Life & Times Books

Researching Health: Qualitative, consequence of the majority of authors Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, in 2014. Quantitative and Mixed Methods. Third being academics rather than clinicians. The book is written for a lay audience edition. Furthermore, in appealing to a broader in a vivid, journalistic style. The writer, Dr Mike Saks and Judith Allsop international audience, some unique Seema Yasmin, is a British medical doctor SAGE Publications Ltd, 2019, PB, 608pp, facets of the UK research landscape are and AIDS activist who has taken to writing as £31.99, 978-1526424297 omitted, including General Data Protection a third career. Dr Yasmin does not hide her Regulation (GDPR), engaging with research admiration for Dr Lange: she describes him networks and support structures, and steps as a role model and believes he achieved a to policy implementation within UK primary great deal in his life. care. He was one of the doctors responsible for All things considered, Researching Health the now historic AIDS studies. provides an accessible and readable overview He spent decades railing at the slowness of clinical research methodology. Given its of the international response. Nor did he length and breadth, its benefit is likely to be just rail: for 3 years he worked as a senior greatest as a ‘dip in, dip out’ reference book bureaucrat in the WHO global programme on for students or clinicians already involved in AIDS (1992–1995). In 1995, he predicted that, healthcare research. While not specifically because of the enormously high mutation tailored to primary care, I would recommend rate of the HIV virus, single drug use would FILLING IN YOUR RESEARCH it to primary care clinicians with some prior simply lead to resistance and that, as for TB, KNOWLEDGE GAPS knowledge of research, seeking to improve multi-drug regimens would be required. In ‘Research should be based on evidence their understanding of specific aspects this he proved correct. He worked on trials of and evidence should be based on sound of methodology, rigour, or community interrupting mother–child transmission and research processes — even when there are engagement. later on trials of pre-exposure prophylaxis. challenges.’ He became involved in AIDS in developing Aaron Poppleton, countries from an early stage of the epidemic. NIHR In-Practice Fellow, Centre for Primary He was one of the first, in a trial in Mulago Researching Health sets out to provide Care and Health Services Research, University of a broad research guide for healthcare Manchester. Hospital, Kampala, to show, in the face of great scepticism, that rural Africans could students, clinicians, and researchers. Indeed, Email: [email protected] the content is comprehensive, including @aaronpoppleton adhere to highly active antiretroviral therapy research methods, ethics, dissemination, and (HAART) and achieve results comparable critical appraisal. Practical implementation DOI: https://doi.org/10.3399/bjgp20X708677 with those in the West. Eventually, of course, and appropriateness of commonly used * * * * * such free treatment was provided by the qualitative, quantitative, and mixed-methods The Inpatient Dr Lange. One Man’s Fight to Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the approaches are considered within the End the Global HIV Epidemic President’s Emergency Plan For AIDS Relief broader context of health care. Descriptions Seema Yasmin (PEPFAR), among others. The HIV epidemic of theory are helpfully supported by case Johns Hopkins University Press, 2018, PB, is still massive, with 37 million affected in examples, often demonstrating common 208pp, £12.96, 978-1421426624 2017, and, while AIDS deaths are falling, the benefits and challenges experienced with a prevalence of HIV infection is still increasing at a steady rate of about 1.7million people particular methodology. per year.2 We desperately need other young The importance of patient and community doctors, inspired perhaps by Dr Lange’s life, participation in healthcare research design to devote their lives to fighting it. and implementation is considered, including helpful sections on co-design and Public Gervase Vernon, and Patient Involvement. Furthermore, the GP, Tulasi Medical Centre, Essex. final two chapters on ‘proposals, planning, Email: [email protected] and writing up’ and ‘dissemination and evaluation’ offer a practical insight for early- DOI: https://doi.org/10.3399/bjgp20X708689 career stage researchers into important topics commonly neglected within similar REFERENCES literature and lecture series. A HERO FOR TODAY The editors state that ‘underrepresented’ This book is a biography of Dr Joep Lange. 1. Piot P. Joep Lange obituary. Guardian 2014; 21 Jul: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/ areas of healthcare research including He qualified in Amsterdam in 1982, just as jul/21/joep-lange (accessed 15 Jan 2020). primary care are considered. Nevertheless, the AIDS epidemic started. According to his 2. US Department of Health and Human Services. chapters tend towards the theoretical, with obituary ‘he was one of the world’s top HIV/ Global statistics. The global HIV/AIDS epidemic. case examples general to health research. Aids researchers and a prominent pioneer 2020. https://www.hiv.gov/hiv-basics/overview/ Translation of findings to clinical practice of antiretroviral therapy’.1 He was killed by data-and-trends/global-statistics (accessed 15 Jan 2020). receives limited attention. This may be a Ukrainian separatists when they shot down

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