centres 🎉

🗓️ Thursday 1st of May
⏰ 6pm-7pm
📍Wolfson College

www.wolfson.ox.ac.uk/event/from-s...

DOJ cancels grants for gun-violence and addiction prevention, victim advocacy In an email to staff, the head of the Justice Department’s Office of Justice Programs said the canceled grants don’t align with Trump administration priorities.

The DOJ has cancelled millions of dollars in grants for gun violence prevention, victim advocacy, and addiction support.

This will hurt local governments and grass-roots organizations doing life-saving work. The assault on public safety continues.

www.washingtonpost.com/national-sec...

Excited to share my first #PhD paper, now published in @lancetrh-americ.bsky.social 📝

#scopingreview #gunviolence

Read more: kwnsfk27.r.eu-west-1.awstrack.me/L0/https://a...

📢 New Research in @lancetrh-americ.bsky.social

Read more: kwnsfk27.r.eu-west-1.awstrack.me/L0/https://a...

#GunViolence #PublicHealth #TheLancet
@dspi-oxford.bsky.social @ox.ac.uk

Hi to all of the new faces on here 👋🏼

We are accepting new participants for our research study! Please share widely 🧡

#gunviolence #survivorship #GVP #AcademicSky #SocSky

To staff at CDC and everyone working in public health: we’re with you.

This is really important work IMO - great to have been involved.

The entire archive of CDC datasets can be found here.

HUGE shoutout to data archivists- this work is important 👏🙌🏻

archive.org/details/2025...

US County-Level Variation in Availability and Prevalence of Black Physicians in 1906 This cross-sectional study examines state- and county-level patterns related to the training and availability of Black physicians using data from the first edition of the American Medical Directory.

To start off Black History Month, resharing this exploration of early 20th-century Black physicians.

These medical pioneers overcame great odds to enter the field of medicine, including barriers erected by established medical societies, universities, state and local governments.

🛟 🩺 HistMed

Survivor-Led Research Study CALL FOR VOLUNTEERS The Ripples of Firearm Violence Ethics Approval Reference: R94701/RE001 This research aims to explore the physical, psychological, and social impacts of firearm violence on survivors, their families and communities with shared identities. It involves two components: an online demographic questionnaire and a conversation about your experience(s) with firearm violence via Microsoft Teams. Who? Anyone 18+ who has directly or indirectly experienced firearm violence in the U.S.

Still recruiting for our study on the ripples of #gunviolence!

Are you 18+? Have you experienced firearm violence in the U.S.?

Click here to learn more: forms.office.com/e/7HphbRnfQJ

We need good journalists more than ever.

Here are some great ones working in the climate space. Follow them. Amplify them. Support them if you can.

Revealed: US climate denial group working with European far-right parties Representatives of Heartland Institute linking up with MEPs to campaign against environmental policies

🔴 NEW 🔴

A US climate denial group with close ties to Donald Trump has been working with far-right politicians to undermine EU green reforms.

📝 My @desmog.bsky.social story with the Guardian 👇🏻

Trump officials pause health agencies’ communications, citing review The agencies are charged with making decisions that touch the lives of every American and are the source of crucial information to health-care providers.

Trump stops health agencies from communication on health & vital statistics

www.washingtonpost.com/health/2025/...

We are looking for a data scientist to help us process and combine GPS and PA data, could it be you or someone you know? Deadline 18 Feb www.jobs.cam.ac.uk/job/49988/

International Fellowships 2025 The International Fellowships Programme enables researchers to work for three years at a UK institution with the aim of building a globally connected, mobile research and innovation workforce.

Please spread the word as we have opened the call for @britishacademy.bsky.social International Fellowships which enable researchers to work for two years at a UK institution. If you fancy being away from your country right now this could be an option!
www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/funding/inte...

BREAKING: We’re only two days into the Trump-Vance Administration, and they have seemingly disbanded the first-ever White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention already—making it clear this Administration works for the gun lobby, not the American people.

Hey #StatsSky, what are you favorite papers to cite when you need to justify something that is obvious (I once had a reviewer ask we justify the use of logistic regression on a binary outcome)
or when you need to push-back on silly reviewer requests (e.g., asking for p-values in table 1)?

An Introduction to Systematic Reviews

uk.sagepub.com/en-gb/eur/an...

Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of Interventions

The Cochran Handbook training.cochrane.org/handbook/cur... is possibly the best starting place, which has useful guidance on all synthesis matters. There are other useful texts by Gough, Oliver & Thomas, etc.

🟢 31 Reasons to read DeSmog in 2025
#1: Hazel Healy, Editor-in-Chief
Subscribe to read stories from @hazelhealy.bsky.social! loom.ly/0yZWfJ8 #climatejustice

Causal inference on human behaviour - Nature Human Behaviour In this Review, Drew Bailey et al. present an accessible, non-technical overview of key challenges for causal inference in studies of human behaviour as well as methodological solutions to these chall...

A few papers I think worth reading. Mostly open access.

Causal inference is hard:

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

The power to persuade: a tribute to Professor Gemma Carey — Power to Persuade Professor Gemma Carey passed away in November 2024 after a long illness . Alongside her distinguished academic career , she co-founded Power to Persuade in 2011 and was its co-director until...

We reflect on the force that was Gemma Carey and how she brought us together with Power to Persuade www.powertopersuade.org.au/blog/the-pow...

A line chart showing the ratio of alcohol-specific deaths in Scotland to England from 2001-2023. In 2002, Scotland had more then 3 times as many deaths. This fell to just below double in 2012, then plateaued at that level until 2019, after the introduction of Minimum Unit Pricing in Scotland, when it began to fall again. Deaths are now around 50% higher in Scotland.

This figure, borrowed from Public Health Scotland, is an interesting comparison of the alcohol-specific deaths situation in Scotland and England - looking at the ratio between the two.

It highlights how big the gap was in the early 2000s, but also how it's fallen since Minimum Unit Pricing in 2018

Excited to share our new paper describing DCRs as ‘inclusion health interventions’! Thank you to @bchrisinger.bsky.social @dkhumphreys.bsky.social @gwshorter.bsky.social for their guidance on this piece.

Link: harmreductionjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10....