EPQ Help!!

[Twilight08]

Hii, I am an alevel student who just started an EPQ. My title is: Despite major medical advancements, why is cardiovascular diseases still the world's leading cause of death?. I was wondering if anyone had any views on this, people I can contact, sources I can look into or any general tips on how to approach this will be much appreciated:)

A good starting point would be the World Health Organisation https://www.who.int/health-topics/cardiovascular-diseases#tab=tab_1

I have no medical training but you have chosen an interesting topic. A key point is that people choose to behave in ways that put them at risk - smoking, drinking, eating processed food. Each of the three has big money behind them. Public health messages find it hard to compete with massive advertising budgets.

You might want to ask this on student room as well , there is a thread for EPQ's.

some advice - I would perhaps narrow your title to perhaps western world or UK. or do you want to do a comparison about heart disease, perhaps other countries like for e.g. Denmark don't follow this trend. (then you identify what fa tors living there might contribute to better heart health) You might even want to identify a group of people that you focus on e.g. men in. a certain age group.

then what are the stats for heart disease in UK (or worldwide?), first get current stats and figures .

your school should let you have access to proper journal articles - this will already have been written about. - few sources to try shape your thinking

https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/cardiovascular-diseases-(cvds)

https://www.cdc.gov/heart-disease/data-research/facts-stats/index.html

https://world-heart-federation.org/world-heart-day/cvd-causes-conditions/what-is-cvd/

Insidious spread of poor diet and lifestyle choices. In the West, we eat too much (unhealthy) food and many have largely sedentary work lives (office or wfh), without doing much exercise. I have no idea, but I’d be really interested to know if the way people used to live many decades ago - less processed food, and less food generally, and more manual labour and outdoor activity meant that heart disease was less common?

Id look at the West vs what we can learn from parts of the East. The healthiest people in the world live rurally in Japan (I think) much better diet, lots of exercise, no nasty corporate jobs, better mental health, no alcohol or cigarettes.

Thank you! I hadn't thought about looking at West and East. I had a few ideas in mind to look at low income countries and high income countries and maybe focus on a few case studies of people from different backgrounds. Do you have any idea where I could get those case studies? But I will definitely be using your idea, thanks!

What help does your school give?

I mean we have seperate classes for EPQ with an EPQ mentor. However they are only allowed to guide you not tell you how or what to write. So I'd rather rely on people who have done the EPQ or external sources.

You’d be better relying on your school and the EPQ mentor, I think. If you don’t know how to research anything, how can you tell that you’re being given good advice here?

Actually, I know how to do my own research but the whole point of an EPQ is to get the views of other people on your topic and I think I'm educated enough to know whether the advice given is good or not, but thanks anyways.

My A levels are a distant memory (and DD didn’t do an EPQ), but it would be interesting to pick a town/city and map out the prevalence of takeaways/(lack of) greengrocers/vape shops/supermarkets vs convenience stores against the demographic and transport links/car ownership.

If you know how to do your own research, then why did your OP say:

’I was wondering if anyone had any views on this, people I can contact, sources I can look into or any general tips on how to approach this’.

That sounds very much as if you’re asking people how to do your research.

Are you even slowed to ask for outside assistance?

You don't need other people's views on an EPQ, DS did one 2 years ago. You also shouldn't be looking to anyone else to tell you what or how to write it, it should be your own work. It sounds like you want other people to do your research for you OP and that is not what it is about at all. One of the skills you should be learning is how to research yourself and school should be teaching you how to do that.

General advice on whether you should narrow your title down is fine though. But before you decide on any title you need to check that the topic is something you can find enough information and relevant sources for.

What I would recommend to you is to first do some research yourself and see what information and sources you can find on the topic. Find good and poor resources and record both to show you can tell the difference! (Only use the good ones though) Then use that to help refine your title. Read some research papers to see how they are structured and the style they are written in - it is very different from anything you do in GCSE English! You should also go carefully through the mark scheme and make sure you tick every box there is to be ticked on there.

I'd also highly recommend you do a Gantt chart as they are beloved by EPQ markers - if you haven't been told that already. It is very much all about the planning and the process as much as it is about the essay, so record everything you do to research and the different ideas you try out for titles.

Oh also it's no bad thing if things go wrong and you change them to work better for you - it gives you something to write about in all that other stuff you have to fill out alongside. Good luck!

DD did an EPQ and it featured in her Uni interview. Main point is is it something you are passionate about? Is there a reason you’ve picked this topic to make it interesting to you? If you are passionate about it your passion and interest will shine through.

I would also highlight the grammatical error in the title it should be disease rather than the plural unless you change the question to ‘why are’ rather than ‘why is’.

I'm an EPQ teacher and Head of Department in my school. In my opinion, this is not the way to do research.

Firstly, your question is not focused enough. As @iwantavuvezela suggests, narrowing the scope to a particular country or region will help you to gain the depth of knowledge necessary to achieve a top grade. Does your school/college not give you input or signposts towards suitable research options?

In my school, the librarian has already done an hour session with my year 12 EPQ group where she shared how to research along with the school logins and passwords. Our school pays for various online journal subscriptions - that is a good place for you to look. Alternatively, you could start with Google Scholar, the part of the search engine which does not have sponsored content. We also use JSTOR and guide aspiring medics or those undertaking a medical-related EPQ towards PubMed. As @IdaGlossop suggests, the WHO is another good place to start, but their statistics may well be too broad for this topic.

Finally, case studies are rarely a good way to get marks in EPQ. Students become fixated on them rather than looking at wider studies. I cannot see why any case studies would be relevant to your title unless you are looking on a regional basis (Mediterranean or Japanese diets vs "Western" diets).

Before anyone doubts my credentials, in the last 2 years, we have had cohorts of 80+ achieving 98%+ A star to B grades.

It’s really interesting idea for an EPQ.

https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/the-top-10-causes-of-death

This link is a good starter for stats to compare levels income of income and generates 5 furthers enquiry questions. There are many paths you could venture down.

Also look at the work of hans rosling and the GapMinder

good idea to use initiative and ask on here!

Arguably, cardiovascular disease will always be a leading cause of death, alongside cancer and neurodegenerative disease. Medical advancements and lifestyle choices can delay the onset of these and ultimately shift lifespan and healthspan for individuals and groups of people, but the main causes of death are unlikely to change.

My advice would be to look at (or be very aware of) how past medical research and recent ‘gender identity’ obfuscation have skewed the data regarding differences in cardiovascular diagnoses and treatments for the M and F biological sexes.