My doctor father used to regularly set his trousers on fire. Born in 1924, he started smoking cigarettes as a teenager. He died of a smoking related cancer in 2003. […]
Mary E Black
Mary E Black: Stik—My NHS Homerton hero
What inspires me? People who think differently, public spaces that are beautiful, art in unexpected moments. So when an enormous blue painting of a sleeping baby appeared on an outside […]
Mary E Black: How data science will change public health
We are living in a perfect storm: vast amounts of data and rapidly increasing, cheap computing power. The world is shifting towards basing decisions even more on data. I believe, […]
Mary E Black: Data—a love story
I remember my first data extraction. As a clinician I enjoyed creating good clinical notes, and was adept at digesting fat files of written scrawl, laboratory records, and referral letters—for […]
Mary E Black: On public health—Roy Lilley gets it wrong
Roy Lilley—blogger, NHS and social care agent provocateur, fettered by none, master of the timely hyperlink, and coiner of deliciously irreverent names for the great and the good. I do […]
Mary E Black: Data is really beautiful
My whine of the week, if not the decade . . . Given that data, and in particular big data, is inevitable, exciting, inspiring, unlocks potential, has fabulous hidden patterns, […]
Mary E Black: Look at me
I was a bit of a star in my early 30s at Harvard’s School of Public Health. On a fully funded and prestigious Harkness Fellowship (so a treasured person in […]
Mary E Black: Essential reading for new NHS Executives
I have just joined the NHS Executive fast track programme. There will be 51 of us in total—36 clinicians from within the NHS and 15 application from outside the NHS. We […]
Mary E Black: Save our national statistics
That old chestnut about “lies, damned lies and statistics” always raises a laugh. But something is about to happen that is not funny at all. The Office for National Statistics […]
Mary E Black: Moving public health contracts out of the NHS and over to local authorities
The problem with us Brits is that when handed the impossible to deliver we actually go ahead and do it, methodically, honestly, and with many a sincere task and finish […]