Every Monday our authors provide a round-up of some of the most recently published peer reviewed articles from the field. We don’t cover everything, or even what’s most important – just a few papers that have interested the author. Visit our Resources page for links to more journals or follow the HealthEconBot. If you’d like to write one of our weekly journal round-ups, get in touch.
All-male panels and gender diversity of issue panels and plenary sessions at ISPOR Europe. PharmacoEconomics – Open [PubMed] Published 22nd July 2019
All male panels and other diversity considerations for ISPOR. PharmacoEconomics – Open [PubMed] Published 22nd July 2019
How is gender balance at ISPOR Europe conferences? This fascinating paper by Jacoline Bouvy and Michelle Mujoomdar kick-started a debate among the #HealthEconomics Twitterati by showing that the gender distribution is far from balanced.
Jacoline and Michelle found that, between 2016-18, 30% of the 346 speakers at issue panels and plenary sessions were women. Of the 85 panels and sessions, 29% were manels and 64% were mainly composed by men, whereas 2% were all-women panels (‘famels’?).
The ISPOR president Nancy Devlin had a positive and constructive response. For example, I was very pleased to know that ISPOR is taking the issue seriously and no longer has all-male plenary sessions. Issue panels, however, are proposed by members. The numbers show that the gender imbalance in the panels that do get accepted reflects the imbalance of the panels that are proposed.
These two papers raise quite a lot of questions. Why are fewer women participating in abstracts for issue panels? Does the gender distribution in abstracts reflect the distribution in membership, conference attendance, and submission of other types of abstracts? And how does it compare with other conferences in health economics and in other disciplines? Could we learn from other disciplines for effective action? If there is a gender imbalance in conference attendance, providing childcare may help (see here for a discussion). If women tend to submit more abstracts for posters rather than for organised sessions, more networking opportunities both online and at conferences could be an effective action.
I haven’t studied this phenomenon, so I really don’t know. I’d like to suggest that ISPOR starts collecting data systematically and implements initiatives in a way that is amenable to evaluation. After all, doing an evaluation is the health economist way!
Seamless interactive language interfacing between R and Stata. The Stata Journal [RePEc] Published 14th March 2019
Are you a Stata-user, but every so often you’d like to use a function only available in R? This brilliant package is for you!
E.F. Haghish created the rcall package to use R from Stata. It can be used to call R from Stata, or call R for a specific function. With the console mode, we call R to perform an action. The interactive mode allows us to call R from a Stata do-file. The vanilla mode evokes a new R session. The sync mode automatically synchronises objects between R and Stata. Additionally, rcall can transfer various types of data, such as locals, globals, datasets, etc. between Stata and R. Lastly, you can write ado-commands to embed R functions in Stata programs.
This package opens up loads of possibilities. Obviously, it does require that Stata users also know R. But it does make it easy to use R from the comfort of Stata. Looking forward to trying it out more!
Development of the summary of findings table for network meta-analysis. Journal of Clinical Epidemiology [PubMed] Published 2nd May 2019
Whilst the previous paper expands your analytical toolbox, this paper helps you present the results in the context of network meta-analysis. Juan José Yepes-Nuñez and colleagues propose a new summary of findings table to present the results of network meta-analysis. This new table reports all the relevant findings in a way that works for readers.
This study is remarkable because they actually tested the new table with 32 users in four rounds of test and revision. The limitation is that the users were mostly methodologists, although I imagine that recruitment of other users such as clinicians may have been difficult. The new format comprises three sections. The upper section details the PICO (Population; Intervention; Comparison; Outcome) and shows the diagram of the evidence network. The middle section summarises the results in terms of the comparisons, number of studies, participants, relative effect, absolute outcomes and absolute difference, certainty of evidence, rankings, and interpretation of the findings. The lower section defines the terminology and provides some details on the calculations.
It was interesting to read that users felt confused and overwhelmed if the results for all comparisons were shown. Therefore, the table shows the results for one main comparator vs other interventions. The issue is that, as the authors discuss, one comparator needs to be chosen as the main comparator, which is not ideal. Nonetheless, I agree that this is a compromise worth making to achieve a table that works!
I really enjoyed reading about the process to get to this table. I’m wondering if it would be useful to conduct a similar exercise to standardise the presentation of cost-effectiveness results. It would be great to know your thoughts!
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