Andrea Mazzella

The medium-term aim would be to inform studies that can better give causal answers (I'd love to learn what those are, when looking at these systemic factors) and ultimate aim is of course inform public health action and policy

Thanks Simon (hi!)
The short-term aim would be hypothesis generation. I feel that when we identify and quantify health inequalities by deprivation we often stop there, without even trying to determine which of the countless possible mechanisms are more relevant. Complexity paralyses us

My question is: would you find this method acceptable? Is there a better way of doing this?

6/6

I'm aware that I can't actually answer my causal question with what is essentially an ecological study. And that deprivation domains are closely linked, so chucking them all in a model is bound to infuriate the causal inference goddesses.

5/6

If some domains have very small p-values, I'd then consider them as having statistical evidence for an association with my outcome.

4/6

I could calculate counts and denominators at the LSOA level, and then fit a negative binomial regression model with the count as dependent variable and the decile of each deprivation domain as covariates (and obviously log population as offset).

3/6

The health outcome I'm analysing is strongly linked to IMD (to the surprise of no one).

However, I'd like to know which deprivation domains are more relevant in this health inequality.

So I thought of this possible approach:

2/6

A question for social epidemiologists. #episky #publichealth
As we know, the English Index of Multiple Deprivation is a composite metric, including domains such as education, income, environment, etc. And these are often closely linked. 1/6

If you push hard enough, anything can squeeze into a logistic regression model

The final line of the article made me chuckle

Annual epi update on bloodstream infections and C. difficile infections in England.

Continuing worrying trend of increasing rates of most of these infections, especially for community-onset cases

Conspiracy belief and the willful ignorance of information The idea that conspiracy believers are prone to willful ignorance is widespread, yet many seemingly supporting studies lack designs suited to test thi…

People are less likely to believe conspiracy theories when they get clear, simple, and early information from trusted sources. Using tools like “prebunking” and reaching people where they are (like on social media) can help build trust and reduce misinformation.
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Botox, lifestyle medicine, and future general practice. Some years ago I taught an exceptionally bright young GP on a course. She seemed to grasp the values of the specialty intuitively. I hadn't heard news of her for a while, but I discovered recently that she runs a private aesthetics clinic, offering botox, fillers, and so forth to people who want to look younger and are happy to pay for this. Forgive me, but my heart sank. It wasn't the kind of career I'd hoped she might pursue. At the same time, I recognised she may have made the choice for her own good. We hear a lot about doctors emigrating, but I'm hearing of far more who stay in the UK but leave the NHS. Some are already thinking about it during their specialty training. I come across others when I do their appraisals two or three years later: they're carrying out sessions in aesthetics, lifestyle medicine, wellbeing clinics, or various screening services. Some are doing this part time to supplement their income or between spells of locum work, but a significant number are moving into full time private work. My perception is that these doctors include some of the best of their generation. Their motives vary. These often include feeling overwhelmed by the punishing pace of NHS work. However, in some localities these doctors are finding the opposite: they can't make a living because different professions are taking over GP work, and practices are engaging far fewer sessional doctors. Many who do private work are parents who simply want to spend more time with their children.

An interesting piece by @johnlauner.bsky.social in the @bmj.com recently.

I know GP trainees who have done this too. Not all our younger doctors are leaving for Australia & NZ. Some are staying here but leaving the NHS.

Somehow, the system has gone horribly wrong that this is happening.

#MedSky

First day as Public Health Medicine Registrar (=resident) done ✅
Exciting to start!

Stunning!

Beyond the neglectful state: unpacking the intersection of public health and personal freedom Public Health Disrupted · Episode

This podcast episode has some interesting commentary of the "nanny state" critique against public health policies.

In its 10 Year Health Plan, the government recommitted to halving the gap in healthy life expectancy (HLE) between the poorest and richest regions. But how? Our new analysis with the ONS points to the underlying factors which any plan will need to take account of. 🧵

😂

How many PhDs does the world need? Doctoral graduates vastly outnumber jobs in academia PhD programmes need to better prepare students for careers outside universities, researchers warn.

"And when the number of years of experience in the workforce were taken into account, master’s holders in any field earned slightly more than those with PhDs."

www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Springer Nature Discovers MDPI – The Strain on Scientific Publishing Home page for the paper ‘The Strain on Scientific Publishing’ by Mark A Hanson, Dan Brockington, Paolo Crosetto and Pablo Gomez Barreiro

Springer-Nature launched a series of "Discover" journals that closely mimic MDPI titles -- sharing *identical* journal names, and likely similar business model.

What is going on, and why researcher will - as always - fall for it?

A 🧵

the-strain-on-scientific-publishing.github.io/website/post...

Tricky!
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Thank you and your colleagues for sharing your findings. I'm completely unfamiliar with behavioural research but it seems essential (and fascinating!)

Thanks for sharing. Disappointing but of course good to know.

Are there any approaches to counteract/prevent misinfo with some evidence of effectiveness?

Cancer Research UK today published a report which highlights changes in cancer survival rates over the last 50 years.

Many headlines (like this one from the Guardian) have chosen to report the ‘doubling of cancer survival rates’ since the 1970s.

But that's misleading...

1/18

There is a much stronger evidence base to support measles vaccination in all children and COVID vaccination during pregnancy, compared to annual COVID vaccination in healthy children.

I think this is important distinction, and we should be cautious about mixing levels of evidence in discussions.

Joined Parkrun and it's great! I don't enjoy running by myself but doing it with 500 other people in a park makes it much more fun

Oh wow. On reflection, shouldn't surprise me – I definitely use Stack Overflow less since I started asking coding questions to LLMs. Not necessarily a good thing...

Thanks!