Cochrane webinars describe Forum's core research programs
The Cochrane Policy Liaison Office based at the McMaster Health Forum has partnered with Cochrane Canada to offer a series of monthly webinars beginning in October.
Each webinar will focus on one of the liaison office’s core programs that support evidence-informed policymaking, and will profile how Cochrane reviews are a key input for the programs. Cochrane Canada is one of 14 independent centres of the Cochrane Collaboration, which works to make the vast amounts of available research evidence useful for informing decisions about health.
The second webinar in the series is on November 20, from noon to 1 p.m. (EST) and will focus on the Forum’s Rapid Response program, which provides rapid syntheses to urgent requests from Canadian policymakers and stakeholders for evidence about health-system challenges. Rapid syntheses summarize evidence based on a systematic search for information about problems, options and/or implementation considerations. The service can be requested in a three-, 10- or 30-day time frame.The webinar will be conducted by Mike Wilson, assistant director of the Forum.
The first webinar was held on Thursday, October 23, and described the key features of Health Systems Evidence (HSE), the one-stop shop for research evidence to support evidence-informed policymaking about health systems. The webinar was conducted by Kaelan Moat, lead of Health Systems Evidence and Learning for the Forum.
HSE is the world’s most comprehensive, free access point for evidence on how to strengthen or reform health systems or in how to get cost-effective programs, services and drugs to those who need them. It is a ‘self-serve’ resource that can help policymakers and stakeholders rapidly identify research evidence related to their work.
Future webinars are as follows:
- Wednesday, January 21, 2015, noon to 1 p.m. (EST) – Forum Director John Lavis will discuss the key features of stakeholder dialogues, the Forum’s signature program that involves preparing an evidence brief about a health-system problem (and its causes), options to address it, and key implementation considerations, and convening a deliberative dialogue among the policymakers, stakeholders and researchers likely to be involved in or affected by decisions related to the challenge.
- Monday, February 23, 2015, noon to 1 p.m. (EST) – The new Citizen Panels program that includes development of a citizen brief and convening a deliberative dialogue to gather citizens’ values, preferences and informed judgments that can inform policymaking about health systems, will be discussed by Francois-Pierre Gauvin, the Forum’s lead of evidence synthesis and Francophone outreach.
- Wednesday, March 18, 2015, noon to 1 p.m. (EST) – The focus of the final webinar in the series will be on Health Systems Learning, an educational program that provides online and in-person training about how to strengthen health systems, and how to get cost-effective programs, services and drugs to those who need them. It will be led by Kaelan Moat.