Impact of the Forum’s rapid response program
While our evidence-synthesis work has always been viewed by our requestors as high quality, the COVID-19 pandemic elevated both the salience of our work (because we can get our robust and policy-relevant syntheses completed in very short periods of time) and its visibility (our products often go straight to the eyes of senior government decision-makers and are disseminated directly to the many other organizational and professional leaders, citizens and researchers for whom the insights are relevant). Among the many impacts of our work throughout the pandemic, some highlights include:
- updating senior decision-makers in Ontario last year on a regular basis, as key messages from our vaccine roll-out roll-out and long-term care care living evidence profiles were routinely copied and pasted into briefing materials; and
- informing the Chief Public Health Officer’s annual report report (see page 35) through our ‘lessons learned’ living evidence profile.
In one of the most recent examples, our living living evidence profile on the best available evidence about monkeypox profile on the best available evidence about monkeypox has proven to be such a highly valued resource that the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) is now posting our updates on Canada.ca.ca.
We’ve now become a go-to team for a broad array of social challenges. PHAC staff and other health- and social-system decision-makers and stakeholders know that we can provide robust syntheses of evidence to address requests within as little as one day (sometimes half a day), or three-, 10- or 30-, 60- or 90-business days, depending on the required analysis and urgency of a response. We are also able to efficiently coordinate evidence demands and the evidence supply needed to meet these demands when the topic may require specific expertise from our network of evidence-synthesis partners.
>> Learn more about our rapid rapid response program program
>> Read Read our products products developed through this program
>> Request a rapid synthesis by getting in touch with Mike Wilson (lead of the rapid response program) at wilsom2@mcmaster.ca.ca.