Hosted by the University of Bristol's Population Health Science Institute, this webinar series will focus on the theme of "Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Population Health: Bridging the Gaps for a Healthier Future."

Abstract: I will overview a recently completed NIHR-funded evidence synthesis of over 200 randomized trials of interventions aiming to prevent obesity in children and young people. The project involved the development of a novel analytic framework, used to code key features of the interventions and populations studied, which was co-developed with stakeholders including children/young people, schoolteachers and public health professionals. The main synthesis sought to determine which of these features, and combinations of features, were associated with the largest effects. We also examined the extent to which intervention effects differed according to baseline characteristics associated with inequities (e.g. ethnicity, socioeconomic status) by collecting subgrouped data from 81 of the trials via a collaboration with the trialists. 

Short biog: Julian Higgins is Professor of Evidence Synthesis in the newly renamed Bristol Evidence Synthesis, Appraisal and Modelling (BEAM) Centre based in Population Health Sciences at Bristol Medical School. His research has mainly been in the methodology of systematic review and meta-analysis and he has been senior editor of the Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of Interventions since 2003. He is an NIHR Senior Investigator and currently co-directs the NIHR Bristol Evidence Synthesis Group.