Please find below the main decisions made by the Cochrane Governing Board (previously known as Steering Group) at its meeting in Geneva, Switzerland, April 5-7. If you have any questions about these decisions, please contact a member of the Board.

The Board:

• approved the Cochrane Knowledge Translation (KT) framework. Next steps will be for the Central Executive to develop the KT implementation plan.
• approved the Cochrane Review Group Structure and Function Transformation Programme Sustainability Report; and asked the working group to carry on with its work. More information on this will be announced in the coming months.
• approved the Fields Structure and Function paper (except for a proposed name change to Fields, which will be decided later); and requested that the CET work with Fields to develop an operational plan and continue to explore different models for Fields to take on review production.
• approved membership thresholds with a few modifications to the requirements for membership.
• approved the funding request to assist the Australian satellite groups with strategic support funding.
• approved the recommended changes to the electoral procedures for the Governing Board, with the additional qualification that all official communications be under the scope of the promotion policy and should only be used to encourage members to vote, with no references to specific candidates. The new policies on canvassing and candidate promotion will be added to the Governing Board membership policy and electoral procedures. Nominations for the next round of Board members will open in the next three weeks.
• approved the recommendation from the Finance, Audit & Investment Committee that trustee roles within Cochrane remain unremunerated except under exceptional circumstances.
• approved the establishment of the three new Cochrane Centres in Austria, Croatia and Japan (all three were previously Associate Centres).
• reviewed the latest financial monitoring report of Groups. In future, Groups who fail to complete the financial reports six months’ after the deadline will be deregistered.
• asked the Funding Arbiter to undertake a new audit of compliance in circa 12 months’ time
• agreed the proposed changes to the CEU review screening programme.
• approved the 2016 Trustees Report & Financial Statements

The Agenda and open access papers can be found here. The full Minutes will be available soon.

The next Governing Board face-to-face meeting is 10-12 September 2017 in Cape Town, South Africa.

12 April 2017