The groups of this focal area are dedicated to various questions within public health research. One focus is on the advancement of clinical research methods.

• Autistic children and children with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD)
• Biomedical ethics
• Cancer prevention + cancer control
• Empirical mixed-method research on randomised controlled trials, in particular on different types of study discontinuation and patient recruitment
• Epidemiology of chronic diseases
• Evidence-based health care, comparative effectiveness research
• Evidence-based insurance medicine
• Research methodology in surgery
• Psychosomatic multimorbidities
• Result and process research in internal medicine
• Surgical complications and their treatment
• The influence of environmental factors on health

Association of Supporting Trial Evidence and Reimbursement for Off-Label Use of Cancer Drugs. Herbrand AK, Schmitt AM, Briel M, Ewald H, Goldkuhle M, Diem S, Hoogkamer A, Joerger M, Moffa G, Novak U, Hemkens LG, Kasenda B. JAMA Netw Open. 2021 Mar 1;4(3):e210380. doi: 10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2021.0380. PMID: 33651108; PMCID: PMC7926292.

Recruitment and Results Reporting of COVID-19 Randomized Clinical Trials Registered in the First 100 Days of the Pandemic. Janiaud P, Axfors C, Ioannidis JPA, Hemkens LG. JAMA Netw Open. 2021 Mar 1;4(3):e210330. doi: 10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2021.0330. PMID: 33646310.

Association of Convalescent Plasma Treatment With Clinical Outcomes in Patients With COVID-19: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis. Janiaud P, Axfors C, Schmitt AM, Gloy V, Ebrahimi F, Hepprich M, Smith ER, Haber NA, Khanna N, Moher D, Goodman SN, Ioannidis JPA, Hemkens LG. JAMA. 2021 Feb 26. doi: 10.1001/jama.2021.2747. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 33635310.

Development of the Instrument to assess the Credibility of Effect Modification Analyses (ICEMAN) in randomized controlled trials and meta-analyses. Schandelmaier S, Briel M, Varadhan R, Schmid CH, Devasenapathy N, Hayward RA, Gagnier J, Borenstein M, van der Heijden GJMG, Dahabreh IJ, Sun X, Sauerbrei W, Walsh M, Ioannidis JPA, Thabane L, Guyatt GH. CMAJ. 2020 Aug 10;192(32):E901-E906. doi: 10.1503/cmaj.200077. PMID: 32778601.

Evaluating the credibility of anchor based estimates of minimal important differences for patient reported outcomes: instrument development and reliability study. Devji T, Carrasco-Labra A, Qasim A, Phillips M, Johnston BC, Devasenapathy N, Zeraatkar D, Bhatt M, Jin X, Brignardello-Petersen R, Urquhart O, Foroutan F, Schandelmaier S, Pardo-Hernandez H, Vernooij RW, Huang H, Rizwan Y, Siemieniuk R, Lytvyn L, Patrick DL, Ebrahim S, Furukawa T, Nesrallah G, Schünemann HJ, Bhandari M, Thabane L, Guyatt GH. BMJ. 2020 Jun 4;369:m1714. doi: 10.1136/bmj.m1714. PMID: 32499297; PMCID: PMC7270853.

Online randomized controlled experiments at scale: lessons and extensions to medicine. Kohavi R, Tang D, Xu Y, Hemkens LG, Ioannidis JPA. Trials. 2020 Feb 7;21(1):150. doi: 10.1186/s13063-020-4084-y.

Personalized prediction of smartphone-based psychotherapeutic micro-intervention success using machine learning. Meinlschmidt G, Tegethoff M, Belardi A, Stalujanis E, Oh M, Jung EK, Kim HC, Yoo SS, Lee JH. J Affect Disord. 2019 Nov 14. pii: S0165-0327(19)31212-1.doi: 10.1016/j.jad.2019.11.071. [Epub ahead of print]

Association of Communication Interventions to Discuss Code Status With Patient Decisions for Do-Not-Resuscitate Orders: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis.Becker C, Lecheler L, Hochstrasser S, Metzger KA, Widmer M, Thommen EB, Nienhaus K, Ewald H, Meier CA, Rueter F, Schaefert R, Bassetti S, Hunziker S. JAMA Network Open. 2019 Jun 5;2(6):e195033. doi: 10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2019.5033.