The Doug Altman Scholarship & Building Capacity Globally

We are delighted to report on the success of the inaugural Doug Altman Scholarship following a donation from the McCall MacBain Foundation (MMF). Given the generosity of the MMF, we funded eight forward-thinking future leaders of evidence-based medicine who attended the 2019 EBMLive Conference in Oxford. The scholars brought provocative, bold and constructive contributions on the theme of making research relevant, replicable and accessible to end users. They tackled the issue of reducing questionable research practices, offering solutions and continuing the great work that Professor Doug Altman started in 1994 with “The scandal of poor medical research.” We awarded a further six early mid career researchers from low- and middle-income countries a Building Capacity Bursary, which also covered travel and accommodation to attend EBMLive 2019. They brought unique perspectives and contributed to the overall aim of building capacity in evidence-based medicine globally. The Doug Altman Scholars and the Building Capacity Bursary awardees enriched EBMLive, bringing their ideas, enthusiasm, and the perspectives of early-mid career researchers to the conference. This report highlights the contributions of awardees, the outcomes this initiative and our future plans for supporting early mid career researchers and to build capacity globally.