Coming to grips with seemingly conflicting results in programme evaluation: the devil’s in the detail

To the Editor: We recently published findings from our study evaluating the impact of a national education initiative to improve the quality of proton pump inhibitor (PPI) prescribing in Australia in this journal.1 We write to respond to Blogg’s comment on our paper2 and address how Wu et al 3 seemingly generated conflicting conclusions in their evaluation of the same programme. Over the past decade, NPS MedicineWise has led two educational programmes to better align prescribing practice with evidence-based recommendations for PPIs and reduce the risk of PPI-related harm. The first intervention occurred in April 2009, the second between April 2015 and April 2016. Both programmes disseminated information to Australian general practitioners (GPs) about reviewing the need for long-term PPI treatment and considering ‘step-down’ treatment approaches.4 The Wu et al paper evaluated the impact of both interventions and Bruno et al only evaluated the …