Past secretariat roles

The Global Commission on Evidence to Address Societal Challenges, operating from 2021-25, began as a grassroots effort to improve the use of research evidence, both in routine times and in future global crises. It emerged during the COVID-19 pandemic, and came to focus on three implementation priorities: 1) formalizing and strengthening domestic evidence-support systems (which the Forum continues to do via the Evidence Support Network for Canada, or ESN-CA - [Steve, please add the hyperlink when we’re ready]); 2) enhancing and leveraging the global evidence architecture (which the Forum continues to do via the Evidence Synthesis Infrastructure Collaborative (ESIC)); and 3) putting evidence at the centre of everyday life (which the Forum continues to do via its citizen-engagement program and community-engagement program).

The Forum acted as secretariat for the Global Evidence Commission, the Forum’s director acted as co-lead and lead report writer, and Forum staff played many critical roles in its many output (which are available in other languages, including Arabic, Chinese, French, German, Japanese, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish):

The COVID-19 Network to support Decision-making (COVID-END), operating from 2020-22, brought together more than 50 of the world’s leading evidence-synthesis, technology-assessment and guideline-development groups around the world. It covered the full spectrum of the pandemic response, from public-health measures and clinical management to health-system arrangements and economic and social responses. It also covered the full spectrum of contexts where the pandemic response was playing out, including low-, middle- and high-income countries. COVID-END helped:

  • those supporting decision-making about COVID-19 to find and use the best available evidence (i.e., to support the evidence-demand side of the pandemic response)
  • researchers to avoid waste by reducing duplication in and better coordinating the COVID-19 evidence syntheses, technology assessments and guidelines being produced (i.e., to support the evidence-supply side of the pandemic response).

The Forum acted as secretariat for COVID-END, the Forum’s director acted as co-lead, and Forum staff played many critical roles in almost every aspect of its work, including the remarkable array of resources that can still be found via the archived COVID-END homepage.