A Prescription for Improving Drug Formulary Decision Making

Gordon Schiff and colleagues present a new tool and checklist to help formularies make decisions about drug inclusion and to guide rational drug use

Leveraging formularies for improved prescribing.

<p>Formularies are poised to enhance the quality of drug prescribing decision making beyond that of individual practitioners. By encoding the collective expertise and judgment of a group of physicians and pharmacists who have resources and experience to weigh evidence in context, formularies work in ten ways to help optimize prescribing. In addition to supporting the decision making of individual clinicians, the formulary committee oversees the safe and effective use of drugs in institutions by providing guidance and engaging in ongoing drug utilization review.</p

What Doesn't Kill you: Early Life Health and Nutrition in Anglo-Saxon East Anglia

YesEarly life is associated with high vulnerability to morbidity and mortality - risks which can be reduced in infancy and early childhood through strategically high levels of parental or alloparental investment, particularly in the case of maternal breastfeeding. Recent evidence has supported links between early-life health and care patterns and long-term population health. This growing body of research regarding the broader impacts of infant-parent interactions transcends a traditional partitioning of research into discrete life stages. It also highlights implications of childhood data for our understanding of population health and behaviour. Skeletal and environmental data indicate that the 5-7th century cemeteries at Littleport and Edix Hill (Barrington A), Cambridgeshire represent populations of similar material culture but contrasting environments and health. The high prevalence of skeletal stress markers at Littleport indicates a community coping with unusual levels of biological stress, potentially a consequence of endemic malaria present in the marshy Fen environs. In contrast, Edix Hill was an inland site which exhibited lower skeletal stress marker prevalence comparable to wider British data for the early medieval period. Early life patterns relating to diet and physiological stress at Littleport (n=5) and Edix Hill (n=8) were investigated through analyses of carbon and nitrogen stable isotopes from incrementally-sampled deciduous dentine. Meaningful variation in isotopic values within and between populations was observed, and should be a focus of future interdisciplinary archaeological childhood studies.The Society for the Study of Human Biology, the Durham University Institute of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, and by the Rosemary Cramp Fund