Who is behind this website?

The Testing Treatments international website is funded by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) through the James Lind Initiative.

Additional funding has been made available by the Naji Foundation.

Editorial team

The development of this website was led by Patricia Atkinson, Astrid Austvoll-Dahlgren, Douglas Badenoch, Iain Chalmers, Paul Glasziou and Andy Oxman.

Patricia Atkinson administers two important websites developed by the James Lind Initiative between 2003 and 2018 to promote better research to inform better health care, particularly through greater public involvement in research. The Critical thinking and Appraisal Resource Library (CARL) has been developed to assemble texts, videos, audios, cartoons and other resources to help people learn how to assess whether health claims are trustworthy. For the James Lind Library – a website illustrating the development of fair tests of treatments – Patricia is responsible for sourcing, preparing and uploading documents. Patricia helped to develop the James Lind Alliance Priority Setting Partnerships between 2003 and 2013. Before this she worked in Information Technology in the National Health Service, providing IT services and support for hospitals in the Oxford region.

Astrid Austvoll-Dahlgren is a researcher and section leader at the Regional center for child and adolescent mental health East and South. Her main research interest over the past 16 years has been in systematic reviews and in developing and evaluating interventions to facilitate informed health decision making. She enjoys teaching evidence-based practice and research methodology, particularly to patients and members of the public. In 2012, she launched a Norwegian website (www.sunnskepsis.no) which enables patients and others to access and apply research evidence. Currently she is developing an evidence portal for child and adolescent mental health. Astrid is part of the Key Concepts working group (together with Iain Chalmers and Andy Oxman) which is responsible for updating the IHC Key Concepts. She is also responsible for managing the Claim Evaluation Tool database for measuring people’s understanding of these..

Douglas Badenoch is project manager for the Testing Treatments websites, working closely with designer Tom Brooks and developer Robin Layfield. In 2002 he co-founded Minervation Ltd to provide design, development and consultancy services in evidence-based health care. Current and previous clients include Cancer Research UK, the UKCRC , NHS Evidence and NHS Scotland. Prior to that he was Programme Manager at the NHS R&D Centre for Evidence-based Medicine at Oxford University, and before that he was a lecturer at the University of Strathclyde Department of Information Science.

Paul Glasziou is a researcher and general practitioner concerned about gaps between the findings of high quality research evidence and everyday clinical practice. His work focuses on identifying and removing the barriers to reducing these gaps. He is the author of several books promoting the use of evidence to inform choices and decisions in healthcare, and he edited the BMJ’s journal Evidence-Based Medicine for many years. Between 2003 and 2010 he was director of the Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine in Oxford. Since July 2010 has been the National Health and Medical Research Council Australia Fellow at Bond University, Queensland.

Andy Oxman works as a health services researcher in the Centre for Informed Health Choices at the Norwegian Institute for Public Health, where he leads the Informed Health Choices project. His research over the past three decades has focused on ways of helping people to make informed choices about healthcare. Andy completed his medical training in the US in 1979. After that he worked as a general practitioner in northern Norway. He was at McMaster University in Canada from 1984 to 1994 before moving back to Norway.

How we manage the content

The content of this website has been reviewed by the Editorial Team.  For more information about how we find and include learning resources for CARL, please read the About page.  We will be happy to receive your comments, recommendations or suggestions for new resources.

If you find any errors, please let us know using the Comment box. Day-to-day management is by Douglas Badenoch of Minervation.  If you submit a comment or a suggestion, it will most likely be Douglas who moderates it. These comments are included on the site if they are relevant, respectful and honest.