Cochrane is delighted to announce that Cochrane Austria has been recognized for its outstanding achievements in promoting evidence-based decision-making in health care by being awarded full, independent Centre status.

Opened in 2010 as a branch of Cochrane, Cochrane Austria consists of longstanding, dedicated Cochrane enthusiasts located in the Department for Evidence-based Medicine and Clinical Epidemiology at the Danube University, Krems.

Cochrane Austria will continue to promote evidence-based decision making in health care in Austria and the region by supporting and training new authors of Cochrane Reviews, as well as working with clinicians, professional associations, policy-makers, patients, and the media to encourage the dissemination and use of Cochrane evidence.

Read the Press Release on Cochrane.org

Visit the Cochrane Austria website

We are looking for people to get involved with the Cochrane-Wikipedia Initiative. Whether you are new to Wikipedia and Cochrane, or you are a seasoned Wikipedian or Cochrane contributor, there is a task for you.

Cochrane has a commitment to producing and sharing high-quality medical evidence to as broad an audience as possible. As a way of achieving this, Cochrane has been working in partnership with Wikipedia since 2014 to improve the evidence base of health articles in Wikipedia, using quality, reliable secondary sources such as recent Cochrane Reviews to help improve the reliability of freely available health information.

The Cochrane-Wikipedia initiative supports the inclusion of relevant evidence within all Wikipedia health articles, as well as processes to help ensure that health information included in Wikipedia is of the highest quality and as accurate as possible. Trusted, evidence-based information can help people to make informed decisions about their own health and health care.

We have a list of projects that you can get involved with on our Cochrane-Wikipedia Initiative Wikimedia page. From updating Wikipedia references with the latest Cochrane Review or doing detailed content updates, there are a range of tasks for all levels of Wikipedia editors.

You are welcome to get in contact with the project leads, or you can keep an eye out for tasks listed on Cochrane Engage.

Find out more and get involved.

Cochrane Japan has been recognized for its outstanding achievements in promoting evidence-based decision-making in health care by moving from a Cochrane Associate Centre to being awarded full, independent Centre status.

The Centre consists of longstanding, dedicated Cochrane enthusiasts located at the National Centre for Child Health and Development (NCCHD) in Tokyo, Japan.

Cochrane Japan, part of Cochrane since 2014, will continue to promote evidence-based decision making in health care in Japan by supporting and training new authors of Cochrane Reviews, as well as working with clinicians, professional associations, policy-makers, patients, and the media to encourage the dissemination and use of Cochrane evidence.

• Read more about the launch to a full Centre on Cochrane.org
• Visit the Cochrane Japan website

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

Cochrane’s organizational Dashboard presents our achievements in key metrics.
 
We use it as an excellent tool to reflect on our accomplishments on a quarterly basis.
 
Here are just a few highlights from Q1 2017:

• Cochrane Library use in Q1 shows a 35% year on year increase in demand.
• Cochrane Crowd now has over 5,000 members
• Covidence usage growing quickly in Cochrane, with a 206% increase in total users compared with Q1 2016

See Cochrane’s QI Dashboard in full here: http://community.cochrane.org/organizational-info/resources/strategy-2020/dashboard
 
Find out more about Cochrane’s organizational Targets for 2017, here: http://community.cochrane.org/news/strategy-2020-2017-targets

Cochrane is proud to announce its newest Associate Centre, Cochrane Sweden.

The new Cochrane Sweden Centre is located in the city of Lund, and is affiliated with the Department of Research & Development / Section for HTA Analysis, Skåne University Hospital, in collaboration with the Faculty of Medicine, Lund University, Lund, Sweden, and with the Nordic Cochrane Centre in Copenhagen.

Cochrane Sweden will be co-ordinated and led by its new Centre Director, Matteo Bruschettini, who will offer methodological support, mentoring, and supervision of randomized clinical trials.

Read the full press release on Cochrane.org

Visit the Cochrane Sweden website

We are pleased to announce that the fourth funding round of the Cochrane Review Support Programme (CRSP) pilot is now open.

There are two important changes to note with this round:

1. The number of grants has been reduced to eight (16 grants in total for 2017).
2. We will now offer an extended due date for complex reviews. The due date for standard intervention reviews remains the same and shall be not more than 12 months from the date of the award, however for reviews that include complex methodologies or topics, the due date shall be not more than 18 months from the date of the award.More details about the eligibility criteria for the extended due date are available in the guidance. 

It is important that applications are made using the new form and guidance. Applications made using the old forms will not be accepted.  

Key features of the programme:

• All Cochrane Review Groups may apply for the awards
• Groups may nominate no more than two titles – either new reviews or review updates – from the December 2016 version of the Cochrane Priority Review List. Titles added to the list after December 2016 cannot be proposed for this funding round
• 8 grants of £5,000 each will be awarded
• Reviews must be published a maximum of 12 or 18 months after the awards are notified
• All successful reviews must be submitted to the CEU screening prior to publication
• The funds are intended to accelerate publication of high priority reviews/updates that are already planned or underway and will therefore meet the publication deadline
• We will aim to decide the list of successful reviews and to have notified the applicants by mid-June 2017

Cochrane recognises that these awards are insufficient to meet the full costs of conducting reviews; rather, they are intended to facilitate and possibly accelerate publication of high priority reviews that are already planned or underway.

Applications close at 5pm GMT, Friday 19 May 2017.

A new Cochrane Council has been established to represent Cochrane’s various communities and provide a forum for discussion of high-level issues that cut across all Cochrane’s Groups and contributors. The Council was established as part of the 2016 Governance Restructure Project, and met for the first time at the Mid-Year Meetings in Geneva on 6 April 2017.

Julie Brown (author representative, NZ), and Fergus Macbeth (Co-Ed representative, UK) were elected as Co-Chairs by the members of the Council, and full information on the Council members and Terms of Reference is available on the Council page on the Cochrane Community website.

At its first meeting, the Council:
•    reviewed and adopted their Terms of Reference;
•    reviewed the agenda and papers for the Governing Board meeting also held in Geneva, and sent feedback to the Board;
•    discussed the proposed thresholds for attaining and retaining membership under Cochrane’s new membership scheme to be introduced in 2017;
•    discussed and endorsed the Consumer Network’s document, “Consumer involvement in Cochrane: Statement of principles”.

The Council welcomes requests from the community for matters to be discussed at its future meetings. Matters raised should be of wide relevance to all Cochrane’s Groups and contributors. Contact information is available on the Council website.

Cochrane's 2016 Annual Review is now available for download and dissemination. To find out more about what we achieved in 2016, what's happening across the organization in 2017, and links to share with stakeholders, please see cochrane.org for more information.

The University of Split School of Medicine, in Split, Croatia, had the pleasure of hosting Cochrane Poland’s director, Malgorzata Bala, from 6^th to 9^th March, 2017, during her visit to Cochrane Croatia. Given Croatia and Poland’s similar health and education systems, cultural background and Cochrane group setting (both are based at a medical school), it was felt that a visit would be mutually beneficial and contribute towards future progress and collaboration.

During her visit to Split, Dr Bala met with several members of Cochrane Croatia and attended a regular monthly meeting, where she shared her knowledge of conducting systematic reviews of non-controlled studies and her experience in involving medical students in the conduct of Cochrane Systematic Reviews. While at the medical school, Malgorzata gave a well attended presentation to staff on ‘Evidence based health care – achievements and challenges in Poland’.

Dr Małgorzata Bała is head of Cochrane Poland, established in 2015 as a Branch of the Nordic Cochrane Centre, and head of the Department of Hygiene and Dietetics at the Jagiellonian University Medical College in Krakow, Poland. She is a specialist in public health and epidemiology and since 2005 has been teaching EBM to students. Dr Małgorzata Bała has been involved in Cochrane activities since 2000 and is an author and co-author of several Cochrane reviews.

Cochrane Croatia and Cochrane Poland will explore the possibility of organising study visits, both for students and staff, via ERASMUS, and, in the meantime, agreed for two students from the Medical College in Krakow to present at the upcoming 9^th Croatian Cochrane Symposium, on the topic of ‘Evidence  based dental medicine’, to be held from 9^th-10^th June at the University of Split School of Medicine.

Irena Zakarija-Grković, Co-Director Cochrane Croatia