George T H Ellison
Biographic Data
| ID | 2263921 |
|---|---|
| NAME | George T H Ellison |
| GIVEN NAMES | George T H |
| FAMILY NAME | Ellison |
| SIGNATURE | ELLISON G T H |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Johannesburg |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-8914-6812 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 24 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 79 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 24 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1997 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2020 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Covid-19 and the epistemology of epidemiological models at the dawn of AI
adjusted for in the analysis. Such adjustment is commonplace when: mediators are mistaken for confounders; prediction models are mistakenly repurposed for causal inference; or mediator adjustment is used to estimate direct and indirect causal relationships (in a mistaken attempt at 'mediation analysis'). These three biases are central to ongoing and unresolved epistemological tensions within epidemiology. All have substantive implications for our…
Life expectancy and the Global Burden of Disease 1990–2016
Last year, the BBC News website published the ‘BBC Life Expectancy Calculator’ (BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) 2018), based on the 2016 Global Burden of Disease Study (Wang et al. 2017)—an
Robust causal inference using directed acyclic graphs
Directed acyclic graphs (DAGs), which offer systematic representations of causal relationships, have become an established framework for the analysis of causal inference in epidemiology, often being used to determine covariate adjustment sets for minimizing confounding bias. DAGitty is a popular web application for drawing and analysing DAGs. Here we introduce the R package 'dagitty', which provides access to all of the capabilities of the DAGitt…
Poverty, disability and self-reported health amongst residents and migrants in Gauteng, South Africa
Variation in sociodemographic and economic predictors of self-reported health at the individual- and household-level partly explain the lower odds of disability and health-limiting work/social activities of migrants, since migrants were less likely to be disabled and tended to be younger, with higher educational attainment and better employment status than residents, yet were also more likely to be living in households with fewer services and ass…
Obstacles to "race equality" in the English National Health Service
Inequitable healthcare access, experiences and outcomes across ethnic groups are of concern across many countries. Progress on this agenda appears limited in England given the apparently strong legal and policy framework. This disjuncture raises questions about how central government policy is translated into local services. Healthcare commissioning organisations are a potentially powerful influence on services, but have rarely been examined from…
Improving Maternal Health in Pakistan
Evidence suggests national- and community-level interventions are not reaching women living at the economic and social margins of society in Pakistan. We conducted a 10-month qualitative study (May 2010–February 2011) in a village in Punjab, Pakistan. Data were collected using 94 in-depth interviews, 11 focus group discussions, 134 observational sessions, and 5 maternal death case studies. Despite awareness of birth complications and treatment op…
Prospects for progress on health inequalities in England in the post-primary care trust era
There is doubt about the ability of GP commissioners to take clearer action on health inequalities than PCTs have historically achieved. Key actors expect the contribution from commissioning to address health inequalities to become even more piecemeal in the new arrangements, as it will be dependent upon the interest and agency of particular individuals within the new commissioning groups to engage and influence a wider range of stakeholders
Altruism and participation in longitudinal health research? Insights from the Whitehall II Study
Can the quality of social research on ethnicity be improved through the introduction of guidance? Findings from a research commissioning pilot exercise
As the volume of UK social research addressing ethnicity grows, so too do concerns regarding the ethical and scientific rigour of this research domain and its potential to do more harm than good. The establishment of standards and principles and the introduction of guidance documents at critical points within the research cycle might be one way to enhance the quality of such research. This article reports the findings from the piloting of a guida…
Cardiovascular disease in a cohort exposed to the 1940–45 Channel Islands occupation
These findings suggest that the levels of postnatal undernutrition experienced by children, adolescents and young adults exposed to food deprivation during the 1940-45 occupation of the Channel Islands were a more important determinant of CVD in later life than the levels of prenatal undernutrition experienced in utero prior to the occupation
The Standardization of Race and Ethnicity in Biomedical Science Editorials and UK Biobanks
As the search for human genetic variation has become a priority for biomedical science, debates have resurfaced about the use of race and ethnicity as scientific classifications. In this paper we consider the relationship between race, ethnicity and genetics, using insights from science and technology studies (STS) about processes of classification and standardization. We examine how leading biomedical science journals attempted to standardize th…
What evidence is there that adjustment for adult height influences the relationship between birth weight and blood pressure
BACKGROUND: The inverse association between birth weight and blood pressure may partly be the result of inappropriate adjustment for adult body size, but it remains unclear whether adjustment for adult height elicits this effect. AIM: The study investigated the impact of adjustment for adult height on the relationship between birth weight and blood pressure. METHODS: A systematic search of Medline from 1996 to 2006 was conducted using the terms '…
Anthropological Insights Into the Use of Race/Ethnicity to Explore Genetic Contributions to Disparities in Health
Anthropological insights into the use of race/ethnicity to explore genetic contributions to disparities in health were developed using in-depth qualitative interviews with editorial staff from nineteen genetics journals, focusing on the methodological and conceptual mechanisms required to make race/ethnicity a genetic variable. As such, these analyses explore how and why race/ethnicity comes to be used in the context of genetic research, set agai…
Can Science Alone Improve the Measurement and Communication of Race and Ethnicity in Genetic Research? Exploring the Strategies Proposed by Nature Genetics
Population profiling’ and public health risk
The limited reliability of race/ethnicity and the sensitivity surrounding its use to stereotype, discriminate and rationalize difference suggest it should not be used in population profiling for public health risk. However, race/ethnicity is crucial for assessing the risk of discrimination along the lines of race/ethnicity, and it can be the best available proxy for important unmeasured variables. Nonetheless, generating any data disaggregated by…
Growth of Jersey Schoolchildren During the 1940-1945 German Occupation
The 1940-45 German occupation of the Channel Islands was accompanied by a gradual deterioration in food availability and culminated in a nine-month siege with severe food shortages after supplies from France were cut off following the liberation of Normandy in 1944. The aim of this study was to compare the growth rates of schoolchildren resident on one of the Channel Islands (Jersey) with children growing up on mainland Britain. Secondary analyse…
Social identities and the 'new genetics'
The use of social identities in genetic research is increasing, yet for the most part their use remains untheorized. The possible consequences of this practice extend beyond the essentialization of social identities, to the production and application of genetic information. This paper examines the four processes linking the construction of social identities with the allocation of 'collective genetic affinities', and deconstructs the assumptions u…
Why did they blame the respondents
Letting the Gini out of the bottle? Challenges facing the relative income hypothesis
An inverse relation between blood pressure and birth weight among 5 year old children from Soweto, South Africa
STUDY OBJECTIVE: To examine the relation between birth weight and blood pressure at 5 years in a cohort of South African children. DESIGN: Prospective cohort study. PARTICIPANTS: 849 five year old children. SETTING: Soweto, a sprawling urban area close to Johannesburg, South Africa, which was a designated residential area for people classified as "black" under apartheid legislation. MAIN RESULTS: Systolic blood pressure at 5 years was inversely r…
Relative importance of heritable characteristics and lifestyle in the development of maternal obesity
STUDY OBJECTIVE: To assess the relative importance of heritable characteristics and lifestyle in the development of "maternal obesity" after pregnancy. SETTING: South east London, in the homes of mothers who had delivered their babies at either Guy's, Lewisham or St Thomas's hospitals. PARTICIPANTS: Seventy four mothers of low antenatal risk who had been enrolled in the Antenatal Care (ANC) Project (a previous trial of antenatal care) during the …
Growth in height and weight of South African urban infants from birth to five years
The Birth To Ten (BTT) birth cohort study was designed to investigate the health and growth of children living in the Soweto-Johannesburg Metropole, South Africa. During 1990-1991, 4034 singleton births, from a total birth population of 5449 that occurred between 23 April and 8 June, 1990, were enrolled into the study. Anthropometric, socioeconomic, health, nutritional, and demographic data were collected at birth and at 3, 6, 12, 24, 48, and 60 …
Caesarean section rates in South Africa
Population group' differences in caesarean section rates among South African women are not explained by differences in demographic risk factors for assisted delivery, nor by differences in access to private health care. Instead, the differences in section rates may reflect the effect of bias in clinical decision-making, and/or differences among women from different 'population groups' in their attitude towards assisted delivery, and their capacit…
Is there an independent association between parity and maternal weight gain
The independent associations between parity and maternal body mass index (BMI), and between parity and maternal weight gain, were investigated using a combination of cross-sectional and longitudinal analyses based on a retrospective, repeat-pregnancy study that examined the change in maternal body weight from the beginning of one pregnancy to the beginning of the next. A group of 523 multiparous women who had been weighed regularly during pregnan…
Letting the Gini out of the bottle? Challenges facing the relative income hypothesis
The Standardization of Race and Ethnicity in Biomedical Science Editorials and UK Biobanks
As the search for human genetic variation has become a priority for biomedical science, debates have resurfaced about the use of race and ethnicity as scientific classifications. In this paper we consider the relationship between race, ethnicity and genetics, using insights from science and technology studies (STS) about processes of classification and standardization. We examine how leading biomedical science journals attempted to standardize th…
Altruism and participation in longitudinal health research? Insights from the Whitehall II Study
Obstacles to "race equality" in the English National Health Service
Inequitable healthcare access, experiences and outcomes across ethnic groups are of concern across many countries. Progress on this agenda appears limited in England given the apparently strong legal and policy framework. This disjuncture raises questions about how central government policy is translated into local services. Healthcare commissioning organisations are a potentially powerful influence on services, but have rarely been examined from…
Relative importance of heritable characteristics and lifestyle in the development of maternal obesity
STUDY OBJECTIVE: To assess the relative importance of heritable characteristics and lifestyle in the development of "maternal obesity" after pregnancy. SETTING: South east London, in the homes of mothers who had delivered their babies at either Guy's, Lewisham or St Thomas's hospitals. PARTICIPANTS: Seventy four mothers of low antenatal risk who had been enrolled in the Antenatal Care (ANC) Project (a previous trial of antenatal care) during the …
Can the quality of social research on ethnicity be improved through the introduction of guidance? Findings from a research commissioning pilot exercise
As the volume of UK social research addressing ethnicity grows, so too do concerns regarding the ethical and scientific rigour of this research domain and its potential to do more harm than good. The establishment of standards and principles and the introduction of guidance documents at critical points within the research cycle might be one way to enhance the quality of such research. This article reports the findings from the piloting of a guida…
An inverse relation between blood pressure and birth weight among 5 year old children from Soweto, South Africa
STUDY OBJECTIVE: To examine the relation between birth weight and blood pressure at 5 years in a cohort of South African children. DESIGN: Prospective cohort study. PARTICIPANTS: 849 five year old children. SETTING: Soweto, a sprawling urban area close to Johannesburg, South Africa, which was a designated residential area for people classified as "black" under apartheid legislation. MAIN RESULTS: Systolic blood pressure at 5 years was inversely r…
Caesarean section rates in South Africa
Population group' differences in caesarean section rates among South African women are not explained by differences in demographic risk factors for assisted delivery, nor by differences in access to private health care. Instead, the differences in section rates may reflect the effect of bias in clinical decision-making, and/or differences among women from different 'population groups' in their attitude towards assisted delivery, and their capacit…
Improving Maternal Health in Pakistan
Evidence suggests national- and community-level interventions are not reaching women living at the economic and social margins of society in Pakistan. We conducted a 10-month qualitative study (May 2010–February 2011) in a village in Punjab, Pakistan. Data were collected using 94 in-depth interviews, 11 focus group discussions, 134 observational sessions, and 5 maternal death case studies. Despite awareness of birth complications and treatment op…
Growth of Jersey Schoolchildren During the 1940-1945 German Occupation
The 1940-45 German occupation of the Channel Islands was accompanied by a gradual deterioration in food availability and culminated in a nine-month siege with severe food shortages after supplies from France were cut off following the liberation of Normandy in 1944. The aim of this study was to compare the growth rates of schoolchildren resident on one of the Channel Islands (Jersey) with children growing up on mainland Britain. Secondary analyse…
Is there an independent association between parity and maternal weight gain
The independent associations between parity and maternal body mass index (BMI), and between parity and maternal weight gain, were investigated using a combination of cross-sectional and longitudinal analyses based on a retrospective, repeat-pregnancy study that examined the change in maternal body weight from the beginning of one pregnancy to the beginning of the next. A group of 523 multiparous women who had been weighed regularly during pregnan…
Growth in height and weight of South African urban infants from birth to five years
The Birth To Ten (BTT) birth cohort study was designed to investigate the health and growth of children living in the Soweto-Johannesburg Metropole, South Africa. During 1990-1991, 4034 singleton births, from a total birth population of 5449 that occurred between 23 April and 8 June, 1990, were enrolled into the study. Anthropometric, socioeconomic, health, nutritional, and demographic data were collected at birth and at 3, 6, 12, 24, 48, and 60 …
Caesarean section rates in South Africa
Population group' differences in caesarean section rates among South African women are not explained by differences in demographic risk factors for assisted delivery, nor by differences in access to private health care. Instead, the differences in section rates may reflect the effect of bias in clinical decision-making, and/or differences among women from different 'population groups' in their attitude towards assisted delivery, and their capacit…
An inverse relation between blood pressure and birth weight among 5 year old children from Soweto, South Africa
STUDY OBJECTIVE: To examine the relation between birth weight and blood pressure at 5 years in a cohort of South African children. DESIGN: Prospective cohort study. PARTICIPANTS: 849 five year old children. SETTING: Soweto, a sprawling urban area close to Johannesburg, South Africa, which was a designated residential area for people classified as "black" under apartheid legislation. MAIN RESULTS: Systolic blood pressure at 5 years was inversely r…
Relative importance of heritable characteristics and lifestyle in the development of maternal obesity
STUDY OBJECTIVE: To assess the relative importance of heritable characteristics and lifestyle in the development of "maternal obesity" after pregnancy. SETTING: South east London, in the homes of mothers who had delivered their babies at either Guy's, Lewisham or St Thomas's hospitals. PARTICIPANTS: Seventy four mothers of low antenatal risk who had been enrolled in the Antenatal Care (ANC) Project (a previous trial of antenatal care) during the …
Social identities and the 'new genetics'
The use of social identities in genetic research is increasing, yet for the most part their use remains untheorized. The possible consequences of this practice extend beyond the essentialization of social identities, to the production and application of genetic information. This paper examines the four processes linking the construction of social identities with the allocation of 'collective genetic affinities', and deconstructs the assumptions u…
Why did they blame the respondents
Letting the Gini out of the bottle? Challenges facing the relative income hypothesis
Population profiling’ and public health risk
The limited reliability of race/ethnicity and the sensitivity surrounding its use to stereotype, discriminate and rationalize difference suggest it should not be used in population profiling for public health risk. However, race/ethnicity is crucial for assessing the risk of discrimination along the lines of race/ethnicity, and it can be the best available proxy for important unmeasured variables. Nonetheless, generating any data disaggregated by…
Growth of Jersey Schoolchildren During the 1940-1945 German Occupation
The 1940-45 German occupation of the Channel Islands was accompanied by a gradual deterioration in food availability and culminated in a nine-month siege with severe food shortages after supplies from France were cut off following the liberation of Normandy in 1944. The aim of this study was to compare the growth rates of schoolchildren resident on one of the Channel Islands (Jersey) with children growing up on mainland Britain. Secondary analyse…
Anthropological Insights Into the Use of Race/Ethnicity to Explore Genetic Contributions to Disparities in Health
Anthropological insights into the use of race/ethnicity to explore genetic contributions to disparities in health were developed using in-depth qualitative interviews with editorial staff from nineteen genetics journals, focusing on the methodological and conceptual mechanisms required to make race/ethnicity a genetic variable. As such, these analyses explore how and why race/ethnicity comes to be used in the context of genetic research, set agai…
Can Science Alone Improve the Measurement and Communication of Race and Ethnicity in Genetic Research? Exploring the Strategies Proposed by Nature Genetics
What evidence is there that adjustment for adult height influences the relationship between birth weight and blood pressure
BACKGROUND: The inverse association between birth weight and blood pressure may partly be the result of inappropriate adjustment for adult body size, but it remains unclear whether adjustment for adult height elicits this effect. AIM: The study investigated the impact of adjustment for adult height on the relationship between birth weight and blood pressure. METHODS: A systematic search of Medline from 1996 to 2006 was conducted using the terms '…
Cardiovascular disease in a cohort exposed to the 1940–45 Channel Islands occupation
These findings suggest that the levels of postnatal undernutrition experienced by children, adolescents and young adults exposed to food deprivation during the 1940-45 occupation of the Channel Islands were a more important determinant of CVD in later life than the levels of prenatal undernutrition experienced in utero prior to the occupation
The Standardization of Race and Ethnicity in Biomedical Science Editorials and UK Biobanks
As the search for human genetic variation has become a priority for biomedical science, debates have resurfaced about the use of race and ethnicity as scientific classifications. In this paper we consider the relationship between race, ethnicity and genetics, using insights from science and technology studies (STS) about processes of classification and standardization. We examine how leading biomedical science journals attempted to standardize th…
Can the quality of social research on ethnicity be improved through the introduction of guidance? Findings from a research commissioning pilot exercise
As the volume of UK social research addressing ethnicity grows, so too do concerns regarding the ethical and scientific rigour of this research domain and its potential to do more harm than good. The establishment of standards and principles and the introduction of guidance documents at critical points within the research cycle might be one way to enhance the quality of such research. This article reports the findings from the piloting of a guida…
Altruism and participation in longitudinal health research? Insights from the Whitehall II Study
Prospects for progress on health inequalities in England in the post-primary care trust era
There is doubt about the ability of GP commissioners to take clearer action on health inequalities than PCTs have historically achieved. Key actors expect the contribution from commissioning to address health inequalities to become even more piecemeal in the new arrangements, as it will be dependent upon the interest and agency of particular individuals within the new commissioning groups to engage and influence a wider range of stakeholders
Improving Maternal Health in Pakistan
Evidence suggests national- and community-level interventions are not reaching women living at the economic and social margins of society in Pakistan. We conducted a 10-month qualitative study (May 2010–February 2011) in a village in Punjab, Pakistan. Data were collected using 94 in-depth interviews, 11 focus group discussions, 134 observational sessions, and 5 maternal death case studies. Despite awareness of birth complications and treatment op…
Poverty, disability and self-reported health amongst residents and migrants in Gauteng, South Africa
Variation in sociodemographic and economic predictors of self-reported health at the individual- and household-level partly explain the lower odds of disability and health-limiting work/social activities of migrants, since migrants were less likely to be disabled and tended to be younger, with higher educational attainment and better employment status than residents, yet were also more likely to be living in households with fewer services and ass…
Obstacles to "race equality" in the English National Health Service
Inequitable healthcare access, experiences and outcomes across ethnic groups are of concern across many countries. Progress on this agenda appears limited in England given the apparently strong legal and policy framework. This disjuncture raises questions about how central government policy is translated into local services. Healthcare commissioning organisations are a potentially powerful influence on services, but have rarely been examined from…
Robust causal inference using directed acyclic graphs
Directed acyclic graphs (DAGs), which offer systematic representations of causal relationships, have become an established framework for the analysis of causal inference in epidemiology, often being used to determine covariate adjustment sets for minimizing confounding bias. DAGitty is a popular web application for drawing and analysing DAGs. Here we introduce the R package 'dagitty', which provides access to all of the capabilities of the DAGitt…
Life expectancy and the Global Burden of Disease 1990–2016
Last year, the BBC News website published the ‘BBC Life Expectancy Calculator’ (BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) 2018), based on the 2016 Global Burden of Disease Study (Wang et al. 2017)—an
Covid-19 and the epistemology of epidemiological models at the dawn of AI
adjusted for in the analysis. Such adjustment is commonplace when: mediators are mistaken for confounders; prediction models are mistakenly repurposed for causal inference; or mediator adjustment is used to estimate direct and indirect causal relationships (in a mistaken attempt at 'mediation analysis'). These three biases are central to ongoing and unresolved epistemological tensions within epidemiology. All have substantive implications for our…
Medicine (15 works) · Sociology (14 works) · Demography (12 works) · Psychology (9 works) · Biology (8 works) · Population (8 works) · Demography (7 works) · Environmental health (7 works) · Pregnancy (7 works) · Political science (6 works)