Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Andrea Mazzella

@andmazzella.bsky.social

260 followers 460 following 120 posts

Public Health Medicine registrar (resident doctor), epidemiologist, migrant, geek in disguise.📍 London | 🗣️ an-DREH-ah | 👤 he/him

Posts Media Videos Starter Packs

Pinned

Andrea Mazzella @andmazzella.bsky.social · Mar 6

In England, people from ethnic minorities or living in more deprived areas are disproportionately affected by bloodstream infections.

We've shown this with our latest study, just been published on @eurosurveillance.org.

A thread 👇🏼

Health inequalities in incidence of bacteraemias: a national surveillance and data linkage study, England, 2018 to 2022

Background Health inequalities exist globally, but limited data exist on this topic for bacteraemia. Aim In this study we investigated health inequalities surrounding bacteraemia in England, to identi...

www.eurosurveillance.org

1 6 10

Andrea Mazzella @andmazzella.bsky.social · 1d

The final line of the article made me chuckle

1 1

Andrea Mazzella @andmazzella.bsky.social · 15d

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

Zahin Amin-Chowdhury @acciochoc.bsky.social · 15d

🆕 Our Annual Epidemiological Commentary on 6 key HCAIs was published this week - using England national mandatory surveillance data 🦠.

#hcai #surveillance #epidemiology

Some key highlights ⬇️

Annual epidemiological commentary: Gram-negative, MRSA, MSSA bacteraemia and C. difficile infections, up to and including financial year 2024 to 2025

www.gov.uk

1 2 2

Reposted by Andrea Mazzella

Matthew Facciani @matthewfacciani.bsky.social · Sep 11

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...

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…

www.sciencedirect.com

4 15 64

Reposted by Andrea Mazzella

The Virologist 🇳🇱🤙 (@Pen_Is_Mighty on Twitter) @thevirologist.bsky.social · Aug 16

3 11 93

Reposted by Andrea Mazzella

Trisha Elliott @trishaelliott.bsky.social · Aug 14

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.

7 13

Andrea Mazzella @andmazzella.bsky.social · Aug 6

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

Reposted by Andrea Mazzella

John Ross @johnrossmd.bsky.social · Aug 2

Amazing disease outbreak detective story 👇

Brett Biebelberg, MD @bbiebelberg.bsky.social · Aug 1

1/ Last October, 85 people ages 1-91 developed dizziness, drowsiness, anxiety, and/or memory distortion. Some went to the ED. They'd all recently eaten at a Wisconsin pizzeria.

Local public health officials investigated. As reported in last week's CDC MMWR, they found

8 16

Andrea Mazzella @andmazzella.bsky.social · Jul 29

Stunning!

Andrea Mazzella @andmazzella.bsky.social · Jul 19

This podcast episode has some interesting commentary of the "nanny state" critique against public health policies.

Beyond the neglectful state: unpacking the intersection of public health and personal freedom

Public Health Disrupted · Episode

open.spotify.com

Reposted by Andrea Mazzella

Charles Tallack @charlestallack.bsky.social · Jul 19

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. 🧵

4 18 23

Andrea Mazzella @andmazzella.bsky.social · Jul 11

😂

Reposted by Andrea Mazzella

🎃nisillos @onisillos.bsky.social · Jun 23

"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...

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.

www.nature.com

3 3 5

Reposted by Andrea Mazzella

Paolo Crosetto @paolocrosetto.bsky.social · Jun 15

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...

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

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

9 190 250

Andrea Mazzella @andmazzella.bsky.social · Jun 15

Tricky!
🟨⬜⬜⬜⬜
⬜⬜🟨⬜⬜
⬜🟨🟨⬜⬜
⬜🟩🟨🟩⬜
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

Andrea Mazzella @andmazzella.bsky.social · Jun 10

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

Andrea Mazzella @andmazzella.bsky.social · Jun 7

Thanks for sharing. Disappointing but of course good to know.

Are there any approaches to counteract/prevent misinfo with some evidence of effectiveness?

1 1

Reposted by Andrea Mazzella

Kit Yates @kityates.bsky.social · Jun 3

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

5 110 230

Reposted by Andrea Mazzella

Adam Kucharski @adamjkucharski.bsky.social · Jun 3

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.

12 17 140

Andrea Mazzella @andmazzella.bsky.social · May 31

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

3 10

Andrea Mazzella @andmazzella.bsky.social · May 24

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...

Anil Dash @anildash.com · May 24

I have a lot of thoughts about this. blog.pragmaticengineer.com/stack-overfl...

Stack overflow is almost dead

Today, Stack overflow has almost as few questions asked per month, as when it launched back in 2009. A recap of its slow, then rapid, downfall.

blog.pragmaticengineer.com

Andrea Mazzella @andmazzella.bsky.social · May 24

Thanks!

Andrea Mazzella @andmazzella.bsky.social · May 24

Thank you!

Reposted by Andrea Mazzella

Royal College of Physicians @rcphysicians.bsky.social · May 23

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

1 5

Andrea Mazzella @andmazzella.bsky.social · May 23

Ué Valè! Grazie

Andrea Mazzella @andmazzella.bsky.social · May 23

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!

Specialty Training

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

www.fph.org.uk

3 2 20