Cochrane webinars highlight Forum's core research programs

The Cochrane Policy Liaison Office based at the McMaster Health Forum has continued its partnership with Cochrane Canada to offer three additional webinars in the first quarter of 2015.

Each webinar will focus on one of the liaison office’s core programs that support evidence-informed policymaking, and will profile how Cochrane reviews are a key input for the programs. Cochrane Canada is one of 14 independent centres of the Cochrane Collaboration, which works to make the vast amounts of available research evidence useful for informing decisions about health.

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The first webinar of 2015 (January 21, noon to 1 p.m. EST) will feature Forum Director John Lavis as he discusses the key features of stakeholder dialogues, the Forum’s signature program. These dialogues focus attention on a health challenge by marshalling research evidence and convening stakeholders for an off-the-record discussion that will inform future actions and policymaking. This process involves the preparation of an evidence brief about a health-system problem (and its causes), options to address it and key implementation considerations, following which a deliberative dialogue is convened among the policymakers, stakeholders and researchers likely to be involved in or affected by decisions related to the challenge.

The next webinar will be held on February 23 from noon to 1 p.m. (EST) and will focus on the Forum’s new Citizen Panels program. Francois-Pierre Gauvin, the Forum’s lead of evidence synthesis and Francophone outreach, will discuss how the Forum gathers citizens’ values, preferences and informed judgments that can inform policymaking about health systems through a process that includes the development of a citizen brief and hosting of a deliberative dialogue.

The last webinar in the series will be led by Kaelan Moat, the Forum's Lead, Health Systems Evidence and Learning, and will focus on Health Systems Learning, an educational program that provides online and in-person training about how to strengthen health systems, and how to get cost-effective programs, services and drugs to those who need them. This webinar will be held Wednesday, March 18, noon to 1 p.m. (EST).