Epidemiology and evidence-based medicine (EBM) are, broadly speaking, about giving people the skills to evaluate and to produce evidence which can help to make clinical decisions. Many people can make use of those skills: EBM-enthusiasts, epidemiologists, physicians, surgeons, non-clinicians, patients, journalists and policymakers to name a few. However, the best way to teach those skills to the people who need them most is still elusive. Such skills are crucial if clinicians are to keep up-to-date in the rapidly evolving world of medicine.

This week I am attending the 42nd Ten Day Teaching Seminar in Cardiovascular Disease Epidemiology and Prevention, organised by the World Heart Federation in Hyderabad. Since 1968, these seminars have been occurring annually to provide basic epidemiology training to health professionals from all over the world, but particularly focussing on developing country participants, in an effort to build research capacity. Since 1973, a parallel 10-day seminar has been running in the USA. Together, these workshops have helped to train over 1000 delegates, many of whom have become leaders in cardiovascular research. The Centre for EBM in Oxford has been running workshops for both teachers and students of EBM since the mid-1990s. The combination of taught material, group work and networking with other participants seem to make these short workshops the ideal way to both teach and inspire people to use these skills in their every-day practice.

India is at the epicentre of the growing global burden of stroke and coronary heart disease and the world is watching how it deals with its burgeoning epidemic. One of the many challenges is to train the next generation of researchers and clinicians and to build up adequate infrastructure to tackle the problem locally. Currently, many Indians are travelling to schools of medicine or public health in Europe or North America to pursue higher degrees in public health or epidemiology. Until recently, there was only one school of public health in a country of a billion people. Thanks to a new public-private partnership, the Public Health Foundation of India, eight new schools of public health are being built around the country to teach the much-needed skills to students locally and to develop new research programmes. There is no doubt that this local injection of knowledge, skills and capability will lead to greater ability of Indian health professionals to use and produce evidence that is relevant to their health care system.

This week, the Florida Gulf coast played host to the world’s largest meeting of chronic disease epidemiologists. This was the 49th meeting of the American Heart Association Cardiovascular Disease Epidemiology and Prevention Conference and is combined with the Nutrition, Physical Activity and Metabolism conference over 5 days.