Trial By Error: My FOI Letter about Oxford’s Post-COVID-19 Fatigue Pamphlet

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By David Tuller, DrPH

As I reported yesterday (oops!–it was Thursday, not yesterday–this is a correction made a few minutes after posting!), the Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust, which oversees NHS services in the area, recently published a pamphlet on coronavirus and fatigue that reads as if the last 25 years hadn’t happened. To try to understand what happened, I have just sent the agency the following freedom-of-information request.

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Dear FOI office:

I am a public health researcher and journalist at the University of California, Berkeley. I am seeking information related to the pamphlet on coronavirus and fatigue recently published by the Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust, which is posted at this URL:

https://www.oxfordhealth.nhs.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/OH-011.20-Coronavirus-and-fatigue-v2.pdf

These are my questions:

  1. What is the €œpsychosocial response group,€ which is credited on the cover of the pamphlet? I have searched for the term on the site and nothing comes up. How many people are members of this group, and what are their professional qualifications and/or medical specialties? When was this group established, and what is its official mandate? What else has it done?
  2. Can you provide a list of the peer-reviewed studies and related scientific documentation used to generate the material in the pamphlet specifically about chronic fatigue syndrome, including risk factors for the illness, diagnostic criteria, management strategies and treatment?

Thank you. I look forward to hearing back.

Best–David Tuller, DrPH

David Tuller, DrPH
Senior Fellow in Public Health and Journalism
Center for Global Public Health
School of Public Health
University of California, Berkeley

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