Baltimore Museum of Art

General practice has one of the most diverse medical training programmes in terms of sex and ethnic background. However, this diversity of race and ethnicity is not reflected in academic GP careers, with just 17% (n = 81/473) of academic GPs being from racially minoritised groups, according to the Medical Schools Council. To determine whether GP academic clinical fellow (ACF) trainees from racially minoritised backgrounds are proportionally represented, compared with the non-academic training programme, using the annual GP ACF conference as a proxy. A retrospective analysis of conference programmes from national academic GP training conferences from 2018-2023 and demographic data obtained from Health Education England (HEE). Using conference programmes and online searches, demographic information on conference speakers was obtained and a freedom of information request was made to HEE for the demographics of GP ACFs for corresponding years. This was compared with demographic data of GP trainees and academics. On average, there were 40 speakers each year at the conference. White females (average 20.2 speakers each year) were the most well represented group, followed by White males (average 12.5), Asian females (average 3.3), Asian males (average 1.8), Black males (average 0.7), and Black females (average 0.3). HEE data from 2022 revealed that 27 (71.1%) of the 38 (excluding five who did not state their ethnicity) ACFs were White British. GP academia should be more representative of the non-academic GP training scheme. Work needs to be done to understand and overcome the structural barriers to recruiting from racially minoritised groups.

“Metaphor to Métier: Kerry Tribe’s Aphasia Poetry Club and the Discourse of Disability in Contemporary Art” explores a 2015 video work by Los Angeles-based artist Kerry Tribe. Tribe’s “The Aphasia Poetry Club” embodies a shift in contemporary artistic discourse around concepts of physical and cognitive disability. Created by a neurotypical artist, the work uses the medium of the moving image to interpret the experience of aphasia, a neurocognitive language disorder frequently associated with traumatic brain injury. Three distinct visual idioms capture the particular neurological profiles and linguistic patterns of Tribe’s chosen participants. Tribe’s representation of people living with aphasia disrupts ableist conceits about the human capacity for memory and language. Rather than stigmatizing individual impairments, the work is indicative of a new aesthetic arising from disability experience. The article argues that disability no longer functions in the contemporary art world as a political or spiritual metaphor, but rather has become a site of formal invention and conceptual research.

The recent 9th World Conference on Injury Prevention and Safety Promotion was attended by over 1100 participants and featured hundreds of posters and oral presentations, plenary sessions, and ancillary meetings of various affiliated interest groups (including the editorial board of this journal). Hosted by the good people of Merida, Mexico, the conference was an enjoyable event that offered an opportunity to forge or renew connections with colleagues from around the world. Sessions highlighted the sobering statistics familiar to readers of this journal: the importance of injury in the global burden of disease and the disproportionate share of that burden borne in low and middle income countries (LMIC).1 There was optimism, too, in reports (many coming from LMIC) of programs and policies that seem to be effective at mitigating the impact of injury. In addition, conspicuous attendance by ministerial officials from a variety of countries bespoke a commitment to this issue that will promote progress. But, despite the hope and fellowship, I was left with a strange unease. The conference was, in fact, a rather modest event. By way of contrast, the 2008 International AIDS conference to be held nearby in Mexico City expects to host 25 000 participants and 3000 journalists.2 There will be policy papers, declarations, youth forums, celebrity speakers, and intense worldwide media attention. Why, I wondered, was the premier international conference on injury not heralded by a similar outpouring of media interest and announcements of major policy initiatives? Where were the donor …

Objectives To evaluate how acceptable authors find the BMJ's current practice of publishing short versions of research articles in the paper journal and a longer version on the web and to determine authors' attitudes towards publishing only abstracts in the paper journal and publishing unedited versions on bmj.com once papers have been accepted for publication.Design Two cross sectional surveys.Setting General medical journal.Participants Survey 1: corresponding authors of a consecutive sample of published BMJ research articles that had undergone the ELPS (electronic long, paper short) process. Survey 2:corresponding authors of consecutive research articles submitted toBMJ.Results Response rates were 90% (104/115) in survey 1 and 75% (213/283) in survey 2. ELPS is largely acceptable to BMJauthors, but there is some concern that electronic information is not permanent and uncertainty about how versions are referenced. While authors who had experienced ELPS reported some problems with editors shortening papers, most were able to rectify these. Overall, 70% thought that the BMJ should continue to use ELPS; 49% thought that publishing just the abstract in the printed journal with the full version only on bmj.com was unacceptable; and 23% thought it unacceptable to post unedited versions on bmj.com once a paper had been accepted for publication.Conclusions It is acceptable to authors to publish short versions of research articles in the printed version of a general medical journal with longer versions on the website. Authors dislike the idea of publishing only abstracts in the printed journal but are in favour of posting accepted articles on the website ahead of the printed version.

Womens health issues which received scant attention at the first three UN world conferences on women gained recognition when the 1987 Safe Motherhood Conference highlighted the numbers of women dying annually from pregnancy-related causes. Since then the 1993 World Conference on Human Rights the 1994 International Conferences on Population and Development (ICPD) and the 1995 Social Summit have recognized that women have a right to the highest attainable standard of health that reproductive health includes sexual health and that womens health affects poverty unemployment and levels of social disintegration. By late 1995 the Commonwealth Medical Association convened a group known as Advocacy for Womens Health that has met regularly to promote a comprehensive gender-sensitive and human rights approach to womens health and to comment on draft documents for various conferences. This group prepared for the Fourth World Conference on Women with regional and inter-regional roundtable meetings and had a significant impact on the health content of drafts of the Platform for Action. The draft Platform for Action was finalized by the US Commission on the Status of Women with 40% of the text (including all references to gender) bracketed to indicate a lack of consensus. The introductory Beijing Declaration and its proposed amendments failed to mention womens health and the text of the Platform for Action would create problems in the field of reproductive health. Indeed the draft contains questionable terms such as feticide that cloud abortion issues. Re-enforcement of the Cairo consensus on providing reproductive health information and services and government commitment on the protection of womens rights to health is necessary.