Blogs

  • Headshot of Dr. Vaibhav Sahni
    Dr. Vaibhav Sahni holds dual specialisations in the fields of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery as well as Periodontics. He also holds the MFDS RCPS (Glasg), MFDS RCSEd and the AssocFCGDent. His areas of expertise include, in addition to the general purview of oral health, maxillofacial injuries, point of care diagnostics, oral-systemic interactions…
  • Creating social media posts on phone
    Cochrane Group members are spending between 3 hours to just 15 minutes a week on social media activities. How can you make the most out of that time for maximum impact? In this blog Roses Parker, Research Fellow, and Muriah Umoquit, Communications and Engagement Officer, share communication tips that are easy to implement and take…
  • Person working in office
    Cochrane’s revised policy on conflicts of interest (CoI) was launched in October 2020. Since then, Cochrane’s Research Integrity team has been working with authors and editorial teams to support the implementation of the policy and has been learning about the challenges that arise. One such challenge has been the suggestion of authorship changes…
  • Dr. Luis Enrique Colunga-Lozano
    Dr. Luis Enrique Colunga-Lozano is both an internal medicine and a critical care physician from Guadalajara, México. He currently works at the COVID-19 intensive care unit at Hospital Civil de Guadalajara - Dr. Juan I Menchaca. He is also a junior professor at Universidad de Guadalajara, where he teaches evidence-based medicine. Dr. Colunga-Lozano…
  • Wiki button
    Jennifer Dawson, PhD has worked with Cochrane as the Wikipedia in Residence since 2016. Her role includes maintaining and building further relations with Wikipedia, connecting new editors to the Wikipedia community, and supporting requests for engagement in Wikipedia work from the Cochrane community. Here she shares a few of her top FAQs on…
  • Wiki on a computer screen
    Jennifer Dawson, PhD has worked with Cochrane as the Wikipedian in Residence since 2016. Her role includes maintaining and building further relations with Wikipedia, connecting new editors to the Wikipedia community, and supporting requests for engagement in Wikipedia work from the Cochrane community. Here she shares how Wikipedia works, what…
  • People raising hands to ask a question
    Katherine Jones, NIHR Network Support Fellow, looks back to the Cochrane-funded ‘Running on  Empty’ project led by Paul Montgomery and the Empty Reviews Project Group, more than a decade ago. Having initiated and completed an update evaluation in 2021, she considers findings in the context of the original project. Read more about…
  • Tiny people testing quality
    Rachel Craven, Product Lead of Cochrane Library, recently incorporated user experience research to help improve the right-hand navigation beside reviews in the Cochrane Library. Here she shares more about that project and offers her 3 top tips that you can incorporate into your projects at Cochrane.  At Cochrane we want to make sure that our…
  • Optimal methods for the use of ‘pain’ as an outcome in systematic reviews of postoperative pain management
    The Cochrane Pain, Palliative and Supportive Care (PaPaS) Review Group was awarded a Cochrane Network Innovation Fund to produce expert guidance on how to manage pain as an outcome in systematic reviews of postoperative care. Co-ordinating Editor Dr Neil O’Connell and Managing Editor Anna Erskine from the PaPaS Group are pleased to present the…
  • Business people discuss solving business problems
    The full report of a Cochrane-funded study designed to compare the existing and revised Cochrane risk of bias tools for RCTs was finalised in June 2021 and has now been made available to the Cochrane community. The study was initiated to collect evidence about the amount of time and effort review authors need to invest to use the revised risk of…
  • People at table talking
    Who are my stakeholders? What can they offer me? What can I offer them? And how do I begin engaging them? These were some of the questions tackled by NIHR Network Support Fellows Roses Parker (Cochrane Musculoskeletal, Oral, Skin and Sensory Network; MOSS) and Eve Tomlinson (Cochrane Cancer Network) as they embarked on stakeholder engagement…
  • Laptop on blue background
    Muriah Umoquit, Communications and Analytics Officer with Cochrane’s Knowledge Translation Department, and Paolo Rosati, Web Operations Manager with Cochrane’s Information and Technology Department, share their top tips for creating a low maintenance website Most Cochrane groups are granted their own website - it’s a place to…
  • Colourful overlapping silhouettes of people with speech balloons
    Sarah Chapman and Selena Ryan-Vig, Knowledge Brokers at Cochrane UK, share interesting lessons from a qualitative evaluation project which looked at what could be learnt from blog comments and what could make the blogs more helpful. Evidently Cochrane is Cochrane UK’s blog site, which aims to make Cochrane evidence really accessible, and to…
  • In this Cochrane community blog Karen Head, Justin Mann and Cat Fowler (Wiley) talk about publishing summaries of Cochrane Reviews in journals to help Cochrane evidence reach health professionals.  Many Cochrane Groups work with medical journals to either re-publish the short versions of a Cochrane Review, or to publish an original commentary based on the results of a Cochrane Review. These articles (sometimes called ‘Cochrane Corners’ or ‘Practical Evidence About Real Life Situations’ [PEARLS]) may include
    In this Cochrane community blog Karen Head (Project Manager, Knowledge Translation Department, Cochrane), Justin Mann (Assistant Editor, Editorial and Methods Department, Cochrane) and Cat Fowler (Associate Editor, Wiley) talk about publishing summaries of Cochrane Reviews in journals to help Cochrane evidence reach health professionals.…
  • Elena Kostova, Managing Editor of Cochrane Gynaecology and Fertility
    Awareness days have existed as means to spread a message and to raise awareness on a subject matter way before the advent of social media. Nowadays, conversations are largely happening online and joining awareness days and campaigns on social media by means of hashtags is a widespread phenomenon. We spoke to Elena Kostova, Managing Editor of…
  • Drawing of hands holding a magnifying glass to a sheet of paper with graphs on it
    Cochrane FirstAid is pleased to share their annual report with the wider Cochrane Community. In this Cochrane Community Blog, Vere Borra, Field Coordinator for Cochrane First Aid, shares some of the Field's achievements from 2020.  Tell us about a little about your key achievements last year? What are you most proud of?  In 2020, the…
  • Person with headset having a virtual meeting
    In this Cochrane Community blog Karen Head from Cochrane’s Knowledge Translation department discusses the start of the second cohort of the Cochrane KT mentoring scheme.   Whether it be prioritising review topics, involving end-users in producing Cochrane reviews, disseminating evidence or supporting decision makers to be able to find and…
  • Joy Oliver
    "It is a great privilege and honour to be awarded the Chris Silagy prize. For me, there is no greater acknowledgement for the work we do than this incredible award, which I will forever treasure. I would like to thank those who nominated me. I did not get the opportunity to meet Chris but the Chris Silagy prize speaks to who he was. Only a great…
  • Cochrane Community connected globally against COVID-19
    In this Cochrane Community Blog, the Cochrane Knowledge Translation Department discusses the idea behind the ‘Cochrane COVID case stories’, how they were developed and what they hope for the future. A great deal of work has been completed by Cochrane in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition to the work involved in developing Cochrane…
  • A Black woman with short curly hair sits at a table and writes in a notebook
    The way we do training has needed to change in 2020 - more online training brings new challenges of how to keep participants engaged when they aren’t all sitting in the same room. In this Cochrane Community Blog, Mike Clarke talks about his experience of finding new and novel ways of engaging the participants of a recent online systematic…
  • Team working together virtually
    Cochrane Multiple Sclerosis and Rare Diseases of the Central Nervous System recently launched an international priority setting exercise. Here, the Co-ordinating Editors, Dr Graziella Filippini and Dr Francesco Nonino, tell us about their experience with priority setting and plans for evaluation and implementation.  Why do you think it’s…
  • Hands on laptop
    Cochrane Heart has published the first Cochrane Review using Risk of Bias (RoB 2) as part of the formal pilot. Here Marianna Kaye, Assistant Managing Editor with Cochrane Heart, interviews two authors to find out more about the experience of using the tool.  Cochrane Heart is excited to announce that Physical activity…
  • An image of a graph and magnifying glass in shades of blue
    By Ella Flemyng (Methods Implementation Manager) We are delighted to announce that the first Cochrane Review using Risk of Bias (RoB 2) as part of the formal pilot has published in the Cochrane Library.  This Review, from Craig Williams, University of Exeter, and colleagues, examined the effects of physical activity interventions for people…
  • Students 4 Best Evidence logo
    A recent observational study found that the Students 4 Best Evidence blog can be used as a clinical practice competences educational tool for students. Chiara Arienti, Cochrane Rehabilitation Coordinator and lead author, shares how this study came about and more on what it found.  In 2017, during my abroad experience…
  • Fireqworks
    The Cochrane Insurance Medicine Field has recently celebrated its fifth anniversary.  In this Cochrane Community blog, Adrian Verbel, Cochrane Insurance Medicine Coordinator talk about the successes and challenges of the past five years, their KT strategy, working in collaboration with partners and other Cochrane Group, and their plans for…
  • grphic
    Information specialists within Cochrane generally work with their review authors and editorial staff, but rarely have a chance to work with another information specialist to produce a search strategy, or to collaborate on a review. Samantha (Sam) Cox (Information Specialist at Cochrane ENT) and Anne Littlewood (Information Specialist at Cochrane…
  • Do you know whether Cochrane is making a difference? What we heard and what’s happening next!
    Karen Head is writing on behalf of Cochrane’s Knowledge Translation Evaluation Working Group. The working group is made up of people across Review Groups, Fields, Geographic Groups and the Central Executive Team. In 2020 the working group has been finding out how to support Cochrane Groups that want to evaluate their knowledge translation work.…
  • Two drawn heads filled with gears are connected by a bridge of gears in the air
    Learn about Knowledge Translation in Cochrane with the launch of the KT online learning module! Blog author Karen Head is the Cochrane Knowledge Translation Project Manager and a Cochrane author. She works to support KT projects and help share learnings about knowledge translation across Cochrane. As someone who is more used to conducting meta-…
  • video icon
    Soumitra S Datta and Ajit Kumar are both child psychiatrists and Cochrane reviewers for more than 15 years with the Cochrane Schizophrenia Group. Rajendrani Mukherjee is a professional illustrator. Anisha Basu is passionate about art and is in her first year of medical school. Saranya Banerjee and Rhea Daruvala are both clinical psychologists.…
  • Cochrane Dissemination Fellows – Promoting Cochrane Evidence to the Right Audience
    The Cochrane Anaesthesia Review Group (CARG) strongly believes that research does not finish when a paper is published and that without an audience engaging with a review then this amounts to research waste.  Getting evidence into practice must therefore be a key aim - not only by disseminating reviews already produced, but also engaging with…