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SUPPORT Tools for evidence-informed health Policymaking (STP) 7: Finding systematic reviews.

ABSTRACT: This article is part of a series written for people responsible for making decisions about health policies and programmes and for those who support these decision makers. Systematic reviews are increasingly seen as a key source of information in policymaking, particularly in terms of assisting with descriptions of the impacts of options. Relative to single studies they offer a number of advantages related to understanding impacts and are also seen as a key source of information for clarifying problems and providing complementary perspectives on options. Systematic reviews can be undertaken to place problems in comparative perspective and to describe the likely harms of an option. They also assist with understanding the meanings that individuals or groups attach to a problem, how and why options work, and stakeholder views and experiences related to particular options. A number of constraints have hindered the wider use of systematic reviews in policymaking. These include a lack of awareness of their value and a mismatch between the terms employed by policymakers, when attempting to retrieve systematic reviews, and the terms used by the original authors of those reviews. Mismatches between the types of information that policymakers are seeking, and the way in which authors fail to highlight (or make obvious) such information within systematic reviews have also proved problematic. In this article, we suggest three questions that can be used to guide those searching for systematic reviews, particularly reviews about the impacts of options being considered. These are: 1. Is a systematic review really what is needed? 2. What databases and search strategies can be used to find relevant systematic reviews? 3. What alternatives are available when no relevant review can be found?

SUBMITTER: Lavis JN

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3271834 | biostudies-other | 2009 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-other

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SUPPORT Tools for evidence-informed health Policymaking (STP) 7: Finding systematic reviews.

Lavis John N JN Oxman Andrew D AD Grimshaw Jeremy J Johansen Marit M Boyko Jennifer A JA Lewin Simon S Fretheim Atle A

Health research policy and systems 20091216

This article is part of a series written for people responsible for making decisions about health policies and programmes and for those who support these decision makers. Systematic reviews are increasingly seen as a key source of information in policymaking, particularly in terms of assisting with descriptions of the impacts of options. Relative to single studies they offer a number of advantages related to understanding impacts and are also seen as a key source of information for clarifying pr ...[more]

PMID: 20018114

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Project description:This article is the Introduction to a series written for people responsible for making decisions about health policies and programmes and for those who support these decision makers. Knowing how to find and use research evidence can help policymakers and those who support them to do their jobs better and more efficiently. Each article in this series presents a proposed tool that can be used by those involved in finding and using research evidence to support evidence-informed health policymaking. The series addresses four broad areas: 1. Supporting evidence-informed policymaking 2. Identifying needs for research evidence in relation to three steps in policymaking processes, namely problem clarification, options framing, and implementation planning 3. Finding and assessing both systematic reviews and other types of evidence to inform these steps, and 4. Going from research evidence to decisions. Each article begins with between one and three typical scenarios relating to the topic. These scenarios are designed to help readers decide on the level of detail relevant to them when applying the tools described. Most articles in this series are structured using a set of questions that guide readers through the proposed tools and show how to undertake activities to support evidence-informed policymaking efficiently and effectively. These activities include, for example, using research evidence to clarify problems, assessing the applicability of the findings of a systematic review about the effects of options selected to address problems, organising and using policy dialogues to support evidence-informed policymaking, and planning policy monitoring and evaluation. In several articles, the set of questions presented offers more general guidance on how to support evidence-informed policymaking. Additional information resources are listed and described in every article. The evaluation of ways to support evidence-informed health policymaking is a developing field and feedback about how to improve the series is welcome.

Project description:This article is part of a series written for people responsible for making decisions about health policies and programmes and for those who support these decision makers. Differences between health systems may often result in a policy or programme option that is used in one setting not being feasible or acceptable in another. Or these differences may result in an option not working in the same way in another setting, or even achieving different impacts in another setting. A key challenge that policymakers and those supporting them must face is therefore the need to understand whether research evidence about an option can be applied to their setting. Systematic reviews make this task easier by summarising the evidence from studies conducted in a variety of different settings. Many systematic reviews, however, do not provide adequate descriptions of the features of the actual settings in which the original studies were conducted. In this article, we suggest questions to guide those assessing the applicability of the findings of a systematic review to a specific setting. These are: 1. Were the studies included in a systematic review conducted in the same setting or were the findings consistent across settings or time periods? 2. Are there important differences in on-the-ground realities and constraints that might substantially alter the feasibility and acceptability of an option? 3. Are there important differences in health system arrangements that may mean an option could not work in the same way? 4. Are there important differences in the baseline conditions that might yield different absolute effects even if the relative effectiveness was the same? 5. What insights can be drawn about options, implementation, and monitoring and evaluation? Even if there are reasonable grounds for concluding that the impacts of an option might differ in a specific setting, insights can almost always be drawn from a systematic review about possible options, as well as approaches to the implementation of options and to monitoring and evaluation.

Dataset Information

SUPPORT Tools for evidence-informed health Policymaking (STP) 7: Finding systematic reviews.

Publications

SUPPORT Tools for evidence-informed health Policymaking (STP) 7: Finding systematic reviews.

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