We are delighted to announce our plans for Cochrane’s Virtual #CochraneSantiago which will be held online from 2-6 December 2019 and open to ALL Cochrane members and supporters.

Cochrane’s annual flagship event brings together the world’s most influential health researchers, scientists, academics, opinion leaders, clinicians, and patients to promote evidence-informed decision-making.

Whilst the recent, unprecedented situation of civil unrest across Santiago led to the cancellation of our face-to face Colloquium this year, with the support of so many contributors, we are pleased to welcome the full community to participate in Cochrane’s first, virtual #CochraneSantiago Colloquium.  Whilst we recognize our virtual meeting can never replace what we would have achieved together in-person in Chile, we believe that this unique week of content will be a fitting tribute to recognizing the extraordinary efforts of hundreds of contributors and Cochrane community‘s spirit of resilience and collaboration.

Virtual #CochraneSantiago will highlight the theme of ‘Embracing Diversity’. During the week of 2-6 December, content will be curated on our Colloquium website. We have created a dedicated page for each day’s content that will include posters, plenary content, bespoke curated materials from long and short oral presentations as well as pre-produced videos posted ‘as live’ on YouTube each day. In addition, we will provide ways you can interact with our daily content including discussion questions and social media conversations; and, we look forward to hearing from you on the wide-ranging discussions happening on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram using #CochraneSantiago, with Cochrane’s Content Creators helping to lead these conversations across our web platforms.

The Virtual Colloquium is an open invitation to all - whether you registered and were planning to travel to Santiago or not! More details on the final programme schedule and how you can get involved each day will be posted here soon.

We look forward to welcoming you and hope it’ll be a unique opportunity to fully embrace the diversity of voices that make up Cochrane’s global community.

Hold the date now - Monday 2- Friday 6 December 2019 for virtual #CochraneSantiago!

• Visit the virtual #CochraneSantiago website
• Learn more about this year’s Colloquium’s daily themes

While the Cochrane Colloquium didn’t go ahead as planned, the Cochrane Crowd Colloquium Challenge went ahead and gave us all a chance to come together, albeit virtually. As you can see in our promotional image, we’d set our target at 20,000 classifications across 48 hours.

And guess what happened? We actually reached three times that amount! What an outrageous and wonderful amount of energy you all have! In total, 61,774 classifications were made by 103 people living in 29 countries around the world. And participants identified around 1,500 RCTS!

Congratulations go especially to our top three screeners, Abhijna Vithal Yergolkar, Hariklia Nguyen and Abhijit Dutta. Thank you for your brilliant efforts and a prize pack will be making its way to you shortly. Hariklia has written the piece below especially for this blog.

My piece for the Cochrane Crowd citation screening challenge blog post

I was thrilled that I was one of the three top screeners! I would like to share that this challenge required special effort on my part because as I was participating I was also managing symptoms of Dystonia, a Neurological Movement Disorder. I wanted to share this to inspire other people with medical conditions to also get involved with Cochrane’s work and Cochrane Crowd challenges. And to say “congratulations” to other participants in the challenge who were also managing medical issues while working to make a difference.

The following encouraged me in this challenge:

• I wanted to make a difference! Identifying studies that health researchers and practitioners can access which in turn can help with treatments for patients or consumers
• Achieving something significant despite the disadvantage of living with a medical condition
• My cheering squad! (Australian Dystonia Support Group admins)  – Thanks for your support!
• Achieving while representing Australia!
• Eating chocolate as a reward while screening!

 Thank you to Cochrane for this great opportunity and congratulations to the other winners!

And if that wasn't enough excitement, we’re doing it all over again for the virtual Cochrane Santiago conference! Join us for the COCHRANE COLLOQUIUM CHALLENGE 2019! More info coming soon.
 

You can email Emily and Anna from Cochrane Crowd at crowd@cochrane.org. And don’t forget to follow us on Twitter!

Do you have an innovative idea to engage with or involve healthcare consumers? Submit your proposal to the Challenge Fund for one of four awards worth £2,500 each

As part of the Cochrane Consumer Network’s Delivery Plan (Priority 2.2 to develop the role of Cochrane Geographic Groups in supporting consumer involvement) a Challenge Fund has been established to provide awards to support new activities in engagement and involvement of healthcare consumers and sharing examples of activities with the network of Geographic Groups.

Does your idea fit the criteria?

Four awards of £2,500 each will be available. Applications open in October 2019. Awards are to support innovative activities that address issues relating to consumer engagement and involvement, identified in:

• Strategy to 2020
• Consumer Network Delivery Plan,
• Knowledge Translation Framework, in as far as it meets the needs of consumers as a key audience
• The Statement of Principles for Consumer Involvement in Cochrane  
• The Centres and Consumers Report 2019

The Challenge Fund is open to supporting a range of activities under a very broad definition of consumer engagement and involvement, but funded activities will need to demonstrate how they:

• meet the needs of healthcare consumers, (i.e. patients and care givers)
• Involve consumers in the planning, delivery and reporting of the activity

AND at least one of the following

• Develop and test a new approach to engagement or involvement
• address the needs of consumers in areas of the world where engagement and involvement has not yet occurred
•  address the needs of “seldom-heard” groups for reasons including disability, ethnicity, sexuality, communication impairments, mental health problems, homelessness and geographical isolation)

Who is eligible to apply?

We invite submissions from Cochrane’s network of Geographic Groups (Affiliates, Associate Centres, Centres and Networks). An application constitutes a commitment to work with Cochrane and to be willing to enable approaches tested during the project to be further taken up as part of Cochrane’s ongoing work.

We will look favourably on proposals that:

1. are from Cochrane’s Geographic Groups in Low- and Middle-income countries
2. make clear how Geographic Groups intend to evaluate the impact of their innovation
3. make clear how Geographic Groups intend to disseminate findings to colleagues across Cochrane
4. demonstrate match funding by institutions, whether that is through resourcing or staff commitment.

Please note: We will not fund proposals specifically to support attendance at international conferences, or proposals for completed initiatives.

How and when can you apply?

The call for proposals is open and closes at midnight UK time on Monday, 9th December 2019. Awards will be announced shortly afterwards. We may require shortlisted candidates to make a further presentation prior to making a final decision about awards. The expectation is that the successful project(s) will commence in January 2020 and run for a maximum of 9 months.

A requirement of funding will be to provide a report of progress, at three-monthly intervals from the start of the project, final findings for sharing at the Cochrane Colloquium in October 2020 (at a meeting to be determined), and a written or video report for sharing with the wider Cochrane community.

To apply, please complete the application form available from rmorley@cochrane.org. The application should be completed either as an MS Word file or pdf

For any questions about the Challenge Fund, including submission of applications, please contact:

Richard Morley
rmorley@cochrane.org

The Anne Anderson Award recognizes a female member of Cochrane who has made a significant contribution to the enhancement and visibility of women's participation within Cochrane. The winner then designates the cash award to assist a woman from a low-resource setting with her Cochrane activities. Here the winner of the 2018 cash award reports back a year later.

The Anne Anderson Award is one of several prizes awarded annually. The goal of the Anne Anderson Award is to recognize and stimulate individuals contributing to the enhancement of women’s visibility and participation in Cochrane’s leadership. In the footsteps of Anne Anderson, many outstanding women continue to contribute and inspire other women to improve health knowledge for the good of their communities.

The Award recipient receives a plaque from Cochrane honouring her contributions at the annual Colloquium. She then designates the cash award of 3000 USD to assist a woman from a low-resource setting with her Cochrane activities, who should eventually provide a brief written report on how the funds have been used.

2018 Anne Anderson award winner, Kay Dickersin nominated Janice Bowie to receive the award money.

Janice Bowie is an organizer of Consumers United for Evidence-based Healthcare (CUE), a coalition of nearly 50 consumer and consumer health groups, in the United States. A mission of CUE is to promote the health of populations and the quality of individual health care by empowering consumers to make informed decisions based on the best current evidence. Janice's goal for CUE is to enhance the health equity perspective, including in Cochrane evidence. In CUE, populations are engaged as partners through CUE’s Clearinghouse of research and policymaking opportunities, e.g., research participation, guideline development, and peer review.  

Consumers contribute to many Cochrane reviews already and will contribute even more under Janice’s guidance.  For example, CUE consumers are interested in whether studies have included patient-important outcomes and how the totality of the evidence contributes to equity across populations. Janice’s area of research specialization is minority health and health disparities in the context of qualitative data. Janice will use the awarded funds, plus a matching gift, to engage consumers in participating in Cochrane reviews.

We spoke to Janice to find out her plans for the prize money.

How did receiving the prize money help you personally?
The prize money will help fund efforts to train and engage consumers in the United States as peer reviewers of Cochrane systematic reviews.

What are your future plans?
My goal is to increase the awareness of evidence-based healthcare and Cochrane among consumers in the United States. Specifically, my next steps are to promote engagement of priority populations (eg, racial/ethnic minorities, older adults, women) in research by providing training and facilitating partnerships.

What is your message to people thinking about submitting a nomination for the Anne Anderson Award?
I encourage people to consider nominees who are committed to the importance of consumer engagement in research and serve as an example to others in regard to their own consumer engagement practices.

To find out more about the Anne Anderson award, please visit https://colloquium2019.cochrane.org/anne-anderson-award

William (Bill) Silverman (1924-2004) was one of the founders of American neonatal medicine. He was honoured repeatedly as one of the pioneers in his specialty; however, he often evoked somewhat contradictory responses amongst his colleagues because he was in the habit of raising troubling questions about the scientific basis and ethics of his and their practices. Like many of the people who have helped to establish Cochrane, Bill Silverman could be regarded as a 'troublemaker'. As he reiterated frequently, however, criticism is a form of troublemaking that can help to drive progress. Furthermore, criticism should not be limited to examining the work of others, but should also include self-criticism.

Every year Cochrane recognizes the outstanding work of Bill Silverman with its own award. It is offered annually and explicitly acknowledges Cochrane's value of criticism, with a view to helping to improve its work, and thus achieve its aim of helping people make well-informed decisions about health care by providing the best possible evidence on the effects of healthcare interventions. 

In 2019, Nicole Skoetz won for her paper; ‘Methodological review showed correct absolute effect size estimates for time-to-event outcomes in less than one-third of cancer-related systematic reviews.' We asked her about this award and what it means to her.

What made you decide to enter for this prestigious Cochrane award?

The award was suggested to me by Elvira van Dalen, one of the co-authors of the paper. When we read through the description of the prize, which focuses on Cochrane's value of criticism, helping to improve its work and thus achieving its aim of helping people make well-informed decisions, we decided to apply.

Can you tell us a little more about what made you decide to enter for the Prize and the process involved?

The published paper, for which I received the prize, reveals some challenges in the interpretation of hazard ratios as absolute effects.

Together with the co-authors and the GRADE working group, we now want to make sure that reviewers and policy developers are aware of these challenges and know how to avoid mistakes. Since the publication of the paper, the GRADEpro software has been adapted and contains additional information for calculating the risk rates as absolute effects. An accompanying paper will be published shortly. We also offered a webinar and workshop to train authors and guideline developers.

We believe this is what is mentioned in the prize description: Critical science, which then improves the quality of Cochrane reviews and contributes to an improved decision-making process on health-related questions.

How did it feel to win? What does this award mean you, personally?

Thank you very much for this prize, it is a great honour to receive the Bill Silverman prize as it explicitly rewards critical science. I would also like to thank all the co-authors who contributed to the publication of this paper and who are now also involved in follow-up projects to solve the identified challenges.

I have been a member of Cochrane for a long time and as a senior editor for the Cancer network, I am very keen that Cochrane reviews have a high methodological quality. If the paper for which I get the prize contributes to it, I am personally very pleased.

• Read Nicole Skoetz's winning paper; ‘Methodological review showed correct absolute effect size estimates for time-to-event outcomes in less than one-third of cancer-related systematic reviews'

Dear Cochrane community,

Last week the unprecedented situation of civil unrest across Santiago led to the cancellation of the physical gathering of Cochrane's annual Colloquium. Whilst it has caused huge disappointment and inconvenience for hundreds of Colloquium delegates, we have been impressed by the generosity and perseverance to make the most out of this sad situation by our members and supporters.

On behalf of Cochrane and the Local Organizing Committee, I would like to invite those accepted for a poster or oral presentation to present their material virtually. Working with Cochrane Training, we will collect and curate the Colloquium content by topic and host them on our Colloquium website, the week of 2-6 December 2019. In addition, we will also be collecting plenary presentations and workshop materials and more details on these will follow.

Whilst we recognize our virtual meeting can never replace the valuable face-to-face interactions, we feel this week of virtual content it will be a fitting tribute to Cochrane community‘s spirit of resilience and collaboration. We invite the full community of Cochrane members and supporters to engage with virtual #CochraneSantiago  from 2-6 December, 2019. Please mark your calendars and look out for more details as we get closer.

The theme of this year’s 26th Colloquium is ‘Embracing Diversity’. We hope that the virtual #CochraneSantiago can help contribute to reaching diverse audiences with diverse evidence needs for diverse health decisions.

With my personal thanks for all your support and best wishes,

Dr. Gabriel Rada
Chair of the Local Organizing Committee
Co-Director of Cochrane Chile

Here’s how to submit your poster or oral presentation for the virtual Colloquium:

If you were accepted for a poster presentation, your poster and optional audio can be uploaded to the Colloquium website. We will curate the posters by topic and be back in touch with the wider community when posters are available to view.

To upload your poster to the Colloquium website:

1.  Log in to the Colloquium website
2. Go to “My submissions"
3. Click on “Edit” next to your poster abstract
4. Next to “Poster file” click on “Browse” to select a poster file (preferably a PDF)
5. Select the poster file from your computer and then click “Upload"
6. If you wish, you can also share an audio file of you ‘presenting’ your poster. Next to “Poster audio” click on “Browse” to select an audio file, select the audio file from your computer and then click “Upload"
7. IMPORTANT: When you are finished, click on “save"
8. The deadline for uploading posters is Friday November 8th

If you had a short or long oral presentation at the Colloquium, you can record your own screencast of the presentation and share that with us.

We ask that duration be 5 minutes for short oral presentations and 10 minutes for long oral presentations. We will upload screencasts to the Cochrane Training YouTube channel and share these on the Colloquium website, so they will be publicly available.

To submit your own screencast of your oral presentation:

1. Go to: https://www.dropbox.com/request/qDruuCMEzftqAUoF9UnV
2. Upload your file. It’s helpful if you name the file with the same title as your presentation with first and last name in brackets afterwards
3. The deadline for uploading presentations is Friday November 8th

Any questions? If you have any questions or need assistance with sharing your posters or oral presentations, please contact support@cochrane.org

Watch our webinar on how to improve your dissemination products and share Cochrane evidence more effectively

Knowledge Translation (KT) in Cochrane is delighted to announce the launch of its Dissemination Checklist - a new resource that can improve the quality, consistency and translatability of dissemination products that present findings of a Cochrane intervention review. 

The 18-item Checklist and accompanying guidance is for anyone in Cochrane who produces, or wants to produce, dissemination products or dissemination product templates.  It shares the components of a high-quality dissemination product that you can check against your own product, along with tips and suggestions to use when creating your product, and examples of applying the new Checklist in practice. 

The webinar videos  below covers the following:-

• Brief review of the checklist items
• How the checklist can be used in practice
• Where to find further support and resources to improve dissemination products

Additional Resources

• Webinar presenter bios and slides
• More information about the Dissemination Checklist
• Print-friendly checklist
• Checklist flyer
• Information on how to share Cochrane Evidence

Let us know what you think! Are you finding these resources helpful? We welcome feedback on how we can support you in your dissemination efforts. Tell us what you think about the new Checklist by emailing Stephanie Lagosky, KT Project Officer at slagosky@cochrane.org

Dear Community colleagues and members,

Despite the cancellation of this year’s Colloquium, Cochrane’s Governing Board was able to meet in Santiago, Chile, as planned. At the end of the meeting, we extended our grateful thanks to Gabriel Rada and the Local Organizing Team at Cochrane Chile for their outstanding work in preparing for the 2019 Santiago Colloquium. Read our full message here: https://www.cochrane.org/news/cochrane-santiago-message-cochrane-board

We also wish to give special thanks to Cochrane’s Senior Management Team and all their colleagues from the Central Executive Team.  They have worked tirelessly over the last few days, liaising with the wonderful local organizers, rescheduling meetings, making sure people were safe and helping them get home safely.  We and the Board are extremely grateful.

Following our time together in Santiago, here is a summary of our key decisions over the last couple of days. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact one of us at support@Cochrane.org

We are pleased to report that the Board approved:

• The strategic direction of Cochrane’s Editorial & Methods Department. Please refer to the Open Access agenda papers for more information;
• Cochrane’s Multi-language Strategy 2020-2022, including the investment for upscaled multi-language and Knowledge Translation implementation; in addition, this mandates the Central Executive Team to develop a wider implementation plan to integrate multilingualism and cultural diversity as part of a new organizational strategy post 2020;
• Three brand new organizational policies: More information about these policies and how you can use them to support you will be made available in the coming weeks.
  • Principles of Collaboration: Working Together for Cochrane (Code of Conduct) developed by Cochrane’s Council;
  • Complaints Resolution Procedure;
  • Organizational Accountabilities for Cochrane.
• The recommendations and implementation plan for the revised Conflict of Interest policy for the Cochrane Library, (more information to follow).
• Dr. David Tovey be awarded the title “Emeritus Editor-in-Chief.” This title is given in special recognition of David’s distinguished service as Cochrane’s first Editor-in-Chief, 2009-2019.

The agenda for this meeting and open access papers are available and the full Minutes will be available soon.

The next Governing Board face-to-face meeting will be during Cochrane’s Governance Meetings in Manchester, UK, in March 2020. 

With our best wishes,

Catherine Marshall and Martin Burton

Cochrane Co-Chairs

At the close of its meeting today, Cochrane’s Governing Board extended its grateful thanks to Gabriel Rada, the Local Organizing Team at Cochrane Chile, Cochrane Iberoamerica, and support from Cochrane’s Central Executive Team for their outstanding work in preparing for the 2019 Santiago Colloquium.

The Board and Senior Management Team share Cochrane Chile’s huge disappointment that it was necessary to cancel the Colloquium however all were in agreement that this was the most appropriate decision in the wake of the ongoing civil unrest in Santiago.

They have also been inspired to see the best of Cochrane’s collaborative spirit demonstrated by the organizing teams and every Cochrane member and supporter who came to Chile under these most difficult circumstances.

We send our best wishes to the staff of Cochrane Chile and hope for a peaceful resolution to the current political situation.  

Cochrane’s Governing Board

Tuesday 22 October 2019

An unprecedented situation of civil unrest across Santiago has led to the cancellation of Cochrane's annual flagship event, this year’s 26th Colloquium.

Chair of the Local Organizing Committee and Co-Director of Cochrane Chile, Gabriel Rada, expresses his thanks for everyone’s support this week.

Dear friends,

At this very instant, as chair of the Local Organizing Committee, I should be inaugurating the 26th Cochrane Colloquium here in Santiago. 

However, as you already know, an unprecedented situation of civil unrest across Santiago and the rest of the country, gave us no option but to cancel Cochrane's annual flagship event.

Even though it was an extremely painful decision, we are convinced it was the right one and taken at the right time.

I want to thank the Governing Board and the Central Executive Team for their unquestioning vote of confidence when we recommended cancellation as the only possible course of action. The safety of all delegates, both physical and emotional, and the empathy with the sad situation all Chileans are currently living have been the drivers of all the decisions made, even when there were many other things at stake.

I want to thank all the people that worked so hard in organizing this event: the Local Organizing Committee, the Scientific Committee, and the Central Executive Team. I also want to thank all the participants. We recognize the enormous effort behind each presentation, workshop, oral session or poster.

Marcela Cortés, Rachel Klabunde, Sabrina Khamissa, Julio Villanueva, Gabriel Rada
Not pictured: Eva Madrid, Pamela Serón, Jana Stojanova, Luis Ortiz

During the coming weeks, we will put in place a virtual space for you to share your presentations or posters, so you can share your work. Please do, and help us make this year's Colloquium into a truly unique experience.

The theme of this Colloquium was ‘Embracing diversity’. In my inaugural speech, I was going to draw a parallel between the diverse geography and composition of the society of this country, and the challenges that diversity imposes to Cochrane, the scientific community in general, and society. 

I was going to expose how far we are from addressing the challenges that inequities and diversity bring, specifically in the context of information overload, conflict of interests and structural problems that lead to massive research waste. Our chance to keep providing reliable evidence for decision-making to everyone, especially to those most in need, are critically endangered.

It is paradoxical that the same problem we wanted to address is the one that underlies the crisis in Chile that impeded us to celebrate our Colloquium. 

However, we can also consider it a reminder of the urgency of the matter. We are working to provide reliable evidence, useful to everybody, everywhere in the world. If we do not act now, if we do not address diversity and inequality now, then it might be too late.

To all those in Santiago, I wish you safe travels home. And we look forward to showing all your extraordinary work here in the coming weeks.

Dr. Gabriel Rada

Our Local Organizing Committee are working on plans to digitalize some of the key Colloquium content that was planned for the week, and more information about how this will be implemented will be shared here soon.

If you have specific concerns and questions today, you can email us at colloquium@cochrane.org; or phone (or WhatsApp) these support lines: +44 7539 997-549 / +44 7984 421-980.

Our best wishes,
Local Organizing Committee