iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Andrea Mazzella @andmazzella.bsky.social · 12/06/2026

🍬🏫School food standards🎒🍔 Govt is proposing an update to the standards of food served in state schools to make them more nutritious and healthier 🥗🍉 If you have any thoughts on this, you can share them via this consultation (today is the last day) consult.education.gov.uk/school-food-...

consult.education.gov.uk

School Food Standards: updating the legislative framework - Department for Education - Citizen Space

Find and participate in consultations run by the Department for Education

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Andrea Mazzella @andmazzella.bsky.social · 29/04/2026

I realised that the first author is on bluesky - hello @ehemmott.bsky.social , great paper!

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Andrea Mazzella @andmazzella.bsky.social · 29/04/2026

5. Physical activity is viewed mainly in terms of enjoyment/development, not health Interesting - will keep this in mind when framing messages.

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Andrea Mazzella @andmazzella.bsky.social · 29/04/2026

4b. A “balanced diet” is seen as including both healthy and treat foods (not just balance of healthy foods) Genuinely insightful finding. I’ll definitely be more explicit about what I mean by “balanced diet” going forward.

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Andrea Mazzella @andmazzella.bsky.social · 29/04/2026

4a. Parents struggle to manage children’s preferences alongside busy schedules Strongly agree, and parents have my sympathy. We’re in an environment where high-calory, low-nutrient food is everywhere, easy, and heavily marketed, and parents have little time to cook tasty meals.

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Andrea Mazzella @andmazzella.bsky.social · 29/04/2026

3. Home-cooked food is seen as more nourishing than food prepared elsewhere Broadly agree. But notable omission: no mention of portion size or calorie content. Something I’ll be more alert to in conversations.

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Andrea Mazzella @andmazzella.bsky.social · 29/04/2026

Would adding waist measurements to NCMP be feasible? Waist to height ratio would improve risk stratification, but tricky to do sensitively at scale. Probably more suited to primary care… though capacity is a real issue.

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Andrea Mazzella @andmazzella.bsky.social · 29/04/2026

2. BMI is viewed as just an indicator Yes: BMI isn’t the whole story (though it’s still a very big part of it). Unlikely for a child to have BMI in the obesity range without most excess being adiposity. Agree NCMP could frame BMI better.

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Andrea Mazzella @andmazzella.bsky.social · 29/04/2026

I don’t think that evidence supports the authors' claim. To me it shows that, in this environment where high-calory low-nutrient food is pushed onto us, it’s harder to get children to eat fewer calories than to increase activity. Not that excess energy intake isn’t the primary driver of weight gain.

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Andrea Mazzella @andmazzella.bsky.social · 29/04/2026

1. Food vs physical activity (where I part ways with the authors) Parents see food as the main driver of weight. I think they’re right. The authors argue the opposite, placing more importance on physical inactivity, citing evidence that diets are less effective in preventing obesity in children. But

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Andrea Mazzella @andmazzella.bsky.social · 21/04/2026

It's the right moment to implement this policy in the UK, where every year fewer and fewer people smoke, thanks to previous public health action. Countries with higher smoking prevalence will need to drive it down before they can consider implementing this policy.

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Andrea Mazzella @andmazzella.bsky.social · 21/04/2026

This huge public health win happened despite strong lobbying from the tobacco industry, that of course prioritises its financial interests over our health.

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Andrea Mazzella @andmazzella.bsky.social · 21/04/2026

A landmark moment for #PublicHealth: people born after 2008 will be banned from buying tobacco in the UK – once they turn 18 and forever, even when they will be 30, 40, and older. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

bbc.co.uk

Smoking ban for people born after 2008 in the UK agreed

The

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Darren Dahly @statsepi.bsky.social · 18/03/2026

Every day is a good day for sharing one of the most useful papers about research data ever written. PLEASE get your people to understand and follow this advice. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Data Organization in Spreadsheets
Karl W. Broman
& Kara H. Woo
Pages 2-10 | Received 01 Jun 2017, Accepted author version posted online: 29 Sep 2017, Published online: 24 Apr 2018

1. Introduction
2. Be Consistent
3. Choose Good Names for Things
4. Write Dates as YYYY-MM-DD
5. No Empty Cells
6. Put Just One Thing in a Cell
7. Make it a Rectangle
8. Create a Data Dictionary
9. No Calculations in the Raw Data Files
10. Do Not Use Font Color or Highlighting as Data
11. Make Backups
12. Use Data Validation to Avoid Errors
13. Save the Data in Plain Text Files

ABSTRACT

Spreadsheets are widely used software tools for data entry, storage, analysis, and visualization. Focusing on the data entry and storage aspects, this article offers practical recommendations for organizing spreadsheet data to reduce errors and ease later analyses. The basic principles are: be consistent, write dates like YYYY-MM-DD, do not leave any cells empty, put just one thing in a cell, organize the data as a single rectangle (with subjects as rows and variables as columns, and with a single header row), create a data dictionary, do not include calculations in the raw data files, do not use font color or highlighting as data, choose good names for things, make backups, use data validation to avoid data entry errors, and save the data in plain text files.

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Andrea Mazzella @andmazzella.bsky.social · 04/03/2026

The medium-term aim would be to inform studies that can better give causal answers (I'd love to learn what those are, when looking at these systemic factors) and ultimate aim is of course inform public health action and policy

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Andrea Mazzella @andmazzella.bsky.social · 04/03/2026

Thanks Simon (hi!) The short-term aim would be hypothesis generation. I feel that when we identify and quantify health inequalities by deprivation we often stop there, without even trying to determine which of the countless possible mechanisms are more relevant. Complexity paralyses us

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Andrea Mazzella @andmazzella.bsky.social · 04/03/2026

My question is: would you find this method acceptable? Is there a better way of doing this? 6/6

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Andrea Mazzella @andmazzella.bsky.social · 04/03/2026

I'm aware that I can't actually answer my causal question with what is essentially an ecological study. And that deprivation domains are closely linked, so chucking them all in a model is bound to infuriate the causal inference goddesses. 5/6

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Andrea Mazzella @andmazzella.bsky.social · 04/03/2026

If some domains have very small p-values, I'd then consider them as having statistical evidence for an association with my outcome. 4/6

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Andrea Mazzella @andmazzella.bsky.social · 04/03/2026

I could calculate counts and denominators at the LSOA level, and then fit a negative binomial regression model with the count as dependent variable and the decile of each deprivation domain as covariates (and obviously log population as offset). 3/6

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Andrea Mazzella @andmazzella.bsky.social · 04/03/2026

The health outcome I'm analysing is strongly linked to IMD (to the surprise of no one). However, I'd like to know which deprivation domains are more relevant in this health inequality. So I thought of this possible approach: 2/6

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Andrea Mazzella @andmazzella.bsky.social · 04/03/2026

A question for social epidemiologists. #episky #publichealth As we know, the English Index of Multiple Deprivation is a composite metric, including domains such as education, income, environment, etc. And these are often closely linked. 1/6

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Andrea Mazzella @andmazzella.bsky.social · 18/11/2025

If you push hard enough, anything can squeeze into a logistic regression model

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Andrea Mazzella @andmazzella.bsky.social · 10/10/2025

The final line of the article made me chuckle

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Andrea Mazzella @andmazzella.bsky.social · 27/09/2025

Annual epi update on bloodstream infections and C. difficile infections in England. Continuing worrying trend of increasing rates of most of these infections, especially for community-onset cases

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Matthew Facciani @matthewfacciani.bsky.social · 11/09/2025

People are less likely to believe conspiracy theories when they get clear, simple, and early information from trusted sources. Using tools like “prebunking” and reaching people where they are (like on social media) can help build trust and reduce misinformation. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

sciencedirect.com

Conspiracy belief and the willful ignorance of information

The idea that conspiracy believers are prone to willful ignorance is widespread, yet many seemingly supporting studies lack designs suited to test thi…

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Trisha Elliott @trishaelliott.bsky.social · 14/08/2025

An interesting piece by @johnlauner.bsky.social in the @bmj.com recently. I know GP trainees who have done this too. Not all our younger doctors are leaving for Australia & NZ. Some are staying here but leaving the NHS. Somehow, the system has gone horribly wrong that this is happening. #MedSky

Botox, lifestyle medicine, and future general practice.

Some years ago I taught an exceptionally bright young
GP on a course. She seemed to grasp the values of the specialty intuitively.
I hadn't heard news of her for a while, but I discovered recently that she runs a private aesthetics clinic, offering botox, fillers, and so forth to people who want to look younger and are happy to pay for this.
Forgive me, but my heart sank. It wasn't the kind of career I'd hoped she might pursue.
At the same time, I recognised she may have made the choice for her own good.
We hear a lot about doctors emigrating, but I'm hearing of far more who stay in the UK but leave the NHS. Some are already thinking about it during their specialty training. I come across others when I do their appraisals two or three years later: they're carrying out sessions in aesthetics, lifestyle medicine, wellbeing clinics, or various screening services. Some are doing this part time to supplement their income or between spells of locum work, but a significant number are moving into full time private work. My perception is that these doctors include some of the best of their generation.
Their motives vary. These often include feeling overwhelmed by the punishing pace of NHS work. However, in some localities these doctors are finding the opposite: they can't make a living because different professions are taking over GP work, and practices are engaging far fewer sessional doctors. Many who do private work are parents who simply want to spend more time with their children.

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Andrea Mazzella @andmazzella.bsky.social · 06/08/2025

First day as Public Health Medicine Registrar (=resident) done ✅ Exciting to start!

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Charles Tallack @charlestallack.bsky.social · 19/07/2025

In its 10 Year Health Plan, the government recommitted to halving the gap in healthy life expectancy (HLE) between the poorest and richest regions. But how? Our new analysis with the ONS points to the underlying factors which any plan will need to take account of. 🧵

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Onisillos @onisillos.bsky.social · 23/06/2025

"And when the number of years of experience in the workforce were taken into account, master’s holders in any field earned slightly more than those with PhDs." www.nature.com/articles/d41...

nature.com

How many PhDs does the world need? Doctoral graduates vastly outnumber jobs in academia

PhD programmes need to better prepare students for careers outside universities, researchers warn.

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Paolo Crosetto @paolocrosetto.bsky.social · 15/06/2025

Springer-Nature launched a series of "Discover" journals that closely mimic MDPI titles -- sharing *identical* journal names, and likely similar business model. What is going on, and why researcher will - as always - fall for it? A 🧵 the-strain-on-scientific-publishing.github.io/website/post...

the-strain-on-scientific-publishing.github.io

Springer Nature Discovers MDPI – The Strain on Scientific Publishing

Home page for the paper ‘The Strain on Scientific Publishing’ by Mark A Hanson, Dan Brockington, Paolo Crosetto and Pablo Gomez Barreiro

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Andrea Mazzella @andmazzella.bsky.social · 15/06/2025

Tricky! 🟨⬜⬜⬜⬜ ⬜⬜🟨⬜⬜ ⬜🟨🟨⬜⬜ ⬜🟩🟨🟩⬜ 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

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Andrea Mazzella @andmazzella.bsky.social · 10/06/2025

Thank you and your colleagues for sharing your findings. I'm completely unfamiliar with behavioural research but it seems essential (and fascinating!)

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Andrea Mazzella @andmazzella.bsky.social · 07/06/2025

Thanks for sharing. Disappointing but of course good to know. Are there any approaches to counteract/prevent misinfo with some evidence of effectiveness?

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Kit Yates @kityates.bsky.social · 03/06/2025

Cancer Research UK today published a report which highlights changes in cancer survival rates over the last 50 years. Many headlines (like this one from the Guardian) have chosen to report the ‘doubling of cancer survival rates’ since the 1970s. But that's misleading... 1/18

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Adam Kucharski @adamjkucharski.bsky.social · 03/06/2025

There is a much stronger evidence base to support measles vaccination in all children and COVID vaccination during pregnancy, compared to annual COVID vaccination in healthy children. I think this is important distinction, and we should be cautious about mixing levels of evidence in discussions.

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Andrea Mazzella @andmazzella.bsky.social · 31/05/2025

Joined Parkrun and it's great! I don't enjoy running by myself but doing it with 500 other people in a park makes it much more fun

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Andrea Mazzella @andmazzella.bsky.social · 24/05/2025

Oh wow. On reflection, shouldn't surprise me – I definitely use Stack Overflow less since I started asking coding questions to LLMs. Not necessarily a good thing...

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Royal College of Physicians @rcphysicians.bsky.social · 23/05/2025

At ‪@uhsft.bsky.social‬, a project to make food on the wards more sustainable showed that small changes, such as more vegetarian and plant-based options, not only improved menu approval ratings but also educed their carbon footprint: ow.ly/IevF50VXHa9

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Andrea Mazzella @andmazzella.bsky.social · 23/05/2025

Some personal news: I've accepted a Public Health Medicine specialty training post here in London 🎉 @fphuk.bsky.social I'm so looking forward to starting in August! Sad to leave my team @ukhsa.bsky.social but I should be back soon enough for my health protection rotation!

fph.org.uk

Specialty Training

This section provides information on all aspects of training in public health including curriculum and supporting information on training.

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