Lancet Names Hopkins-led Article "Paper of the Year" (web article)

An article by Abdullah Baqui, MBBS, DrPH, associate professor in the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health's Department of International Health, and colleagues from the U.S. and Bangladesh, was selected by The Lancet as one of three papers to share the honor of "Paper of the Year." The article "Effect of community-based newborn-care intervention package implemented through two service-delivery strategies in Sylhet district, Bangladesh: a cluster-randomised controlled trial" was published in the June 6 edition of The Lancet. A summary of the paper is available here.

The study was funded by the United States Agency for International Development by cooperative agreements with the Bloomberg School of Public Health, the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh (ICDDR,B), and the saving newborn lives program by Save the Children (US) with a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

“Top paper of the year is certainly an honor for all of us at Projahnmo project in Bangladesh. The intervention we tested, if scaled, has the potential to save more than a million newborn lives every year. We hope that the recognition of our work will influence policies and programs around the world that will prevent many unnecessary newborn deaths,” said Baqui.

Sharing the honor of “Paper of the Year” were "Thrombolysis with alteplase 3 to 4.5 hours after acute ischemic stroke" (New England Journal of Medicine 2008; 359: 1317–29) by Hacke W, Kaste M, Bluhmki E, et al. and “Effect of carbocisteine on acute exacerbation of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (PEACE Study): a randomised placebo-controlled study” (Lancet 2008; 371: 2013–18.0) by Zheng JP, Kang J, Huang SG, et al.

The winners were chosen from a group of six finalists by the editors of The Lancet and through an online readers’ poll. The results were published in the January 24 edition of The Lancet.