COVID-19 update: Forum remains committed to supporting evidence- and values-informed policymaking about our health and social systems

In light of recent developments related to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Forum team has transitioned to working from home. We are still fully operational and have put in place measures to be responsive to inquiries from new or existing partners about working on pandemic-related work while remaining fully engaged with our existing partners who are not directly involved in pandemic-related work.

Within this context, we continue to operate some of our core programs as usual and have made adjustments to others as needed:

  • our McMaster Optimal Aging Portal (which we co-lead with four other McMaster partners) is turning its focus to highlighting ways for citizens to stay active and engaged while practicing physical distancing, which includes re-profiling weekly 'Hitting the Headlines’ articles or blog posts and creating new blog posts and evidence summaries that give actionable tips for older adults to help adjust to the new reality
  • our monthly updates from Health Systems Evidence and from Social Systems Evidence will begin profiling systematic reviews and economic evaluations relevant to the pandemic while continuing to profile reviews and evaluations about strengthening health and social systems and getting the right programs, services and products to those who need them
  • our Rapid Response program continues to accept requests for syntheses of evidence in three-, 10- or 30-, 60- or 90-business days
  • our Citizen Panels program has adapted to an online format – with our first successful event held on March 18th – to ensure we can continue to systematically and transparently elicit citizens’ values to guide decision-making about our health and social systems (and we are making similar plans to adapt our Stakeholder Dialogues program to an online format)
  • our Rapid-Improvement Support and Exchange (RISE) initiative (which we co-lead with the Institute for Better Health and Ottawa Hospital Research Institute) has postponed many of its scheduled events for Ontario Health Teams, including webinars, but RISE staff continue work behind-the-scenes and can be contacted at rise@mcmaster.ca
  • when feasible and appropriate, our ‘Top Ten Webinar’ series will continue to engage key thinkers and doers to share their insights about priority issues
  • our online training courses continue to be available to any individual or group interested in building skills to support evidence-informed policymaking about priority issues

Our team remains committed to supporting evidence- and values-informed policymaking about our health and social systems. We encourage you to contact us with questions about how we can help in the coming weeks and months.

For general inquiries please email: forum@mcmaster.ca. While we will be checking our voicemails periodically, an email is likely to elicit an even faster response.