Posted on 6 December 2021 by Ella Flemyng (Methods Implementation Manager)
Cochrane's Methods Support Unit led a special web clinic on 11 November 2021 focussing on the practicalities of implementation faced by staff and editors for public health intervention reviews. This included issues relating to complexity, non-randomised studies of interventions and synthesis without meta-analysis.
The sessions were structured around a series of short collaborative projects aimed at delivering practical resources to help authors and editors translate guidance from the Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of Interventions into practice. Attendees had the chance to discuss draft outputs and plans for these projects, which were introduced in the recent news item on tackling methodological challenges in public health reviews (please read this new item for further background). Though these projects were initiated with a public health focus, they may also be relevant to other types of Cochrane Reviews.
Recordings from the web clinic are available below. Details about future Methods Support Unit web clinics are available here.
- Why we launched the public health intervention review methods projects
Tess Moore, Methodology Editor, Editorial and Methods Department, Cochrane, UK
- A checklist and guide for defining the questions to be addressed in the synthesis of public health intervention reviews
Sue Brennan, School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine, Monash University, Australia, and Cochrane Australia
- Supporting descriptions and decisions regarding study design eligibility in Cochrane intervention reviews
Jamie Hartman-Boyce, Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences, University of Oxford, UK, and Cochrane Tobacco Addiction
- Preferred and accepted risk of bias tools for assessing bias in non-randomised studies of interventions
Michele Hilton Boon, Glasgow Caledonian University, UK, and Cochrane Public Health
- Practical conduct and reporting guidance for assessing risk of bias in non-randomised studies of interventions
Kerry Dwan, Statistical Editor and Methods Support Unit Lead, Editorial and Methods Department, Cochrane, UK
- Development of materials to facilitate implementation of methods for presentation and statistical synthesis when data are not amenable to meta-analysis
Jo McKenzie, School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine, Monash University, Australia, and Cochrane Statistics Methods Group
The Methods Support Unit hosts monthly web clinics for Cochrane editors, staff and authors to discuss methodological questions during the production of Cochrane Protocols and Reviews. The November 2021 is a special session and part of the Methods Symposium. More details about the how these sessions are usually run, and how to get involved, is available here.