Toward evidence-based study abroad

The history of evidence in health care

By the 1990’s, the gold standard in health care was “evidence-based medicine” (EBM). The basis for EBM starts with counting—births and deaths, plus certain illnesses and injuries. With this data, scientists called epidemiologists look for patterns, and patterns can lead to science-based recommendations.

Since the emergence of EBM, it has quickly been embraced by allied health fields, including nurses, social workers, psychologists, nutritionists, physical therapists, and so on. Now known as “evidence-based practice,” this multi-disciplinary approach uses scientific research methods, starting with data collection, to improve patient care for everyone.

Evidence-based practice has relevance to injury prevention during study abroad, since fatality prevention is always based on studying previous incidents.