Come and join the NIHR Policy Research Unit Behavioural and Social Sciences!
We're a recruiting a Research Assistant/Research Fellow to be based @ucl-cbc.bsky.social.
For more details - and to apply by Tuesday 3rd March - visit the link below:
www.ucl.ac.uk/work-at-ucl/...
Interesting analyses from @healthfoundation.bsky.social this morning on who is accessing private prescriptions for GLP-1 drugs for obesity.
Data like this has been hard to come by, yet private access is such an important component for GLP-1 use.
Slide with pictures of Prof Oyinlola Oyebode, Queen Mary University of London; Co-Chair of SSMPH 2026 Local Organising Committee Text reads: "Introducing... Oyinlola Oyebode! "Although I had attended the conference for years, I mainly joined the society for the chance to get a mentor. The first conversation I had with my mentor prompted me to apply for the job I have now at QMUL which was a really good move!"
With abstract submissions now ✨OPEN✨ for the joint SSMPH EuroEpi 2026 conference, we are delighted to introduce the other co-chair of this year's Local Organising Committee: Prof Oyinlola Oyebode from @qmul-wiph.bsky.social
Link to blog: bit.ly/4bmvXhr
Conference website: bit.ly/4oyrifb
We spent this week connecting with the @nihr.bsky.social Policy Research Units in Dementia and Neurodegeneration @denpru-qm.bsky.social and Policy Innovation and Evaluation @piru-lshtm.bsky.social.
Read more about what we got up to on our LinkedIn page below:
www.linkedin.com/feed/update/...
First paper of 2026! In our study, we examined whether public health messages can encourage people to adopt protective behaviours, such as wearing masks, washing hands, and keeping distance, to reduce the spread of respiratory infections like COVID-19 and influenza.
www.nature.com/articles/s43...
Great stuff here from @soozaphone.bsky.social about the flimsiness of arguments being trotted out today against lowering the drink drive limit in England & Wales
open.substack.com/pub/suzigage...
I might be one of the cynics complaining about enforcement though...
These approaches should build on foundations of trust, accessibility, and inclusion to involve diverse and underrepresented communities.
Congrats to the authorship team, particularly Catherine Shuttleworth who led the paper and Lauren Bell for seeing it over the line!
In those studies, a number of approaches were used. Mainly, these were forms of participatory approaches, but we also identified examples of Delphi exercises, a super-setting approach, a nominal group technique, a deliberative exercise, and a modified James Lind Alliance process being used.
We found 18 studies that had examples of priority setting around the wider determinants of health and involved local communities in research or intervention prioritisation.
Delighted to share this paper I co-authored that reviewed approaches for health inequality-related research priority setting that involve the affected communities.
academic.oup.com/jpubhealth/a...
Screenshot of title page including the following abstract: To minimise confounding bias and disentangle warranted from unwarranted disparities, researchers examining sentencing discrimination have traditionally sought to control for as many legal factors as possible. However, over the past decade, a growing number of scholars have questioned this strategy, noting that many legal factors are themselves subject to judicial discretion and that controlling for them can introduce post-treatment bias. Here, we use directed acyclic graphs (DAGs) to provide a formal and comprehensive assessment of the different types of bias that may arise from different choices of controls. In addition, we propose a new modelling framework to facilitate the selection of controls and reflect the model uncertainty created by the trade-off inherent in judicially-defined legal factors and other factors with a similar dual causal role. We apply this framework to examine race disparities in US federal courts and gender disparities in the England and Wales magistrates’ court. We find substantial model uncertainty for gender disparities and for race disparities affecting Hispanic offenders, rendering estimates of the latter inconclusive. Disparities against black offenders are more consistent and — under specific conditions — could be interpreted as evidence of direct discrimination.
Thrilled to share my latest paper entitled, "Estimating Discrimination in Sentencing: Distinguishing between Good and Bad Controls"
Led by @jpinasanchez.bsky.social, the paper introduces a framework for examining discrimination in criminal justice processes.
🧵 1/10
publicera.kb.se/ejels/articl...
Our researchers Dr Fiona Graham and Dr @laurajmcgowan.bsky.social were at Evidence Week 2025 in Parliament last week, organised by @senseaboutsci.bsky.social.
They discussed our work on virtual words in the NHS with MPs - read more about it here: www.linkedin.com/feed/update/...
I'm starting to agree with you on this! Most active, and probably most interesting in terms of the extra engagement that happens on there
A "methods primer" article in the journal "BMJ Medicine", titled "Factors associated with: problems of using exploratory multivariable regression to identify causal risk factors"
We wrote an article explaining why you shouldn't put several variables into a regression model and report which are statistically significant - even as exploratory research. bmjmedicine.bmj.com/content/4/1/.... How did we do?
Lauren Bandy and I got a short piece in BMJ arguing that the proposed changes to UK sugar drink tax target the wrong end of the market. Changing the threshold where tax is applied from 5g sugar/100mL to 4g only hurts those that have ALREADY reformulated and changes nothing for high sugar drinks.
Earlier this month, all our researchers & co-investigators got together at the University of Bedfordshire in Luton.
We discussed topics such as engaging youth in research, public involvement, and ensuring meaningful impact.
Read more here: www.linkedin.com/posts/nihr-p...
To have this as the policy for a mental health service is *wild*. If someone does not attend a mental health assessment appointment, they're probably worse not better...
We're are now accepting applications for an exciting DPhil at the @oxprimarycare.bsky.social, *FUNDED* by the THRIVING Food Futures research hub!
The project is about divisive policies, supervised by me, Dr Rachel Pechey @petescarbs.bsky.social @ashakaur.bsky.social
lnkd.in/eezGaZZ3
Pls share! ✨
Jack, wearing a pink shirt, looking very seriously at a handheld microphone
P.s.: caption competition for my stern look at a malfunctioning microphone?
My main takeaway reflection from the conference - as researchers, to what extent should we be acting as advocates (or even activists?) for 1) what our research finds and 2) the policy implications of that research?
Jack standing in a pink shirt and navy chinos on a flowery carpet. He was presenting at the 2025 Society for Social Medicine and Population Health annual scientific meeting
Just back from attending another excellent @socsocmed.bsky.social conference #SSM2025
It was great catching up with old and new friends that I've made over my time in academia to date. I was happy to share our @nihr-pru-bass.bsky.social research on populism and public health interventions.
Less inequality = fewer problems
@profkepickett.bsky.social lays our her vision for a good society at #SSM2025
@socsocmed.bsky.social
Image of jack in a pink shirt and blue trousers standing up and presenting
It was great to present our review of interview studies looking at populism and how people receive public health interventions @socsocmed.bsky.social #SSM2025 yesterday!
Looking forward to two more days of exciting talks 🤓
#SSM2025 Early Career Researcher day! Follow this thread to see updates (I'm doing the updates, so look forward to inevitable typos)
Super interesting thread from @amckinlay.bsky.social on how trust relates to public health, and how this links to our recent work looking at how populism affects the acceptability of public health interventions
⬇️
Thank you @jackmbirch.bsky.social for summarising your experiences at our recent #DigitalHealthDivide2025 workshop at @univie.ac.at!
After all the bollocks of claiming (wrongly) that the UK has two tier justice system, Farage is planning exactly that.
A really nice example on how to visually communicate the text contents of a paper on mobile phones
Our researcher @jackmbirch.bsky.social recently attended a workshop on the digital health divide at the University of Vienna @univie.ac.at.
Read about how they considered how research practice can be improved when considering the digital health divide ⬇️
behscipru.nihr.ac.uk/3207-2/
Very happy to see a big paper from my PhD *OUT TODAY*
We explored if there were inequalities in the attendance & effectiveness of behavioural weight management interventions in an individual participant data meta-analysis.
See the thread for findings 👇
bmjpublichealth.bmj.com/content/3/2/...
