Structured headache services as the solution to the ill-health burden of headache: 1. Rationale and description.

In countries where headache services exist at all, their focus is usually on specialist (tertiary) care. This is clinically and economically inappropriate: most headache disorders can effectively and more efficiently (and at lower cost) be treated in educationally supported primary care. At the same time, compartmentalizing divisions between primary, secondary and tertiary care in many health-care systems create multiple inefficiencies, confronting patients attempting to navigate these levels (the "patient journey") with perplexing obstacles.

Fraud in a population-based study of headache: prevention, detection and correction.

Background: In medicine, research misconduct is historically associated with laboratory or pharmaceutical research, but the vulnerability of epidemiological surveys should be recognized. As these surveys underpin health policy and allocation of limited resources, misreporting can have far-reaching implications. We report how fraud in a nationwide headache survey occurred and how it was discovered and rectified before it could cause harm.

The burden of headache disorders in Pakistan: methodology of a population-based nationwide study, and questionnaire validation.

Background: Large geographical gaps in our knowledge of the prevalence and burden of headache disorders include Pakistan, a country with major problems of poverty, illiteracy and security. We report implementation in this country of standard methods developed by Lifting The Burden (LTB) for population-based burden-of-headache studies.

Methods: We surveyed six locations from the four provinces: Lahore and Multan (Punjab), Karachi and Sukkur (Sindh), Abbottabad (Khyber Pakhtunkhwa) and Gwadar (Baluchistan).