David Sackett Fellowships 2022
Supporting early-mid career researchers and building capacity in Evidence-Based Medicine globally.
What is the David Sackett Fellowship, who can apply, and how are successful candidates chosen?
With generous funding and support from the McCall MacBain Foundation (MMF), the inaugural David Sackett Fellowship was developed in honour of the memory of David Sackett and the important role he played in EBM.
To be awarded a David Sackett Fellowship, individuals were asked to submit a provocative, bold and constructive abstract that aimed to make research evidence relevant, replicable and accessible to end-users, as outlined in the EBM Manifesto. Submissions needed to describe a problem or novel research findings. We reached out to universities and medical schools across the world as well as international and national networks such as the Cochrane Collaboration, Students 4 Best Evidence and the National Institute of Health Research. To be accepted, applicants must have been early career researchers or patients.
About David Sackett
David L Sackett is widely described as the 'father of evidence-based medicine', and was a transformative figure in 20th century health research and education. One of his many notable achievements was the founding of the University of Oxford Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine (CEBM) in 1994. After leaving Oxford in 1999, David retired from clinical practice to dedicate his time to research, writing and teaching the next generation alongside his wife Barbara Sackett, and he left a lasting legacy of mentorship and inspired many leaders in EBM.
Supporting and mentoring future generations of health researchers
In 2022 we welcomed our nine forward-thinking future leaders in Evidence-Based Medicine (EBM) to attend the hugely successful 2022 EBMLive Conference in Oxford.
After an unanticipated delay in hosting EBMLive in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the return to an in-person meeting in Oxford (where David Sackett first founded the Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine) re-invigorated the EBM movement with their ideas, enthusiasm, and perspectives. Fellows were provided with an opportunity to meet like-minded early-career researchers, present their ideas and solicit feedback, attend sessions dedicated to supporting the development of early-career researchers and form life-long networks across the EBM community. All scholars had their abstract submissions published in BMJ Evidence-Based Medicine journal.
Outputs
All scholars had their abstract submissions published in BMJ Evidence-Based Medicine journal, which has also commissioned David Sackett Fellows to author topic-specific articles relating to their research presented at EBMLive. The commissioned articles include:
- An EBM Learning article on “Incorporating health research evidence in Wikipedia: lessons and challenges” by Fellow Dr Umer Siddique.
- An article in the Catalogue of Bias series on “Novelty bias” by Fellow Dr Yan Lou.
- An Analysis article for the Open Science series on replication, the added value vs research waste aspects in systematic reviews by Fellow Dr Sathya Karunanathan.
- An EBM opinion and debate article for the Open Science series on reproducible and interactive manuscripts co-written by Fellow Dr Krish Bilimoria and 2019 Doug Altman Scholar Dr Matt Parkes.
Find out what our students had to say about their fellowships:
It was one of the most fantastic scientific gatherings that I ever attended in my professional career. I got the opportunity to learn and debate around evidence-based practices, implementation science approaches and policy and advocacy. Thanks to the McCall MacBain Foundation for such great support, without which it was nearly impossible for me to share my work with esteemed scientists in the field. - David Sackett Fellow, 2022
It felt exciting to be welcomed into the EBM community at EBMLive, especially coming from a preclinical background. Personally, feeling as though my work has been recognised in some way has also helped to ease the imposter syndrome I feel at times. - David Sackett Fellow, 2022
Being an indigenous researcher, I never thought that I would get the opportunity to share research findings at Oxford ever in my life but it happened just because of support from the McCall MacBain Foundation-funded David L. Sackett Fellowship - David Sackett Fellow, 2022
Such awards are really important to highlight the achievements of early career researchers. When applying for grant funding or future research positions, having this fellowship will positively reflect this and give me an advantage. - David Sackett Fellow, 2022
This fellowship contributed a lot to my professional career. It provided the opportunity to present my research to experts at the Oxford podium and helped to establish collaboration with researchers working in my research arena. I got updated learning on various research methodologies and reporting guidelines that I will be utilising in developing research papers and grant applications, and the Fellowship showcase helped me to secure an academic position straight after my PhD. - David Sackett Fellow, 2022
Meet our 2022 David Sackett Fellows:
Yan Lou
Dr Yan Lou is an assistant professor at Kyoto University Graduate School of Medicine in Japan. She received her MD degree in China and practised as a rheumatologist for three years. After witnessing how EBM had helped improve patient outcomes, Yan came to Japan to start a PhD in epidemiology.
Dr Lou conducts and collaborates in meta-epidemiological research to reveal potential problems in clinical studies that may cause bias or misinterpretation and is interested in how to facilitate evidence dissemination via visualization and how to incorporate patients’ values into decision-making.
At EBMLive, Dr Lou presented “Visualizing the Evolution of Evidence: Cumulative Network Meta-Analyses of New Generation Antidepressants in the Last 40 Years.”
Gabriel Costa
Gabriel Costa is an early-stage PhD student in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. His interest in research goes back to when he was 16/17 years old when he started reading scientific articles and is now a meta-scientist who is honoured to attend this conference in honour of David L. Sackett at Oxford. (Prior to this, he had never left Latin America.) Gabriel has an interest in clinical epidemiology, pre-clinical research and how to reduce research waste and improve methodological rigor. He is a member of the Brazilian Reproducibility Initiative and recently updated the replicability of highly cited clinical research (his MSc thesis – poster at the conference). Without his coauthors, it would not be possible for him to attend the conference. Mr Costa presented “Outcome Reporting Bias in the NonPharmacological Literature – Diminishing Research Gaps and Improving Emerging Health Literature.”
Uday Yadav
Dr Uday Yadav is an early career Implementation scientist and his research interests include noncommunicable diseases, global health, Indigenous health, primary health care, and evidence-based policy. Dr Yadav has implemented various public health programs and conducted research in Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan, India, and Australia. Currently, he holds a Research Fellow position at National Centre for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Wellbeing Research, The Australian National University, Australia. Dr Yadav aims to address global health issues through the implementation of people-centred co-designed solutions and policy and advocacy with a special focus on unserved populations. At EBMLive, Dr Yadav presented “Using Co-design Process to Develop an Integrated Self-management Intervention Program for COPD patients in Nepal.”
Kaitlyn Hair
Dr Kaitlyn Hair is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Edinburgh working with the CAMARADES group. During her PhD, she developed automated evidence-synthesis pipelines for preclinical research and led collaborative systematic review and meta-analyses projects in animal models of Alzheimer's disease. Her research interests are in improving the translational value of preclinical dementia research, and in developing, validating, and implementing automation technologies to accelerate metaresearch. At EBMLive, Dr Hair presented “‘Living’ evidence frameworks for in vivo animal research: towards translational evidence-based medicine.”
Sathya Karunananthan
Sathya Karunananthan holds a PhD in epidemiology from McGill University. She is an Assistant Professor in the Interdisciplinary School of Health Sciences at the University of Ottawa. Her research focuses on frailty and physical function in older persons, and the role of technology in improving access to healthcare. She is also actively involved in projects on systematic review methodology, meta-research, and healthcare knowledge translation. Her recent work includes the development of guidance for when to replicate systematic reviews. At EBMLive, Dr Karunananthan presented “When should systematic reviews be replicated and when is it wasteful: a checklist and framework.”
Trevor Treharne
Trevor's DPhil studies are focused on medicine in the media. He looks at how the media reports on health and medicine issues, including researching the tools and guidance that health journalists require when reporting on these issues. Previously, Trevor was a journalist for 14 years, including working as Deputy Head of News at Yahoo and the Sunday Times Fast Track. He has completed an MA in Bioethics from the University of Sydney and an MSc in Evidence-Based Health Care at the University of Oxford. Mr Treharne presented “The ‘Traffic Light Wheel’: a general reader visualisation tool to evaluate the quality of media news items on research evidence in EBM.”
Krish Bilimoria
Dr Krish Bilimoria is a first-year medical resident in Internal Medicine at McGill University. He completed his Bachelor of Health Sciences (Global Health) at McMaster University and his medical degree at the University of Toronto. He also previously completed research across genetic epidemiology, global health impact investment, and global health ethics. His current academic interests are in diagnostic reasoning and his future clinical interests span General Internal Medicine & Critical Care. At EBMLive, Dr Bilimoria presented “Meeting the Needs of a Diverse Readership: Towards Interactive Manuscripts.”
Umer Siddique
Dr Umer Siddique is a psychiatry trainee (CT3) based in East London and coming up to the end of his core training. He will be applying for dual Specialty Training in General Adult and Older Adults Psychiatry. His particular interests include psychological therapies; personality pathologies; transition from CAMHS; the medico-legal interface; and cultural aspects of psychiatry. At EBMLive, Dr Siddique presented “Adding evidence of the effects of treatments into relevant Wikipedia pages: a randomised trial.”
Edward Li
Edward Li is currently completing his nursing training at the University of New Brunswick and completed his Bachelor of Health Sciences at McMaster University, Canada. He has seen the applicability of research evidence to practice as a Project Associate for a local health administrative body, and as a co-director of Canadian health education media regarding stem cell donation. He looks forward to building on a foundation of research training to champion evidencebased, patient-centred clinical practice. Mr Li presented his idea on “Does End-User-Engaged Peer Review Improve the Relevance, Replicability, and Accessibility of Research Evidence?”