What is Making a Difference?

The “Making a Difference” project highlights really important issues where you feel the BMJ Group can make a difference to health care.

In May 2007 we asked BMJ readers to help the group deliver the information most needed to improve the quality of patient care in clinical practice (see http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/334/7602/0 and http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/334/7602/1055). We categorised readers’ 200 plus suggestions, matched them with the priorities of national and international organisations and with the mission of the BMJ Group and, created a shortlist of 12 topics. An international expert group helped refine each topic and title and we selected a final list of six topics.

These key topics are:

• Adverse drug reactions (burden of iatrogenic disease) in older people
• Community acquired resistant infection in the developing world (particularly childhood pneumonia, typhoid, and/or multiresistant tuberculosis)
• Chronic pain management (excluding palliative care)
• Excessive alcohol intake (harm reduction) in young women
• Palliative care (in conditions other than cancer)
• Multiple morbidity in older people (including malignancy as a chronic disease)

For each topic there are two articles The first article explains the urgency and importance of the challenge, while the second, a quality improvement champion focuses on quality improvement initiatives to improve health care.

All 12 articles will appear in a print BMJ supplement on 26 April 2008.

The winning result will be announced at the International Forum on Quality and Safety in Health Care in Paris on 25 April 2008.

The BMJ Group will support and develop the campaign in 2008-9 by commissioning and inviting work on the campaign’s key topics in the BMJ and the BMJ Group’s 24 specialist journals and online education products. We also aim to expand the campaign by working with other collaborating organisations including the expert advisory group. We will audit the progress and outputs of the campaign during 2008-9, both internally and externally and document whether and how the BMJ Group has provided more relevant, focused, and useful products to improve knowledge and policy and to make a difference.