Jade Goody: Depraved or deprived?

Jade Goody: depraved or deprived?
Famous for merely being famous, Jade Goody has been a part of our everyday culture since she was catapulted to fame by the Big Brother series in 2002. Her death this week, at the tragically young age of 27 made headline news in every national paper. Love her, loath her or have an insistent indifference, it is difficult not to have a view.

It is easy to pass judgment on Jade's lifestyle, her antics have had parents the length and breadth of the country shuddering with disbelief. But, would any of us actually have been all that different if we had been exposed to the social circumstances which dominated Jade's young life?

Jade's hugely public death from cervical cancer has increased health checks amongst young people in our society in a way that most clinicians or politicians can only dream about.

It is indeed good news that Pap smears have risen by 20% since Jade used her case to promote uptake. However, if it is a truism that there is no more powerful therapy than prevention perhaps what we, as a society, might do is to look at the research evidence on aetiological (causation) factors of Jade's ill-health and use this in a non-judgmental way to help the young and vulnerable people in our society.

To retrieve best evidence on the aetiology of disease search Medline and use the term 'risk' in combination with a MeSH search of your disease.

The screenshots below show you how.

For someone who has been dismissed repeatedly as an uncouth, uneducated non-entity Jade Goody has had more influence on the health of the nation in her short lifetime than whole teams of healthcare workers seem able to achieve in their entire careers. Jade Goody: depraved or deprived? But for the grace of God go I ...

Vic

Retrieving evidence on the aetiology of disease

1. Connect to Ovid Medline via MUSE-Library-Subject databases-alphabetical list-O-OvidSP-Connect-Medline 1950-2009 (for the full archive)


2. Select Advanced Ovid search to facilitate MeSH searching, enter the condition and click on search. MeSH (thesaurus) searching is recommended because of the increased recall facilitated by the inclusion of all synonyms.

Ten of the best: 1 The Cochrane Library

One of the things that I am hoping to use this blog for is to promote some of the information resources that I think provide the best evidence for students, staff and researchers in the Med School.

So, I thought I'd tell you what my top 10 resources are, including some old favourites and also a few obscure gems. Take a look and post your comments in terms of ease of use, quality of information and whether you have a preferred alternative to find the same information. I'm kicking off with the Cochrane Library because, if you haven't used this before, it's time you did ...

The Cochrane Library

What is it?

The Cochrane Library contains a number of databases, the primary one being the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews. These reviews are produced by Cochrane Groups which bring together the world's healthcare experts to systematically search for and appraise every clinical trial on a given topic. Those that meet the stringent appraisal criteria will then be synthesised together to produce one document of best evidence. Cochrane reviews are widely seen as the gold standard in evidence for healthcare due to their rigorous research methods. The Cochrane Library also gives access to DARE (Database of Abstracts of Reviews of Effects), a resource which aims to index all other well conducted systematic reviews. Finally, a word of warning about systematic reviews. Not all have been well researched and all too often I will see a simple review being published under the guise of  a systematic review.  So, if it's not from Cochrane or DARE, make sure you appraise it well...

Connecting to Cochrane:

www.thecochranelibrary.org gives access from any network connection in the UK. No password is required.

Searching:

Simple, advanced and MeSH searches are all available but because the number of individual documents is much smaller than in a database such as Medline, retrieval is fairly straightforward.

That's all for now,

Vic