Much previous work in the social sciences has involved researchers – often but not always from the Global North – collecting data from rural communities in the Global South on a wide range of topics from public health to education, agriculture and climate change. Such ‘helicopter’ research is not good practice as it often involves an asymmetry of power and knowledge that invariably disadvantages local communities. So how can research be made more equitable? This is the topic of an analysis undertaken by Jasper Knight from the Wits School of Geography, Archaeology and Environmental Studies, who is also chair of the University’s Non-Medical Ethics Committee, in a new research study published in the International Journal of Qualitative Methods.

Systemwide team of clinicians to service world’s top tennis stars for 13^th consecutive year

FastUKB is an innovative data analysis tool tailored for medical researchers, streamlining access, extraction, and analysis of UK Biobank (UKB) data—the world’s largest biomedical database with health records of over 500,000 British individuals and 10,000+ complex variables. It solves key challenges: UKB’s intricate structure, technical barriers from traditional SQL/Python extraction (difficult for non-coders), and RAP Queue Browser’s 30-variable per-operation limit. Boasting an intuitive interface, efficient batch extraction, and intelligent analysis, it lowers technical hurdles, letting clinicians/researchers easily derive insights. Deployable locally and linked to UKB-RAP, it processes diverse data, accelerating research from raw data to publication.

This study review focuses on the economic evaluation of vaccination strategies in mainland China. It assesses 133 studies, covering 20 different vaccines, with a primary goal of evaluating the cost-effectiveness of various vaccination strategies in China. The review highlights the importance of including vaccines like hepatitis B, human papillomavirus vaccine (HPV), pneumococcal, influenza, and hepatitis A in China’s National Immunization Program (NIP). The study aims to provide policymakers with data for expanding vaccine coverage based on cost-effectiveness, with a clear emphasis on improving the methodology and quality of economic evaluations. The evaluation is primarily conducted through cost-utility analysis (CUA), with many studies using static models like decision trees and Markov models.