Call for participants: testing the Medical Officer of Health reports website

Interested in the public health history of London? Curious about quantifying disease? Enjoy having a chat about websites and how you might use them?

Map showing death rates from all causes in the London metropolitan boroughs, 1905.

We’re looking for 10 people to help us test a prototype of our JISC-funded London Medical Officer of Health website. We have digitised nearly 6000 volumes of the Medical Officer of Health reports for the Greater London area. Now we are preparing to pull them together in an online resource to be launched in October 2013.

If you are:

• an academic who has used the physical Medical Officer of Health reports in your research,
• an undergraduate or graduate student doing historical research on public health, urban development, sanitation, maternal and child welfare, epidemiology, or London history,
• a data or text analyst, or digital humanities scholar,
• a secondary school teacher or lecturer,
• or a combination of the above

…your participation will help us build a useful online resource for the history of public health in the UK.

You don’t have to have used the Medical Officer of Health reports in your research, though if you have, your experiences using the physical reports will give us a lot of insight into how you might like to use the reports online.

The test will take no more than one hour of your time, and you will be compensated with a £25 Amazon voucher and biscuits.

We are seeking participants who can:

• be in London on Thursday 1st August or Tuesday 6th August
• be available between 10:00 – 17:00
• commit to a 1-hour session at the Wellcome Trust on Euston Road.

If you would like to take part and you meet the above requirements, please email e.thornton@wellcome.ac.uk to arrange a date and time.

For more information about the project and what we are building, take a look at the London Medical Officer of Health project page.