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Six Step Stakeholder Engagement Framework

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People at table talking

Who are my stakeholders? What can they offer me? What can I offer them? And how do I begin engaging them? These were some of the questions tackled by NIHR Network Support Fellows Roses Parker (Cochrane Musculoskeletal, Oral, Skin and Sensory Network; MOSS) and Eve Tomlinson (Cochrane Cancer Network) as they embarked on stakeholder engagement projects for their networks, leading to their collaboration on the production of a Six-Step Stakeholder Engagement Framework.  

Why does stakeholder engagement matter?
Engaging the end-users of Cochrane reviews is vital to improve research relevancy and quality, and increase the likelihood that Cochrane evidence will be used in clinical decision making. Stakeholder engagement can be beneficial in all research activities conducted by Cochrane Review Groups (CRGs), including one off events (such as the co-production of a systematic review), broader projects (such as the prioritisation of systematic review topics), and stakeholder engagement over a sustained period covering several different areas (such as to support the direction or focus of a CRG and to disseminate research).

What we did
We both recognised that there is a lot of experience with stakeholder engagement in Cochrane, but sometimes the information is not shared between groups. We wanted to explore this within our Cochrane Networks and see what we could do to help improve stakeholder engagement.

Roses writes:

In the MOSS Network, I conducted interviews with each review group aiming to:

  • Understand the current stakeholder engagement work within MOSS,
  • Share examples of stakeholder engagement work within MOSS, and
  • Gather information to inform the next steps in stakeholder engagement work within MOSS.

I then conducted interviews with consumer representatives from each review group aiming to:

  • Understand the experience of consumers when working with MOSS, and
  • Gain their perspectives on the stakeholder engagement framework in a draft form

Eve writes:

  • In the Cancer Network, CRGs wanted to know more about other CRGs’ relationships with stakeholders and requested support with improving stakeholder engagement.
  • I surveyed each CRG about their experiences with stakeholder engagement and shared the findings in a Network meeting in November 2019.
  • Discussion in the Network meeting, along with stakeholder information given by CRGs, informed a Cancer Network stakeholder mapping project in which I identified relevant stakeholders, gathering information for each CRG and the Network overall. Since then, I have been working with Cancer CRGs to use the stakeholder maps and engage new stakeholders as required.

Together, we used our experiences to collaborate and produce:

  1. A report summarising stakeholder engagement in the MOSS Network: This report details the experiences of each MOSS CRG. These examples offer both inspiring reading of large-scale stakeholder engagement, as well as examples of innovative stakeholder engagement when resource is scarce.
  2. A range of consumer case studies: The case studies provide insight into how consumers are recruited, types of activities they engage in, and some tips on what to do/or not to provide them with a positive experience. We're looking forward to sharing the final documentation soon!
  3. A Six-Step Stakeholder Engagement Framework:
  • The framework is based on insights from both the MOSS Network and the Cancer Network, and a wide array of individuals from Cochrane.
  • It is formatted around the four key stakeholders identified in the Cochrane Knowledge Translation Framework and its key audience is Research Groups (such as CRGs) embarking on stakeholder engagement.
  • It suggests that users consider six key steps (see Figure below) in stakeholder engagement.
  • It aims to cover common and key steps in the engagement process, provide a helpful structure, and raise important considerations for stakeholder engagement, whilst encouraging modifications to be made based on the individual Research Group’s circumstance. We are keen to acknowledge that there is not a neat ‘one size fits all approach’ to stakeholder engagement but many ways researchers could engage stakeholders in their work!
Six Step Diagram

 

Next steps
We hope that by sharing experiences of stakeholder engagement and providing a methodical and pragmatic framework to support the process, this work will be helpful to Groups within and even beyond Cochrane in planning and implementing successful stakeholder engagement.

We are keen to use this work to open up a discussion about stakeholder engagement across Cochrane. We have had some great feedback already! A Managing Editor in the MOSS Network writes:

Laura Prescott

 

Acknowledgements
We would like to acknowledge the input of CRG members in the MOSS Network who gave their time to be interviewed about their experiences with stakeholder engagement. We would also like to thank the members of the Cancer Network who have worked with Eve on stakeholder mapping and engagement. Thanks also to the following people for their help in bringing this work together: Peter Tugwell, Karen Head, Alex Pollock, Neal Haddaway, Jo Anthony, Katie Abbotts, Richard Morley, Anne Littlewood, Ruth Foxlee, Sarah Elliott, Tom Concannon, Elie Akl, Janet Gunderson, Megan Prictor, Chrissi Kelly, Stella O’Brien, Amanda Roberts, the Formalising Strategic Partnerships Working Group, and members of the Multi Stakeholder Engagement (MuSE) Consortium.

Eve and Roses


                             

Resources: 

 

9 July 2021

The Cochrane Official Blog is curated and maintained by the Development Directorate. To submit items for publication to the blog or to add comments to a blog, please email mumoquit@cochrane.org.

The Cochrane Blog presents commentary and personal opinion on topics of interest from a range of contributors to the work of Cochrane. Opinions posted on the Cochrane Blog are those of the individual contributors and do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of Cochrane.

5 tips for a low-maintenance Cochrane group website

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Laptop on blue background

Muriah Umoquit, Communications and Analytics Officer with Cochrane’s Knowledge Translation Department, and Paolo Rosati, Web Operations Manager with Cochrane’s Information and Technology Department, share their top tips for creating a low maintenance website

Most Cochrane groups are granted their own website - it’s a place to highlight your achievements, showcase your best work, and be a landing spot for anyone searching the web for information about your work. However, sometimes due to capacity issues, websites are left neglected and outdated. This can send the wrong message to visitors…sometimes even to funders!

This blog posts offers you our top five tips for creating your best digital footprint, while keeping the maintenance low.

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Description automatically generated

 

1. Content for the end user

Who do you want to use your website? People using the evidence (public, clinicians policy makers)? Your review authors? Your funders? A mix of audiences? Taking some time to answer these questions can help you make the decisions about the type of content you share. 

Keeping your audience in mind, take a look at what is already on your website. If it's not specific to your Group, you could just redirect them. For example, Cochrane Authors don't need to come to your site for latest in training that you would then need maintain - instead, redirect them to the Cochrane Training website

2. Cover the basics

We recommend that you have at the minimum three pages with static content.

  • About Us - this can be your landing/front page if you'd like. This should cover the scope of what your group covers and explain in plain language what your group does. If you need to display logo's of your Funders, this is a great spot them. 
  • Contact us - provide your email address! Other things to include could be any social media accounts that you maintain. 
  • Join Cochrane or Join Us - people looking to get involved with your group can now be funneled directly to the 'Join Cochrane' pages; less work for you handling inquiries and ensures people get assigned membership points for the work they do.

After you have covered the basics, then see if you have the capacity for regular news items. Only if you think you have time to maintain things, add in non-static pages, like news items that show up on https://[yourwebsite]/news. If you don't have time to post news items regularly, you don't need to. You are not required to use the format of having Feature Items and News on your front page (like here on the Community website); this feature is optional. Any information on your front landing page should be current and should speak to your target users - ensure that you are promoting the most important information for you group! 

3. Automate!

There are several things that you can have update on your page with no additional work for you once set-up. These include:

  • Twitter feed - If you have a Twitter account, consider it being added to your landing page or other relevant page. Whenever you tweet, it will automatically show up in this feed. 
  • News feed - If you have trouble adding news to your website, you can add a feed for any news posted on Cochrane.org or a particular Network to show up on website in a feed. 
  • Evidence feed - If you are a review group, consider having a page labeled 'Our Evidence' or 'Our Reviews' where reviews that are produced by your group will automatically show up - see an example here.

4. Get social

Maintaining social media accounts for your group is optional. If you do have a social media account, provide links to the accounts to make it easy to find them. The right-hand side of your landing page is a great place for this or you may wish to add them to the Contact Us page if you have several accounts. As mentioned above, you can also add a feed of your Twitter account on the right-hand side of your landing page. If you don't have any social media accounts you can list the Cochrane and Cochrane Library ones.

5. Maintain

Once your website is set-up with static and automated content, that doesn't mean you can just forget about it! On page 9 of the website admin manual we suggest quarterly and provide a list of things to check on. If things are pretty static, this won't take you long at all! 

 

Need help with your Cochrane website? Contact support@cochrane.org

 

Get help implementing these 5 tips!


Removing the news boxes from your front page, adding in feeds, adjusting your tabs, adding in a language toggle to support translations - these can be tricky things to do because they aren't things you do often! We do have a page on Cochrane Community for webmasters, as well as a detailed website admin manual. You are also welcome to contact support@cochrane.org and we can give you hand and direct you to the information needed! Setting your website up for your particular audience and for your capacity levels take a bit of work but having a polished virtual space on the internet for your group's information is worth the effort! 

 

Sources of further information:

 

13 May 2021

The Cochrane Official Blog is curated and maintained by the Development Directorate. To submit items for publication to the blog or to add comments to a blog, please email mumoquit@cochrane.org.

The Cochrane Blog presents commentary and personal opinion on topics of interest from a range of contributors to the work of Cochrane. Opinions posted on the Cochrane Blog are those of the individual contributors and do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of Cochrane.

Exploring how people experience Evidently Cochrane blogs and how we can make them more useful

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Colourful overlapping silhouettes of people with speech balloons

Sarah Chapman and Selena Ryan-Vig, Knowledge Brokers at Cochrane UK, share interesting lessons from a qualitative evaluation project which looked at what could be learnt from blog comments and what could make the blogs more helpful.

Evidently Cochrane is Cochrane UK’s blog site, which aims to make Cochrane evidence really accessible, and to encourage discussion about it, through blogs which usually feature new or updated Cochrane Reviews on health topics.

What do readers get from Evidently Cochrane blogs and how could they be made more useful? To address these questions, we worked with independent qualitative researcher Fran Toye to carry out a qualitative study, using the comments from five blogs as our data (463 comments, almost 59,000 words). The bloggers also contributed to the analysis.

The blogs focus on menopause, frozen shoulder, stillbirth and subsequent pregnancy, care after major stroke, and tubal flushing to increase the chance of conceiving. Four included the blogger’s relevant personal experience and one included data from in-depth interviews with patients and family members. 

Despite the variety of topics, it is clear that people commenting on the different blogs have much in common. Our findings indicate three key uses of the blogs: to provide a space where people negotiate ambiguity and uncertainty; as a testament of their suffering; and to fill a need for solidarity through shared suffering. People in the comments share the agony and ambiguity of making and living with difficult decisions. They write about their experiences, using the blog as a space where they could safely voice their suffering, and it seems that this gave them some relief. They describe heartbreak, despair and desperation in the face of physical and emotional suffering. They also often expressed that ‘we are in the same boat, sharing our suffering’, describing the value of finding community. 

Experiencing Evidently Cochrane blogs: uncertainty, suffering and solidarity

As a result of what we’ve learned, we’ve made some changes, hoping to make the blogs more useful. We have revised our guide to blogging for Evidently Cochrane, asking bloggers to signpost readers to sources of information and support, and to make suggestions that could help readers think about their treatment options and discuss them with their healthcare providers. 

We have also reflected on our policy for moderating online comments. We remain committed to protecting bloggers and readers from offensive comments. At the same time, this work has shown the value of allowing readers to respond freely to each others’ shared experiences. At times, this may mean that readers will recommend treatments that are not supported by evidence. We have now revised the disclaimer in the blogs to clarify that we do not fact check comments or endorse treatments mentioned by readers.

 

28 April 2021

The Cochrane Official Blog is curated and maintained by the Development Directorate. To submit items for publication to the blog or to add comments to a blog, please email mumoquit@cochrane.org.

The Cochrane Blog presents commentary and personal opinion on topics of interest from a range of contributors to the work of Cochrane. Opinions posted on the Cochrane Blog are those of the individual contributors and do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of Cochrane.

Publishing Review Summaries in Journals – what you need to know!

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In this Cochrane community blog Karen Head, Justin Mann and Cat Fowler (Wiley) talk about publishing summaries of Cochrane Reviews in journals to help Cochrane evidence reach health professionals.  Many Cochrane Groups work with medical journals to either re-publish the short versions of a Cochrane Review, or to publish an original commentary based on the results of a Cochrane Review. These articles (sometimes called ‘Cochrane Corners’ or ‘Practical Evidence About Real Life Situations’ [PEARLS]) may include

In this Cochrane community blog Karen Head (Project Manager, Knowledge Translation Department, Cochrane), Justin Mann (Assistant Editor, Editorial and Methods Department, Cochrane) and Cat Fowler (Associate Editor, Wiley) talk about publishing summaries of Cochrane Reviews in journals to help Cochrane evidence reach health professionals.

Many Cochrane Groups work with medical journals to either re-publish the short versions of a Cochrane Review, or to publish an original commentary based on the results of a Cochrane Review. These articles (sometimes called ‘Cochrane Corners’ or ‘Practical Evidence About Real Life Situations’ [PEARLS]) may include clinical scenarios or commentaries on how the evidence can be applied. Examples of different types of article can be found at the end of the ‘Reviews in Journals’ page of the Cochrane KT learning webpages.

At the end of March 2021, some of these groups met to share their experiences of writing, translating, publishing, and evaluating these types of journal articles.  The discussions at the meetings have been summarised and notes are now available.

 

Infographic of terms

 

When to contact Wiley?

This was the biggest area of discussion! The Cochrane Editorial and Publishing Policy Resource provides the most up to date information about when co-publication agreements are needed and provides a list of journals where such agreements have already been made. However, our advice is: if in doubt, please ask! Any requests can be made through Justin (jmann@cochrane.org) and Tony Aburrow (taburrow@wiley.com).         

Wiley support the desire to share Cochrane evidence widely and have developed processes and templates to support Cochrane Groups in discussions with journals.

Sharing what has been done across Cochrane

Those at the meeting expressed an interest in better sharing of original articles based on individual Cochrane Reviews. It was thought that this could reduce duplication across Cochrane for summaries written on the same Review and allow Review Groups better information about how their Reviews had been disseminated. We are starting to think about how this could be completed and if you would be interested in knowing more or helping think of solutions, please contact Karen (khead@cochrane.org).

Evaluating Cochrane Corners

The attendees share some interesting experiences where journals identified that Cochrane Summaries had been widely accessed and enjoyed by their readers. However, there is still a desire by some to understand more about whether the summaries are having the impact the Groups hoped for and were effective use of their limited dissemination resources. The Knowledge Translation team is pulling together a small group of people from Cochrane Groups who want support to evaluate their activities. If you are interested in joining this small evaluation group for your review summaries then please contact Karen (khead@cochrane.org).

 

Take home messages

21 April 2021

The Cochrane Official Blog is curated and maintained by the Development Directorate. To submit items for publication to the blog or to add comments to a blog, please email mumoquit@cochrane.org.

The Cochrane Blog presents commentary and personal opinion on topics of interest from a range of contributors to the work of Cochrane. Opinions posted on the Cochrane Blog are those of the individual contributors and do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of Cochrane.

Using awareness days to promote Cochrane evidence

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Elena Kostova, Managing Editor of Cochrane Gynaecology and Fertility

Awareness days have existed as means to spread a message and to raise awareness on a subject matter way before the advent of social media. Nowadays, conversations are largely happening online and joining awareness days and campaigns on social media by means of hashtags is a widespread phenomenon. We spoke to Elena Kostova, Managing Editor of Cochrane Gynaecology and Fertility, about her experience using social media as a dissemination tool.

"In my previous job as an editor, I worked closely with marketing communications managers while designing our journals’ content strategy and we often used trending hashtags to promote our published papers. I was interested to know how patients experienced using social media. I found studies reporting that patients could be empowered by using social media for health-related purposes and felt that they took a more active part in the treatment decision-making process.  That’s why when I started working on the social media strategy for our group Cochrane Gynaecology and Fertility, I thought that by sharing Cochrane evidence via Twitter using specific hashtags, we could potentially reach a wider and diverse audience.

I was aware that many campaigns existed, and we would have to focus on those relevant to our group. In addition, I was interested in awareness days/months with an already established online international presence. I checked whether they had dedicated hashtags and if people were using these hashtags. It was important that the campaigns had a legitimate message to raise awareness, rather than selling a product for example.

I found two awareness campaigns that seemed relevant for our group – #EndometriosisAwarenessMonth in March and #PCOSAwarenessMonth in September. Cochrane Gynaecology and Fertility has published more than 50 reviews on polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) and endometriosis. In our tweets we summarised results from these reviews. We aimed at including a picture every time we posted, as visual posts reach a bigger audience. We also created web pages on our Group’s website to track page visits directly. Twitter Analytics is an easy-to-use tool to assess how popular your tweets are. We used Twitter Analytics to measure the number of tweet impressions (how many times a tweet is seen) and engagement (retweets, likes, click links).  Furthermore, using Google Analytics we could not only measure the number of visits to our website, but also where visitors came from.  

Elena

Our experience shows that joining hashtag awareness campaigns on social media is an effective way to disseminate Cochrane evidence to a bigger audience. Using freely available tools like Twitter analytics and Google analytics is a good way to measure how many people you are reaching and how they interact with your posts.  We have also presented what we did in more detail in this Cochrane Colloquium poster, and this video shows in more detail how we evaluated this work."

New – Guidance on the use of awareness days to promote Cochrane evidence
While awareness days present a communications opportunity, they also can carry some risk.  This guidance has been prepared to help you think through the opportunity associating with an awareness day could bring to your group.

Cochrane, for example, has used Mental Health Day and Stoptober as moments to place a spotlight on relevant Cochrane evidence.

However, other awareness moments have been the focus of criticsm. For, example Breast Cancer Awareness Month (Pink October/Octobre Rose) has been criticised by an independent civil and scientific inquiry in France, which found promotional information linked to this awareness day was misleading and exaggerated.

A one page guide, with helpful questions has been created, to support groups making decisions about using awareness days, weeks, months to support their work. This guide summarizes a full report about this topic. 

5 February 2021

The Cochrane Official Blog is curated and maintained by the Development Directorate. To submit items for publication to the blog or to add comments to a blog, please email mumoquit@cochrane.org.

The Cochrane Blog presents commentary and personal opinion on topics of interest from a range of contributors to the work of Cochrane. Opinions posted on the Cochrane Blog are those of the individual contributors and do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of Cochrane.

Cochrane First Aid shares key achievements in 2020

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Drawing of hands holding a magnifying glass to a sheet of paper with graphs on it

Cochrane FirstAid is pleased to share their annual report with the wider Cochrane Community. In this Cochrane Community Blog, Vere Borra, Field Coordinator for Cochrane First Aid, shares some of the Field's achievements from 2020. 

Tell us about a little about your key achievements last year? What are you most proud of? 

In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic has emphasized the importance of providing reliable scientific evidence to everyone, including laypeople, in a timely manner. We feel proud to have contributed to this, by spreading Cochrane evidence as much as possible in a format that is ready to use.

One of the achievements we are most proud of is our blogshot that summarized the findings of the Cochrane COVID-19 rapid review on the effectiveness of handwashing with ash in reducing infection spread, which is highly relevant in areas where soap and water are not widely available. Together with our team of volunteers, we translated the English blogshot to 7 other languages to make sure that the evidence is available in people's preferred languages. This case was published as an impact story for the inaugural World EBHC Day 2020 and as a Cochrane vs COVID-19 case study, which was also spotlighted during a Join the Conversation webinar hosted by Cochrane's Editor in Chief Karla Soares-Weiser.

Other key achievements in 2020 include:

  • Expanding our team of voluntary contributors, who help us create and translate blogshots, and help disseminate our work. We finished off 2020 with a team of 17 contributors from 11 countries. 
  • Creating 9 English blogshots, which were translated to up to 7 different languages.
  • Actively contributing to the inclusion of Cochrane systematic reviews in the 2020 International First Aid, Resuscitation and Education Guidelines.
  • Hosting a live webinar during a virtual first aid conference on how to consult, interpret and use first aid research evidence. 
  • Further compiling our register of first aid-related Cochrane systematic reviews, currently consisting of 170 Cochrane Reviews.
  • Performing systematic reviews for the International Liaison Committee on Resuscitation (ILCOR) used to inform the guidelines of the European Resuscitation Council, as well as 2 reviews to inform a World Health Organization guideline on drowning prevention. 
  • Involving our stakeholders in a priority setting exercise. With this information, we will be able to make a ranking of the topics and communicate this to the relevant Cochrane Groups.

Our full 2020 annual report can be viewed on our website.  

 

Cochrane First Aid logo and partner logos

How did the pandemic affect your work and what changed for you?

Due to the pandemic, the CFA team started working from home full-time. 

Furthermore, during the COVID-19 pandemic:

  • We prioritized topics relevant during the pandemic 
    • for blogshot creation and translation, e.g. handwashing with ash, performing chest compression-only cardiopulmonary resuscitation, interventions to manage bad breath (halitosis)
    • for communication on social media
  • We actively shared relevant first aid messages from other sources/our stakeholders, such as the European Resuscitation Council's COVID-19 first aid guidelines.
  • We posted relevant COVID-19 news messages on our website.

What did you learn? 

We have learnt that it is important to:

  • Prioritize topics for knowledge translation, dissemination and development, based on what people need 
  • Collaborate with others and avoid duplication of work 

What’s the big priority for 2021?

In 2021, we will: 

  • Continue to create and translate blogshots
  • Increase the involvement of laypeople as a target audience of Cochrane First Aid
  • Disseminate priority topics for new Cochrane reviews to Networks and Groups
  • Further expand our register of relevant first aid-related systematic reviews

To learn more...

2 February 2021

The Cochrane Official Blog is curated and maintained by the Development Directorate. To submit items for publication to the blog or to add comments to a blog, please email mumoquit@cochrane.org.

The Cochrane Blog presents commentary and personal opinion on topics of interest from a range of contributors to the work of Cochrane. Opinions posted on the Cochrane Blog are those of the individual contributors and do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of Cochrane.

Mentoring Community Blog - Cochrane KT Mentoring gets up and running again!

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Person with headset having a virtual meeting

In this Cochrane Community blog Karen Head from Cochrane’s Knowledge Translation department discusses the start of the second cohort of the Cochrane KT mentoring scheme.  

Whether it be prioritising review topics, involving end-users in producing Cochrane reviews, disseminating evidence or supporting decision makers to be able to find and use Cochrane evidence, –  two brains are often better than one!

Mentoring for knowledge translation is a way of matching people who have knowledge translation projects or activities in Cochrane with people who have experience of delivering KT projects. An initial pilot study complete in 2020 identified that it was a helpful way of building knowledge translation knowledge and confidence.

In November 2020, 17 new pairs of mentors and mentees from across the world started out on their Cochrane knowledge translation mentoring journey.

A global cohort
The 34 mentee and mentor participants come from 18 different countries across 6 continents. We are still working on Antarctica!  We are delighted that this time we have included three pairs who will be completing the mentoring in languages other than English.
 

KT Mentoring Cohort 2

The mentees
Participating mentees across from Cochrane group types with Review Groups and Review Group Networks, Geographic groups and Cochrane authors all represented.

The mentors
We were delighted with the response to the applications for KT mentors. The mentors include people already working with Cochrane, but also seven who have knowledge translation experience outside Cochrane, providing an opportunity to learn from knowledge translation experts from other organisations.  We were also delighted to welcome back four of the mentors from the pilot scheme.

What next?
Mentoring will run for the next four to six months. In June we will complete a short evaluation of the scheme in order to plan our next steps.

If you are interested in this or any of our other Knowledge Translation work, please get in touch! Khead@cochrane.org

12 January 2021

The Cochrane Official Blog is curated and maintained by the Development Directorate. To submit items for publication to the blog or to add comments to a blog, please email mumoquit@cochrane.org.

The Cochrane Blog presents commentary and personal opinion on topics of interest from a range of contributors to the work of Cochrane. Opinions posted on the Cochrane Blog are those of the individual contributors and do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of Cochrane.

Chris Silagy 2020 Prize Winner

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Joy Oliver

"It is a great privilege and honour to be awarded the Chris Silagy prize. For me, there is no greater acknowledgement for the work we do than this incredible award, which I will forever treasure. I would like to thank those who nominated me.

I did not get the opportunity to meet Chris but the Chris Silagy prize speaks to who he was. Only a great leader knows the importance of appreciating and acknowledging all its people to ensure the success of an organization.

Thank you Jimmy Volmink for giving me the opportunity to work for such an incredible organization and for all your support. To Tamara Kredo and Nandi Siegfried a special thank you for your constant support and believing in me even when I doubted myself. I feel privileged to be able to work with so many dedicated and wonderful colleagues who are always striving to improve the lives of its people in Africa. I have learnt so much from you all and I thank you!

Finally, I would like to thank Chris’ family and all those who make this award possible and continue his legacy."
Joy Oliver, 2020 Chris Silagy Prize winner

The 2020 Chris Silagy Prize recipient is Joy Oliver. Joy is the senior administrator Cochrane South Africa and, in this role, has contributed 20 years of dedicated service to Cochrane.

We asked Sally Green, Chris Silagy Prize Committee Chair what made Joy such a worthy winner this year
"Joy’s colleagues describe her as committed, capable, passionate, and always working to ensure that Cochrane South Africa, Cochrane Africa and Cochrane succeed in all they do. Joy began her employment with Cochrane South Africa in 2000 and was instrumental in ensuring that the Cape Town Cochrane Colloquium held in October of that year was an enormous success. Almost two decades later, she played an active management role in hosting over 1500 delegates at the Global Evidence Summit in Cape Town in 2017.

Joy is a past Chair of the Cochrane Consumer Executive, and between 2003 and 2015 was the HIV Clinical Trials Search Coordinator. She is a generous organiser of the HIV Mentoring Programme and there would be few, if any, Cochrane review authors in the African region who do not know her. Joy personifies the spirit of collaboration that underpins Cochrane, and it is a pleasure to award her the 2020 Chris Silagy Prize for her extra-ordinary contribution to Cochrane."

Chris Silagy

 

We also asked Sally some questions about the Chris Silagy Prize, which is awarded to an individual who has made an "extraordinary" contribution to the work of Cochrane which would not be recognized outside the scope of this prize. The Chis Silagy Prize is one of several prizes awarded annually at the colloquium.

Can you talk about your relationship with Chris Silagy? In your view, what impact did he have on Cochrane?
Chris was the foundation Director of the (then) Australasian Cochrane Centre. While Chris was on Fellowship in Oxford, Iain Chalmers recognized his potential to lead Cochrane in Australia on his return home, and together they helped to establish the Cochrane Australia in 1994. At this time it was based in Adelaide, with Philippa as Assistant Director. When the Centre moved to Melbourne, Chris recruited Sally and Steve McDonald to help build the presence at Monash. Sally had met Philippa and Chris as the first Australian Cochrane Fellow during a blistering 40-degree week in Adelaide in 1999.

Chris1
Sally Hunt, Alessandro Liberati, Chris Silagy, Kjell Asplund, Andy Oxman, Peter Gotzsche, Dave Sackett, Brian Haynes, Iain Chalmers, 1994

 

Chris had an enormous and positive impact on the Cochrane Collaboration. He was Chair of the Steering Group from 1996 to 1998, and put together Cochrane’s first strategic plan. He had immeasurable energy (we used to call him the tornado) and a talent for fostering success in others.

Why did Chris feel it was important for this fund to be set up?
Chris had long advocated that Cochrane’s success was due largely to the efforts, altruism and collaborative outlook of many people, often working in under-recognized roles. When he died of lymphoma in 2001, aged 41, Chris requested a fund be established to recognize and reward these individuals, and so the Chris Silagy Prize was established.

Chris
Lisa Bero, Cindy Mulrow, Chris Silagy and Alex Jadad, 1997

 

Why is this Prize so important to the work of Cochrane?
The inaugural Prize, awarded in Stavanger in 2002, exemplified Chris’s intentions when Jini Hetherington became the first recipient of the Chris Silagy Prize. There wasn’t a dry eye in the house. We love the Chris Silagy Prize not only as it remembers our friend Chris, but because it also provides a way of celebrating the special characteristics of the people who have been recipients. There is nothing else like it.

We believe Chris would have been absolutely delighted to see the way Cochrane has developed and grown, and would have joined us in celebrating all of the individuals who have been awarded the Prize over the past 14 years (see here for list).

Even if you didn’t know Chris Silagy, we are sure all would agree that it remains important to celebrate the attributes and efforts of those who contribute to Cochrane in these special ways.

What were the judges looking for?
The selection panel is made up of Prize recipients. The criteria against which nominees are scored are:

  • making an extraordinary contribution to Cochrane;
  • making a contribution that exceeds the expectations of their employment;
  • making a contribution to Cochrane that would not be recognised outside the scope of this Prize;
  • identified by their peers as consistently contributing to a spirit of collaboration.

What are prize recipients awarded?
Chris Silagy Prize recipients are awarded $AUD 1000 from a memorial fund held by Monash University. In addition, they receive a certificate, and Cochrane meets expenses associated with them attending the next Colloquium. The Prize is awarded at the Colloquium each year.

Chris
Chris Silagy, 1998

For more information on The Chris Silagy Prize see here.

16 December 2020

The Cochrane Official Blog is curated and maintained by the Development Directorate. To submit items for publication to the blog or to add comments to a blog, please email mumoquit@cochrane.org.

The Cochrane Blog presents commentary and personal opinion on topics of interest from a range of contributors to the work of Cochrane. Opinions posted on the Cochrane Blog are those of the individual contributors and do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of Cochrane.

Sharing the COVID-19 work of the Cochrane Community

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Cochrane Community connected globally against COVID-19

In this Cochrane Community Blog, the Cochrane Knowledge Translation Department discusses the idea behind the ‘Cochrane COVID case stories’, how they were developed and what they hope for the future.

A great deal of work has been completed by Cochrane in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition to the work involved in developing Cochrane Reviews and publishing them in the Cochrane Library, Cochrane Groups were successful in providing support for decision makers in other ways.  Groups used new and novel ways to meet the evidence needs of those making health decisions, or those working with them. This resulted in a wide range of Cochrane activities from all types of Cochrane Groups, which have supported, and continues to support, end-users in finding, accessing and using available evidence. These activities highlight the collaboration both within and beyond Cochrane, and across the world.

How are we sharing this work?

The Editorial & Methods and Knowledge Translation Departments were keen to find ways to showcase this work in order to demonstrate and celebrate the breadth and quality of the work of the global Cochrane community.  We did this in two ways:

Cochrane’s editorial Supplement: which provides summaries of work submitted from people across the Cochrane community. This Supplement is published in the Cochrane Library so others can find out about this work.

Multiple case study PDFs

Case stories: are short, user friendly, summaries that outline the work that has been completed. It gives the groups an opportunity to share what they have done, who they have collaborated with, and their learnings from the process. The case stories can be translated and shared with audiences and funders, to show the value of working with Cochrane.

How did we collect case stories?

Respondents from the Cochrane Group survey (completed in the summer)  indicated if their group would be interested in showcasing their work. Other stories were adapted from the articles to the editorial Supplement. In both cases, we worked closely with groups to develop the case stories, listen to their work and put together something to provide to their audiences.

Although these stories are brought together in this collection, the individual stories are owned by the Cochrane Groups and can be used and shared as they feel appropriate. We hope that you will read the case stories and get in contact with the groups if you want to find out more!

Do you want to develop a case story for your group?

If you think a case story might be an effective way to share your COVID-19 work with your stakeholders, please contact the Knowledge Translation Department (slagosky@cochrane.org). We can provide a template that you can work with and provide some advice on the final document.

10 December 2020

The Cochrane Official Blog is curated and maintained by the Development Directorate. To submit items for publication to the blog or to add comments to a blog, please email mumoquit@cochrane.org.

The Cochrane Blog presents commentary and personal opinion on topics of interest from a range of contributors to the work of Cochrane. Opinions posted on the Cochrane Blog are those of the individual contributors and do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of Cochrane.

Introducing the “cook box” to online teaching about systematic reviews

Blog
A Black woman with short curly hair sits at a table and writes in a notebook

The way we do training has needed to change in 2020 - more online training brings new challenges of how to keep participants engaged when they aren’t all sitting in the same room. In this Cochrane Community Blog, Mike Clarke talks about his experience of finding new and novel ways of engaging the participants of a recent online systematic review course.

Over 25 years, Cochrane has played a key global role in preparing, maintaining and disseminating systematic reviews. However, this is not enough to ensure that reliable and robust reviews are available and used. People need to learn how to do this research, how to appraise it and how to use it when making decisions. The need was pressing even before there were 200,000 systematic reviews and more than 10,000 starting every year, by 2018. It has increased dramatically in 2020, with COVID-19 leading to an explosion in the number of people working on reviews and the number appearing in the literature. By 21 October 2020, PubMed had added its 1000th systematic review about COVID-19, just over nine months after the first cases of this single disease were reported. Contrast this with the seven years from the start of the Cochrane Collaboration to the 1000th Cochrane Review in early 2001, and those reviews covered all conditions. That was also around the time that I started teaching small group courses on systematic reviews. Over the subsequent decades, I had the privilege and pleasure to teach dozens of such face-to-face courses to thousands of participants in numerous cities around the world, including annually for the last five years, in Tromsø, Norway.

Then COVID-19 arrived, and my courses, and those being taught by tens of thousands of other people around the world, went online.

During recent months, learners have had to get used to receiving their learning out of a screen and teachers have had to get used to delivering teaching into a camera. Ideally, this should be done as live humans, reflecting on recent events, tailoring our words to the audience, answering questions straight away and conveying our enthusiasm in the moment. But even if we are live, we have lost the ability to hand things out during the course; to share physical, not online, content in real time.

Inspired by a conversation with my son, Lorcan, on the way from a supermarket where restaurants had started to sell “cook boxes” of ingredients so that customers who could no longer dine out could stay home and cook the meal for themselves, we developed a similar idea for teaching about systematic reviews.

My first opportunity to try this was a 2-day online course on Systematic Reviews for participants in Tromsø in September 2020. With the help of course organiser, Kari Lægreid, each student was posted a pack of four envelopes. These contained props to help with teaching and learning and instructions to open them only when asked to do so during the course. 

an image of multiple pieces of paper, with different resources as described in the article

  • Envelope 1: contained a piece of paper with the word “SYSTEMATIC” or “REVIEW”. This was used in the initial few minutes of the course, when students were asked to open it and spend 30 seconds thinking about what the word meant, before telling the whole group their ideas on key features of systematic reviews. 
  • Envelope 2: contained a coin or a dice, which the students were asked to describe, in eight words or less, on the online class notebook so that others could experience the challenge of trying to identify something from the equivalent of a short description in a report that might be eligible for their review. The students then used their coin or dice to generate dichotomous data for each of two groups, ready for combination in RevMan, to introduce them to meta-analyses and the forest plot. 
  • Envelope 3: The next envelope was used after the students had worked in small groups on the eligibility criteria for a systematic review of garlic and the common cold. They then opened envelope 3 to reveal an article reporting a potentially eligible trial and had to work independently to decide whether this should be included in the review. 
  • Envelope 4: Finally, after collectively making a list of items to extract for a review of the effects of needle length on local reactions to vaccination, they opened envelope 4 and had to find and extract six key pieces of information from the article it contained.

This introduction of the cook box approach to online teaching worked well. All ten students who provided feedback on the Tromsø course said it should be used again for future online courses, with comments such as “very good idea” and “very exciting”. It gave them the type of interaction that is possible when we are all in the same room, and a hands-on sense of the challenges of being a reviewer or the consumer of other people’s reviews.

We seem certain to continue with the online experience for teachers and learners for some time, not just because of COVID-19 but also as we minimize the impact of travel on climate change. Even if opportunities for travel resume, benefits we have found from teaching remotely may mean that our BAUU (business as unusual) future will include the delivery of more teaching like this. I will be continuing with the cook box idea, adding more to the package, to “spice it up” further, if you will excuse the pun.

An image of Mike Clarke, a white man with wavy light-colored hair, who is smiling

The COVID-19 pandemic and its associated measures is changing how we teach and learn. It has fuelled a massive need to spread knowledge, and enormous surges in the quantity of information available and the number of people reviewing it. We need to adapt our teaching to embrace this and to adopt novel methods, to find ways to deliver on ambitions such as the desire to see one million hours of new learning, and to properly evaluate and systematically review the impact of what we do.

To finish, one of the nicest complements on the idea came from one Tromsø student: “It was soo cool! I loved how active it made the course. If I ever get a chance to teach, I will try to implement something similar”.

Author:
Mike Clarke
Northern Ireland Methodology Hub, Centre for Public Health, Queen’s University Belfast, ICS Block A, Royal Victoria Hospitals, Grosvenor Road, Belfast, BT12 6BJ, UK

Conflicts of interest
MC receives payments to teach about systematic reviews and other evaluations of health and social care. 

Acknowledgements
I am grateful to Kari Lægreid, Elin Evensen and Svetlana Zykova for their help in organizing this and earlier courses in Tromsø, and to Lorcan Clarke for developing the cook box idea and encouraging me to write it up.

Funding
Funding for the Tromsø course and the cook boxes for September 2020 was from the University of Tromsø (the Arctic University of Norway) and the University Hospital of North Norway.

7 December 2020

The Cochrane Official Blog is curated and maintained by the Development Directorate. To submit items for publication to the blog or to add comments to a blog, please email mumoquit@cochrane.org.

The Cochrane Blog presents commentary and personal opinion on topics of interest from a range of contributors to the work of Cochrane. Opinions posted on the Cochrane Blog are those of the individual contributors and do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of Cochrane.

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