Engaging working group

This working group brings together and engages with institutions and people supporting decision-makers (including patients and citizens) to share information, tools and resources in a centralized manner to facilitate timely responses 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 – through a joint listserv – 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
6. Review on a quarterly basis and suggest improvements to COVID-END’s citizen-partnership strategy and related activities and to how COVID-END’s and the Engaging working group’s outreach is reaching citizen and patient groups

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. Phil Collis, citizen partner, UK
7. Secretariat: John   Lavis, McMaster Health Forum and COVID-END Secretariat

Meeting documents