The International Society for Evidence-Based Healthcare is pleased to announce its fifth annual Congress, representing one of the largest gatherings of clinicians, researchers, and policy makers in the field of evidence-based health care and policy making.  The 2016 conference will take place on Kish Island, Iran from 7-9 December 2016, focusing on the theme of 'Best evidence and healthcare decisions: Connecting the dots.'

For complete information on the event, venue, and key dates, please visit the Congress website. 

The Finance and Core Services (FCS) team has announced that Maria Burgess is leaving Cochrane after seven years, deciding to enjoy other aspects of her life.

Maria has been a part of Cochrane since 2009 when she joined Cochrane UK. She has worked with the Central Executive team (CET) as Core Services/Office Manager for the last three years, and before that was part of the administrative team in the Cochrane Collaboration Secretariat in Oxford.

During this time, she has provided administrative management and support to a number of CET staff and teams, as well as supporting the change in leadership in the FCS team in late 2015 and the many changes to systems and process in FCS over the last seven months.

Maria’s last day with us will be 22 July.  Please join us in thanking Maria for her passionate contribution to Cochrane, and in wishing her every happiness and success for the future.

FCS are taking the opportunity to review how this role supports Cochrane’s future plans,  and there will be a further announcement in due course. For all relevant enquiries in the meantime, please email the team at admin@cochrane.org.

Sarah Watson
Head of Finance and Core Services

The Cochrane Steering Group (CSG) invites the nomination of candidates for the position of CSG Co-Chair. Cindy Farquhar’s first term as Co-Chair will be completed at the Seoul Colloquium in October 2016, and nominations are now open to fill this position. Cindy has indicated that she will nominate for a second term, but nomination is open to anyone who holds or has held a leadership position within Cochrane.

For full details of the position, including the duties and requirements, please see the job description and election questions.

To nominate for the position, the following documentation must be received by Lorna McAlley, Executive PA to the CEO, by Friday 29 July 2016:

1. Acceptance of the nomination by the candidate, and commitment of sufficient time to the position of Co-Chair.

2. Candidate answers to the ‘Questions to be completed by candidates’ provided on the final page of the attached document.

3. Nominations from three active members of the organization, including a current member of the CSG. Nominators should describe the capacity in which they know the nominee, why they consider the nominee to be an appropriate candidate in the light of this job description, and the extent to which they think the nominee has the necessary attributes. A CSG member cannot nominate more than one candidate.

Note that some remuneration is possible for CSG Co-Chairs – further details are available in the job description.

Final selection from amongst the nominated candidates will be made by the CSG following the close of nominations, and the successful candidate will take office from the CSG meetings at the Seoul Colloquium. The term of office is for two years, after which a Co-Chair may apply for re-election for a second two-year term.

We are investigating ways to improve the Plain Language Summaries (PLS) of Cochrane diagnostic test accuracy (DTA) reviews. We’re looking for a wide range of potential users to look at a sample of a DTA PLS and provide some feedback on its structure and how easy it is to understand. Editors, authors, and consumers from all Cochrane Groups are encouraged to take 15 to 30 minutes to share their input before 20 July.

Take the DTA PLS survey

Your responses to the questions in this survey will help to develop guidance for people writing PLSs, which will be refined over several rounds of the surveys. If you choose to leave your contact details, you may be invited to participate in a later round of the survey. We will report end results at the 2016 Cochrane Colloquium in Seoul and incorporate into Cochrane DTA review guidance training materials.

For more information, please contact Penny Whiting.

The Cochrane Editorial Unit has announced the 10 successful titles from the second Cochrane Review Support Programme (CRSP) funding round.

1. Delayed antibiotics for respiratory infections (Acute Respiratory Infections Group)
2. Bisphosphonates and other bone agents for breast cancer (Breast Cancer Group)
3. Psychological therapies for the treatment of mental disorders in low- and middle-income countries affected by humanitarian crises (Common Mental Disorders Group)
4. Drug eluting stents versus bare metal stents for acute coronary syndrome (Heart Group)
5. Withdrawal of antihypertensive drugs in older people (Hypertension Group)
6. Pharmacotherapy for hypertension in adults aged 18 to 59 years (Hypertension Group)
7. Interventions for preventing obesity in children (Public Health Group)
8. Taxation of sugar-sweetened beverages for reducing their consumption and preventing obesity or other adverse health outcomes (Public Health Group)
9. Interventions for treating depression after stroke (Stroke Group)
10. Interventions to prevent occupational noise-induced hearing loss (Work Group)

These titles were selected from a pool of 23 applications received from 16 Cochrane Review Groups. For complete details of the selection panel and process, please see the full announcement on cochrane.org.

The next funding round will open in September 2016 and will be advertised via the usual Cochrane communication channels.

The Cochrane Crowd team is delighted to announce that their work is going open access.

Cochrane Crowd's global community of volunteers has already identified thousands of reports of randomized controlled trials eligible for Cochrane’s Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL), helping Cochrane Review authors around the world to find the evidence they need for their reviews.

Now the plan is to make the crowd’s data about trial identification available and accessible to everyone. For more information, please read the full announcement on cochrane.org.

We are delighted to share the news that the Cochrane Steering Group (CSG) has appointed its third external member: Dr Michael Makanga, MBChB, MSc, PhD, FRCP Edin. Michael is Executive Director of the European & Developing Countries Clinical Trials Partnership (EDCTP), and a Ugandan physician with 25 years of professional experience working on health and poverty-related diseases in sub‐Saharan Africa, as well as medical product development and clinical regulatory activities. Michael joins the CSG with immediate effect; his appointment, along with two other recently-appointed external members, will be subject to confirmation by Cochrane members at the 2016 Annual General Meeting (AGM) on 25 October at the Cochrane Colloquium in Seoul, South Korea.

The CSG has undertaken these appointments within its existing powers to co-opt external members as required, and potentially as the first step in Cochrane’s proposed re-structure of the CSG into the Cochrane Board. The governance re-structure is undergoing consultation with the Cochrane community during 2016, and Cochrane Groups will have the final vote on the proposal, also at the 2016 AGM. For more information on this project, please see the Governance re-structure project pages on our Community site.

For more information on this appointment, please see the full announcement on cochrane.org.

Congratulations to Dr. Cynthia Srikesavan, whose voluntary Cochrane translation work has been recognized at the University of Oxford’s OxTALENT annual awards. Cynthia has received the award of runner-up in the Academic Podcasting category, in recognition of High Quality Physiotherapy Evidence in Tamil.

Cynthia initiated one of two volunteer projects translating Cochrane evidence into Tamil in September 2014, and has been managing a team of volunteer Tamil translators and editors since then.

Cynthia’s work includes the translation of Plain Language Summaries of Cochrane Reviews into Tamil, and more recently, translating and recording Cochrane podcasts in Tamil. This work is published on the Tamil version of cochrane.org. The total number of Tamil translations published on cochrane.org has risen steadily from just 55 from January 2015 to almost 500 as of June 2016.

The effect of making Cochrane evidence available in Tamil can be seen in a significant increase in access to Tamil translations. The number of monthly page views reached a new high of 2,259 in April 2016, compared with 610 in January 2015.

Cynthia has been tremendously generous in donating her time to Cochrane, working to improve access to reliable health information for Tamil speakers. Through that, she has made an outstanding contribution to Cochrane’s translation strategy.

Well done Cynthia!

The Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews has not yet received a 2015 Impact Factor due to an indexing issue by Thomson Reuters, who produce the Impact Factor. Wiley are working hard with Thomson Reuters to investigate the reasons behind this and are hoping to resolve this issue in the next few weeks. We will provide an update as soon as possible when we know more.

Update: 2015 Impact Factor released 30 June - more information available here.

As part of Cochrane's review of organizational structure and function, the Cochrane Editorial Unit (CEU) is initiating a process of consultation on behalf of the Central Executive Team and engaging with the wider Cochrane Community. We will be running a series of webinars, led by David Tovey, and we welcome your participation.

For the first two webinars, we will focus on review production and impact; this may be more relevant to Review Group teams (Co-eds, MEs, and Information Specialists). The later webinars will address proposals that are more wide-ranging in their impact and relevance to Cochrane Groups and contributors.

Each webinar will run for 60-90 minutes and will be recorded. Each webinar will start with a PowerPoint presentation, followed by time for questions and feedback. In addition, at least one of the later webinars will be recorded and made available via the Cochrane Community website.

Instructions for joining:

• To join any of the allocated webinars and to be able to view the PowerPoint presentation, you must click the relevant link below.*
• All times listed are UK time, but the meetings have been planned in order to be accessible to everyone irrespective of time zone. Local times can be found at http://www.timeanddate.com/
• If you need more information or assistance with joining the webinars, please contact Hilary Simmonds, CEU.
• If you are on a mobile device, please first download the iOS, Android, or Windows Phone app. Then open the app and enter the Meeting ID (last nine digits on the link below).

* For more information on GoToMeeting, please see the GoToMeeting support page.

Please note: if you or your colleagues are unable to attend any of the times specified above, please contact Hilary Simmonds and we will try to organize a meeting to suit your diary.