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· Peer review process: Where a blog post has a single author, then the content is always peer-reviewed by at least one senior academic in public health. This is to help ensure that statements have a reasonable basis in terms of scientific plausibility and to ensure that uncertainty is appropriately acknowledged where statements have speculative aspects. For multi-authored blogs there can also be additional peer-review. Of note is that the PHE blog posts are often well-referenced so that readers can readily check the background science and arguments.
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It is now possible to readily estimate individual risk of future cardiovascular events with a large number of online calculators – including a NZ-specific calculator that has been available for some years (“Know Your Numbers”). In this blog we consider if such risk calculators could be improved upon. The clear answer being “yes” – and in many ways.