Engaging working group

This working group engages with institutions and people supporting decision-makers and provides them with information, tools and resources to facilitate a timely response to decision makers’ needs

Terms of reference

1. Identify evidence synthesis groups (including technology assessment and guideline groups) and evidence hubs that are contributing to the COVID-19 response (building from the list of evidence sources and centres developed by the Africa Centre for Evidence and McMaster Health Forum)
2. Develop and communicate messages to these groups about how to leverage existing evidence-related data (e.g., daily search data) and processes (e.g., protocol registration)
3. Canvass input from these evidence synthesis groups for additional ideas for how to work more collaboratively as an evidence synthesis community, both within and across ‘divides’ (e.g., quantitative and qualitative synthesis, health and social sciences)
4. Develop approaches to manually capture evidence syntheses, technology assessments and guidelines that are not housed on portals being prioritized by the Digitizing working group (e.g., biweekly website reviews)
5. Identify and engage a broader array of groups (e.g., data analytics, modelling, implementation science, and monitoring and evaluation, horizon scanning / foresight) that need to have access to the best evidence sources for their current COVID-19-related work as well as for policies and practice post-COVID-19

Participants

1. Laurenz Langer, African Centre for Evidence, South Africa (co-chair)
2. Maureen Dobbins, National Collaborating Centre for Methods and Tools, Canada (co-chair)
3. Jenny Yost, Villanova University, U.S.A.
4. Kamga Emmanuel Berinyuy, eBase, Cameroon
5. Lesley Stewart, Centre for Research and Dissemination, PROSPERO (University of York), UK
6. Per-Olav Vandvik, Magic Evidence Ecosystem Foundation, Norway
7. Sandy Oliver, EPPI Centre, UK
8. Sunu Alice Cherian, Pushpagiri Centre for Evidence Based Practice, India
9. Sylvia de Haan, Cochrane Collaboration, Switzerland
10. Tamara Loutfi, Global Evidence Synthesis Initiative, Lebanon
11. Secretariat: John Lavis and Safa Al-Khateeb, McMaster Health Forum | RISE and COVID-END Secretariat, Canada

Meeting documents