Patricia Logullo

I am a science communicator and a meta-researcher. I investigate solutions to help researchers and organisations communicate their findings completely, precisely and clearly for every audience, with my current research focusing on reporting quality.

I have been involved with communicating research outputs since I began my career in the 90s: first as a scientific journalist, then as a medical writer and a consultant for research institutions, charities, and foundations willing to report their health, social and economics and administration projects results.

My academic background allowed me to gather some varied experiences: I graduated in Journalism, followed by a specialisation in Scientific Journalism. After that, I felt I needed to understand scientific methods and rationale more deeply, so I obtained a Master’s Degree in Health Sciences, in a Medical School, with a case-control study on vaccination adherence. Years later, I got my PhD in Evidence-Based Health, with a study on health information for laypeople (the translation of the DISCERN tool). During my PhD, I volunteered for Cochrane for four years, coordinating translations and editing plain language summaries.

Meanwhile, I led my consultancy firm in text-editing, books production and medical writing, working for individual researchers or research teams in public, private, large and small academic and professional associations. I help them to publish their research reports, books, conference presentations. My consultancy allowed me to have some interesting experiences. For example, I led the Permanent History Commission of the Brazilian Society for Orthopaedics and Traumatology (SBOT), curating and preserving 100-old historical documents and writing historical books on the specialty in Brazil. I still keep connections with Brazil and have been worked for the Ministry of Health on plain language summaries and systematic reviews. I worked on an evidence-informed policymaking competency profile for the Brazilian Health System as well.

In 2018, I joined the the UK EQUATOR Centre team, in Centre of Statistics in Medicine (CSM), and moved with my family to Oxford. Here, I participate in several research projects at the same time, collaborating with design, data collection and interpretation. These projects work on evaluating the quality of reporting of biomedical research and creating and testing tools to improve them. My publication record shows my work, funded by CRUK, evaluating the completeness of case-control studies in pancreatic cancer, the quality of reporting of prediction models using artificial intelligence in lung cancer, and more recently the quality of peer review done in published clinical trials. I also collaborated with the development of several reporting guidelines, such as ACCORD (ACurate Consensus Reporting Document), for which I led the explanation and elaboration document, AGREE-S (a tool for evaluating the completeness of reporting of clinical practice guidelines for surgical interventions), as well as TRIPOD-AI (TRIPOD-artificial intelligence). 

I am also proud to be part of RROx (Reproducible Research Oxford), as one of the five UKRN Local Network Leads (LNLs). Our work in RROx is to champion and support open and transparent research practices across the university — basically promoting reproducibility in research. Which we do in part with good reporting, but also many other open science practices that I learn and teach every day.

Because yes, besides working on research (and thinking a lot about it), I teach at various courses for early career researchers in Oxford and international students. The training is aimed at researchers and clinicians willing to improve their skills in communicating their studies methods and results, which is applicable for research articles, protocols, and grant proposals. The courses are organised in the University of Oxford on behalf of the Centre for Statistics in Medicine (CSM), the Medical Sciences Division (MSD), NDORMS, Oxford University Hospitals (OUH) Trust, Oxford Clinical Academic Graduate School (OUCAGS), and of course the UK EQUATOR Centre, as well as other partner institutions and conferences.

Since I started at NDORMS, I have participated in several activities of engagement with the public. I played clinical trials games with children in science festivals, where I could explain concepts like randomisation and blinding. I showcased NDORMS work and wrote about it. More recently, I have been an avid advocate for public and patient involvement with research (PPI), having collaborated in several Meet the Researcher events by Open Arms. I am part of the Steering Committee of The People's Review, a systematic review totally powered by the public (to be launched in October 2024). I have been collaborated in the study design of this review where the public will decide the research question, extract information from the trials papers, and analyse them. 

I hope that my work contributes to improving the quality of overall research reporting in health, both by meta-analysing it and helping researchers increase their awareness about reporting quality and skills. This includes working for a closer participation of the public in health research.

My ORCID register: 0000-0001-8708-7003

I speak Portuguese and English fluently.

I understand French, Spanish and Italian.

Twitter: @patlogullo

Qualifications

Certified Medical Publications Professional (CMPP) by ISMPP, Oxford, UK (2023)

DPhil (PhD) in Evidence-Based Health, UNIFESP, São Paulo, Brazil (2018)

MSc in Health Sciences, Medicine School, USP, São Paulo, Brazil (2001)

Specialization in Scientific Journalism, UNICAMP, Campinas, Brazil (2001)

Bachelor’s in Communications, Faculdade de Comunicação Social Cásper Líbero, São Paulo, Brazil (1994)

Relevant courses attended

NVivo - walking before running (2024), University of Oxford, Oxford, UK

Collecting qualitative data: Interviews and focus groups (2024), University of Oxford - online

Qualitative evidence synthesis made simple (2024), University of Oxford - online

Open Scholarship Train the trainer (2024), COS (Centre for Open Science) - online 

Data Management for Reproducibility Train the trainer (2024), UKRN - online

Statistics: Designing Clinical Research (2023), University of Oxford, Oxford, UK – presential

Oxford Sparks Science Communication Training (2022) – presential 

Mental Health First Aider (MHFA) (2021), Oxford, UK - online

Randomised Controlled Trials Course (2019), University of Oxford, Oxford, UK – presential

UK EQUATOR Centre Publication School (2017), University of Oxford, Oxford, UK – presential