This page provides links and resources for planning, conducting, and reporting your equity-relevant systematic review. For additional training materials, including webinars, please visit the Training and Webinars page.

Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of Interventions
Chapter 16: Equity and specific populations

Welch VA, Petkovic J, Jull J, Hartling L, Klassen T, Kristjansson E, Pardo Pardo J, Petticrew M, Stott DJ, Thomson D, Ueffing E, Williams K, Young C, Tugwell P. Chapter 16: Equity and specific populations. In: Higgins JPT, Thomas J, Chandler J, Cumpston M, Li T, Page MJ, Welch VA (editors). Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of Interventions version 6.2 (updated Febuary 2021). Cochrane, 2021. Available from www.training.cochrane.org/handbook.

Cochrane Interactive Learning

Module 11: Health equity in systematic reviews. This module will give you an introduction to health equity considerations when planning and conducting a systematic review.

Planning

Are you planning to incorporate equity into your review? The Equity Checklist is a tool that can help!

Applying an equity lens to interventions: using PROGRESS ensures consideration of socially stratifying factors to illuminate inequities in health: The acronym PROGRESS refers to place of residence, race/ethnicity/culture/language, occupation, gender/sex, religion, education, socioeconomic status, and social capital. PROGRESS can be used as an aide-memoire, a framework to guide data extraction, and a tool to guide equity analyses for researchers to ensure explicit consideration of equity in the design of new intervention studies and in systematic reviews. 

Conducting reviews

Health equity: evidence synthesis and knowledge translation methods

Complex Interventions: a series of papers on the methods for considering complex interventions in your systematic review:

• Introducing a series of methodological articles on considering complexity in systematic reviews of interventions

• Complex interventions and their implication for systematic reviews: a pragmatic approach

• Systematic reviews of complex interventions: framing the review question

• Synthesizing evidence on complex interventions: how meta-analytical, qualitative, and mixed-method approaches can contribute 

• Identifying, documenting, and examining heterogeneity in systematic reviews of complex interventions

• Assessing the applicability of findings in systematic reviews of complex interventions can enhance the utility of reviews for decision making

• A research and development agenda for systematic reviews that ask complex questions about complex interventions

Reporting

Writing up your equity-focused review? Use the equity extension of PRISMA - the PRISMA-E 2012 Reporting Guideline

More information is available in the explanation and elaboration.

Download a printable version of the PRISMA-E checklist, reporting guidelines for equity-focused systematic reviews.