Dr Dan Epstein
Bio
Participation1
A Melbourne-based Primary Care Physician and PhD in Public Health working on improving institutional decision-making through tabletop exercising through The Long Game Project
Expertise:
Public Health | Game Design | Tabletop Exercises | Pandemic Prevention | Forecasting | Decision Making | Behavioural Economics | Philanthropy
Career highlights:
Behavioural Insights work for Vic Gov during early COVID, PhD Excellence Scholarship, Aus Primary Care Trainee Doctor of the Year 2018, John Monash and Rhodes Scholarship runner-up. Dan has also represented Australia in two sports internationally for Australia, with a general interest in elite performance.
He is an ambassador of @Giving What We Can, a member of @High Impact Professionals, @High Impact Medicine mentor and High Impact Athletes
You will find Dan cycling, playing tabletop games or listening to podcasts when not working.
How others can help me
Connect me with people and organisations who want to improve decision-making with tabletop exercising.
How I can help others
Tabletop exercise design and facilitations, behaviour design, medical/public health/pandemic prevention input.
Posts 3
Comments13
I have a mixed methods public health research background on behaviour change so I'll be done my best to measure, although it is very challenging. I'll be writing a post soon that is much more crunchy and in the weeds about how I think about tabletop exercising as an intervention and how it impacts our approach to game design at lgp
This is a great idea David and could be super impactful. I especially like the organisation of regular channel consolidation. Social and internet communities I think suffer a lot from specialisation entropy and a system to reverse this is great hygiene. I would also like a 'bounty board's for small projects with budgets for 'guns for hire' RA s/PAs that would make some surge tasks move from the unfeasible to feasible catatories for orgs.
As a GP myself, I would love patients like you who are evidence based and committed to treatment plans!
It is well understood depression and other mood disorders are very complex and multimodal. So trying a bunch of stuff outside medication also useful.
Also worth mentioning there is A LOT or epigenetic factors we don't understand well and can make a big difference on effects and side effects of medications. Trial and error is usually indicated like you have done in refractory and treatment resistance experience like yours.
Well done on sharing too. Mental health is like any other chronic disease, and important to aim for 'well managed' rather than 'cure' ... Because we all get down from time to time!
As a public health academic, I would love to see more carving of a niche for WELLBYs. They make a lot of sense for the bio-psycho-social model for health... as they emphasize 2/3 of these metrics rather than just one!
To get traction for use, they need to build awareness as a viable alternative. There should be some effort to educate academics and policymakers about the use of WELLBYs as an outcome measure of interest.
I would also like to see research on existing softer interventions that may not impact DALYs but may shift the needle considerably with WELLBYs (or not?).
Off the top of my head- some candidates might be (potential for long-term well-being increases but maybe not disability/death):
-iron fortification
-access to contraception/ pregnancy termination
-deworming (bringing another prong into debates
-living with worms is terrible), nutrition programs
-increasing sleep quality/supplying simple mattresses
-domestic violence interventions/safehouses
Another way to think of interventions for the list is taking away causes of long-term suffering that would be cheap, easy and likely permanent.
Thanks @TJPHutton I have updated the discord link to not expire. See you in there!