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.

Financial monitoring of Cochrane Groups takes place annually. Monitoring is not an audit of Groups’ accounts, but a data-gathering exercise that builds a picture of Cochrane’s ‘financial health’ year on year. It enables the Central Executive to provide information to the public about who funds Cochrane, the collective monetary cost of the organization’s work, and the number of people involved in group activities. It supports the preparation of statistics about Groups in order to benchmark operations and identify best practice. And it also identifies whether groups are operating sustainably, highlighting any actual or potential resource issues. This is the kind of fundamental information that the Steering Group needs in order to make strategic decisions about how to allocate core funding annually, and will be particularly important as we seek a better understanding of the feasibility and timelines for making structural changes to Cochrane Groups.

The 2016 financial monitoring of Cochrane Groups is taking place from Tuesday 14^th June to Friday 8^th July 2016. All registered Cochrane Groups should complete the financial monitoring form for their last complete financial year. This includes registered Branches and satellites of Groups. More information and a link to the reporting survey is available here.

A summary of the data will be publically available by the Seoul Colloquium in October. Specific details about Groups will remain confidential.

Dear colleagues,

I am delighted to announce the appointment of Gert van Valkenhoef as Cochrane’s IT Development Manager in the Informatics and Knowledge Management Department (IKMD).

Gert has an extensive research background in evidence based medicine, focussing on the development of software to enable new ways of working with evidence. He has a PhD from the University of Groningen thanks to his work on the ADDIS decision support system. He then continued that work as a post-doc researcher at the University Medical Center Groningen.

ADDIS is a proof of concept system that combines a study-oriented repository of trials with network meta-analysis and decision analysis models to inform benefit/risk decisions. Gert's work included methodological contributions in meta-analysis and decision analysis, the development of several R packages, and leading the software development team that built ADDIS.

Gert also provided statistical advice on several systematic reviews, and was a visiting scholar at Brown University and ClinicalTrials.gov.

Gert is excited to be able to combine his passions for software development and evidence based medicine at Cochrane.

He joins IKMD this week, and is currently based in Groningen in the Netherlands with plans to relocate to Copenhagen later this year/early 2017. He will lead Cochrane’s software development and technical architecture in support of our organisational and business aims.

I am sure you will join me in welcoming Gert to the Central Executive Team. His Cochrane email address is gvanvalkenhoef@cochrane.org. 

Best regards,

Chris Mavergames
Head of Informatics & Knowledge Management
Cochrane Central Executive 

Cochrane is joining together with four other leading organizations working in the production and dissemination of evidence for decision making in the global health, social, and economic policy and practice sectors to host the first Global Evidence Summit.

Working in partnership with the Guidelines International Network, The Campbell Collaboration, the International Society for Evidence-based Health Care, and the Joanna Briggs Institute, Cochrane will help to organize and hold the Global Evidence Summit (GES) in Cape Town, South Africa from 12-16 September 2017.

The theme of the GES will be ‘Using Evidence. Improving Lives’, and the event will highlight and promote evidence-informed approaches to health policy and development, with a special focus on the opportunities and challenges facing low- and middle-income countries. Our colleagues at Cochrane South Africa will host this landmark event, which is expected to bring up to 2000 delegates to Cape Town from across the evidence community. For more information, please read the full official announcement.

To keep up to date with plans for the GES, please visit the event website and follow on Twitter: @GESummit and #GESummit17. Registration is scheduled to open in late 2016, and regular updates will be available as event planning continues.

In April 2016 the University of Melbourne launched the Elizabeth Waters Memorial Travel Scholarship in memory of our Cochrane colleague Liz Waters who sadly passed away in September 2015. 

Liz made a lasting contribution to the field of public health both nationally and internationally, fuelled by her passion and commitment to justice, equity and upholding the rights of children. She was an outstanding researcher, advocate, and leader who made an exceptional contribution to child public health through her work with Cochrane Public Health, the University of Melbourne, The Royal Children's Hospital, and as the inaugural Jack Brockhoff Chair of Child Public Health and Director of The Jack Brockhoff Child Health and Wellbeing Program and Public Health Insight. 

The Elizabeth Waters Memorial Travel Scholarship will honour two of Liz’s great passions: excellence in child public health and travel. Funds raised will enable the University to provide scholarships to staff, higher degree candidates, partners and collaborators in The Jack Brockhoff Child Health and Wellbeing Program and the research service, Public Health Insight (or such other programs focused on child public health research) at the University of Melbourne, who demonstrate excellence in their field of work.

The scholarship(s) will assist the successful applicants with expenses associated with attending a domestic or international conference, event or opportunity. The scholarship(s) will also be available to international applicants travelling to Australia to collaborate with the Program and/or Insight. 

We invite you to support the next generation of researchers in child public health by donating to this scholarship fund. For more information on Professor Waters and this scholarship please visit this page. You can also add to the online memory book where you can record your condolences and memories of Liz for the community and her family.

We’re delighted to share the news of the official launch of the Brazilian Cochrane Network, Cochrane’s first-ever national Network. The Network will be co-ordinated and led by the Cochrane Brazil team in São Paulo, providing methodological support, mentoring, and supervision to five new Affiliates located in regional centres across Brazil.

Cochrane Brazil celebrates its 20^th anniversary in 2016 and has produced more than 300 Cochrane Reviews for Brazil’s Ministry of Health. Some of these experienced author teams will now lead Affiliate activity to promote the production, dissemination, and use of Cochrane evidence nationwide.

Please join us in congratulating our colleagues in Brazil on this new initiative, and wishing them every success in building the Brazilian Cochrane Network.

Read the full press release on cochrane.org

For more information on the work of Cochrane Brazil and the Network, please visit the Cochrane Brazil website.

The Cochrane Consumer Network (CCNet) is made up of people committed to the importance of consumer participation in informed healthcare decision-making processes, and our members have a key role in the production of healthcare evidence. The network of consumer contributors is a fundamental part of Cochrane, and contributes at every level to the goals identified in Cochrane’s Strategy to 2020.

Members of the CCNet Consumers’ Executive (CE) are responsible for the implementation of the CCNet remit ‘to support consumers contributing effectively to Cochrane and to help to explain the role of Cochrane and of evidence in health care to consumers and their representatives globally’.

The CE comprises five elected members of CCNet, with the Consumer Co-ordinator serving as the sixth, non-voting, member. For the 2016 election there are two vacancies, and we are seeking a minimum of one representative from a low- or middle-income country.

Nominations should be sent by email to the Consumer Co-ordinator, Richard Morley, by Friday 11 June 2016, 23:59 UTC.

For more information on the CE nomination and election process, please download the complete election process document. For more information on the work of CCNet, please visit our website.