Ruth Gilbert

Centre for Evidence-Based Child Health, University College London, United Kingdom

Current appointments: Reader in Clinical Epidemiology, Institutue of Child Health, London (ICH), Director Centre for Evidence-Based Child Health, ICH, London, Hornorary Consultant Epidemiologist, Great Ormond Street Hopsital Trust, London.

Research interests:
Ruth Gilbert trained as a paediatrician in the UK and embarked on her research career as co-ordinator of the Avon Cot Death Study in the late 1980s. She did an MSc in Epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and joined the ICH in 1991.

Much of her work involves assessment of the effectiveness of screening programmes in pregnancy and infancy. RG leads a major programme of work on preventive strategies for congenital toxoplasmosis, involving 16 centres (14 in Europe and 2 in Brazil). The programme is addressing policy questions about optimal preventive strategies in different countries, particularly prenatal screening, and has culminated in a European consensus development initiative funded by the EU.

Other areas of work relating to policy research include, an analysis of the clinical and cost effectiveness of screening for Down syndrome, a review of optimal starting doses for levothyroxine in children identified by screening for congenital hypothyroidism, a randomised controlled trial to determine whether Down syndrome children should receive early supplementation with vitamins and minerals, a review and policy analysis of the effectiveness of prenatal screening for group B streptococcal infection, and a newly awarded grant to evaluate the accuracy of screening tests for child abuse in injured children attending Accident and Emergency departments. Finally, research is being developed to exploit data linkage between clinical and microbiological datasets to allow surveillance of serious bacterial infection in neonatal intensive care units, stratified by clinical risk group.

Any competing interests declared are displayed with individual evaluations.

: Research Methodology > Teaching Evidence-Based Medicine (15 November 2005 - 13 February 2007)

Links

http://www.ich.ucl.ac.uk/ich/html/academicunits/paed_epid/paed_ep_unit.html

All recent recommendations

• 4.8
  Effects of routine prophylactic supplementation with iron and folic acid on admission to hospital and mortality in preschool children in a high malaria transmission setting: community-based, randomised, placebo-controlled trial.
  Recommended by Ruth Gilbert, Asok Antony