RESEARCH supervision AND TRAINING

I am actively engaged in supervision at undergraduate and postgraduate levels.

I support teaching and training activities across the Medical School, including my roles as departmental/academic lead for Final Honours School and Year 6 Special Study Module research projects.

I am currently supervising five DPhil students. Tonny Muthee is looking to improve the uptake and use of cardiovascular risk assessments in Kenyan primary care settings. Enderson Miranda is researching the appropriateness of treatment received by patients with advanced cancer. Nicole Juul-Hindsgaul is interested indicators of successful weight loss interventions for patients with obesity. Hongyi Xu is interested in the role of electronic medical records for better management of non-communicable disease in LMICs.  Dr Kumeravi Bharathy is designing, implementing and assessing a novel evidence-based healthcare curriculum for undergraduate medical students at Buckingham University.

I am a supervisor on the MSc in Evidence-Based Healthcare programme. I have overseen a number of students to completion of their MSc thesis and assisted in their subsequent peer-review publication.

My interests are in developing and testing lifestyle interventions for the prevention and treatment of lifestyle-related diseases such as diabetes, obesity and hypertension. Presently I have available projects in relation to physical activity in primary care - details of which are available here.

I've been working in academia since 2000, with a focus on clinical care and evidence-based medicine since 2010. Upon completion of my PhD, I joined the Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine and my role is now divided between research, teaching and outreach activities.

Research

I am a principal investigator with interests that focus broadly on:

• Prevention and treatment of lifestyle-related conditions, particularly the role of physical activity and exercise. I am currently leading a programme of work assessing the evidence-base and role of physical activity and exercise in primary care as well as methods to improve its uptake and use for patient care.
• Improving the understanding and use of research evidence by health professionals, patients and members of the public. Work in this area includes the development of a one-page evidence summary tool to support better-informed treatment decisions funded by the School or Primary Care Research.
• Meta-epidemiology (research on research)

I utilise and have experience in a breadth of methodologies to support my research outputs including diagnostic studies, statistical analysis, qualitative research and clinical trials.  I am the lead and principal investigator on a number of Cochrane and non-Cochrane systematic reviews and newer evidence synthesis methods including overviews of reviews.

I work collaboratively with other researchers at a local, national and international level.

I am co-lead of the Catalogue of Bias team.

A list of my publications can be found here.

Teaching and training

I am the Director of the new MSc in EBHC Teaching and Education and the Postgraduate Certificate in Teaching Evidence-Based Health Care.

I am the lead tutor for the internationally renowned Teaching Evidence-Based Practice course. I am also the lead tutor for the Practice of Evidence-Based Health Care and Course Design, Assessment, and Evaluation modules.

I support teaching and training activities across the Medical School, including my roles as departmental/academic lead for Final Honours School and Year 6 Special Study Module research projects.

Other activities

• Board member, International Society for Evidence-Based Health Care (ISEHC)
• Member of the Health Technology Assessment (HTA) Prioritisation Committee: Integrated community health and social care (effective Sept 2020)
• Lead (Oxford) for the RCGP Clinical Priority in Physical Activity and Lifestyle.
• Expert commentator for Science Media Centre, London
• Associate Editor BMJ Evidence-Based Medicine

Outreach work includes supporting GCSE and A-level teachers introduce the topic of evidence-based medicine into their lessons as part of the EinSTein project. In 2015 I was runner-up of I’m a Scientist Get me out of here, a free online event where school students meet and interact with scientists.

I also blog for the CEBM and occasionally for the BJGP and BJSM.

Declarations

David has received expenses and fees for his media work (including payments from Channel 5). He has held funding to conduct research from the NHS National Institute for Health and the Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP) to conduct independent research. On occasion, David receives expenses for teaching EBM. He is a voluntary (unpaid) member of the RCGP Physical Activity and Lifestyle clinical priority steering committee. He is an Associate Editor of BMJ Evidence-Based Medicine for which he receives a small remuneration.