These include: Medical management of vulnerable and underserved populations: Principles, practices, and populations[ 19]; Understanding global health[ 20] and Vulnerable Populations in the United States[ 21].
Given the expected clinical diversity in practices and populations, we choose not to include reviews that focussed on resource poor countries.
A limitation of this review is the variation in practices and populations within and between countries, which may impact on the generaliseability of findings, although we partially addressed this by excluding reviews focussing on resource poor countries.
Amongst practices serving relatively affluent and deprived populations, there was an opinion that the scheme risked widening inequalities between 'us and them' if universally applied, as opposed to focusing on practices and populations with most scope for improvement: 'You'll always get this top lot that will sign up to it all, always do it, know how to do it, cause they're whizzes.
We collected on practice and population characteristics for all practices in England for the year 2006/7 except where otherwise specified.
Practice and population characteristics were obtained by questionnaires, interviews, data extraction from patient registration systems and telephone accessibility measurements.
A central dilemma in medicine and public health is the translation of basic discoveries into clinical practice and population health.
Many of the changes in birth weight over time can be attributed to changes in obstetric practice and population demographics.
For decades, many clinical trials have been publicly inaccessible, raising ethics, medical practice and population health concerns.
Practice list size, i.e. the number of patients registered with the practice, and population density in the area served by the practice were therefore included as candidate variables.
