Evidence synthesis

The ESN-CA evidence-synthesis hub prepares three types of contextualized evidence-synthesis products, each on a different timeline:

  • rapid evidence profiles, which can be produced in as little as one to five business days
  • rapid evidence syntheses, which can be produced in two to 10 weeks
  • full evidence syntheses, which can be produced in 2.5 months or more.

In addition, any of these products can be made into a living evidence synthesis or supplemented with additional forms of information, such as via a jurisdictional scan of what Canadian provinces and territories or other countries are doing in the area.

We undertake all of this work with team members who complement their evidence-synthesis skills with much-needed skills in stakeholder engagement and in policy, systems and political analysis. We consider these five types of skills to be essential to providing timely, demand-driven evidence support that makes a difference.

We prioritize requests that meet the following criteria:

  • demand driven (e.g., has a clear requestor and has been prioritized by them)
  • clear link to it being able to inform ‘up’ to advisory and decision-making process and/or ‘out’ to a learning and improvement platform (or in other words, responds to an anticipated ‘window of opportunity’)
  • alignment with strategic priorities of the funding available to us at the time (e.g., relevant to deliverables and expectations of Ontario Health Teams and their primary-care networks; related to pandemic preparedness and health emergencies)
  • the request is non-duplicative of existing work
  • feasibility and match to one of the spokes in our evidence-synthesis hub-and-spoke model.

In undertaking this work, we are building upon a remarkable track record:

  • those of us based at the McMaster Health Forum have, since 2009, provided timely, demand-driven evidence synthesis and support to a broad range of federal and provincial government policymakers, health and social system leaders, and professional associations – sometimes under the Forum banner, sometimes under the Rapid-Improvement Support and Exchange (RISE) banner, and sometimes under other banners as described below
  • during the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly from April 2020 through November 2022, we co-led and acted as the secretariat for domestic (Canadian) version of the COVID-19 Evidence Network to support Decision-making (COVID-END), which produced many timely, demand-driven evidence syntheses
  • more recently, starting in April 2025, we have been leading and acting as the secretariat for an evidence-synthesis network that prepares timely, demand-driven evidence synthesis on questions related to pandemics and other health emergencies and supported by a $2 million CIHR grant.

We encourage you to explore the tremendous assets that we use or can build upon in our work:

  • listings of contextualized evidence syntheses that have already been prepared
  • descriptions of what to expect with each type of contextualized evidence-synthesis product
  • an evidence-synthesis request form
  • network of 24 evidence-synthesis teams (or spokes) from across Canada that are available to bring world-class expertise in rapid evidence synthesis in timelines ranging from days to weeks to months, using a range of methods and across many subject area
  • world’s most comprehensive databases of quality-appraised evidence syntheses in two domains:
    • health-system arrangements and implementation strategies that determine whether the right programs, services and products equitably get to those who need them (Health Systems Evidence)
    • social-system programs and related social-system arrangements and implementation strategies (Social Systems Evidence)
  • taxonomies that we use to ensure we are using a mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive list of possible ‘ways in’ to requests we receive, including taxonomies for:
    • health-system arrangements and implementation strategies that determine whether the right programs, services and products equitably get to those who need them (our Health Systems Evidence taxonomy)
    • social-system programs and related social-system arrangements and implementation strategies (our Social Systems Evidence taxonomy)
    • pandemics and other health emergencies (coming soon)
  • a set of citizen-engagement resources for teams collaborating with citizen partners on evidence syntheses, a pool of citizen partners who have been trained and who are supported to work on evidence syntheses, an Indigenous advisor who can support our work on questions that touch on Indigenous peoples, and a set of subject-matter experts who can support our work on particular topics for which we don’t have in-house expertise.

We are also working at the heart of the game-changing Evidence Synthesis Infrastructure Collaborative (ESIC), which means we are also contributing to global public goods and leveraging the leading edge of ‘thinking and doing’ in evidence-synthesis work.