Welcome to the April 2024 edition of the Cochrane Consumer Network digest, the newsletter for the over 3,000 subscribers who are part of our growing, global community of patients, carers and the public, interested in health evidence, Cochrane evidence, and helping to produce it.
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A new Cochrane Scientific Strategy.Make your views count!
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The Cochrane Collaboration is developing a Scientific Strategy to set out how we will achieve our mission by producing evidence that benefits global health over the next five years. The Scientific Strategy will direct our limited resources to the world’s most critical health needs. It is also an opportunity to raise Cochrane’s profile – helping shape the research agenda for global health and attract new funders and collaborators.
Cochrane has been working with researchers and partner organisations to assess the most critical global health challenges so we can decide where to focus our efforts and resources. We used data from various sources – including the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals and information on the global burden of disease – to create a map of 50 critical health needs which we grouped into six categories.
We then sought to narrow our focus by consulting with the Cochrane Central Executive Team, the Strategy Working Group and Advisory Group, and a group of experts from the World Health Organization. We drew up a shorter, consolidated list of health priorities, along with a group of cross-cutting endeavours that will be crucial for the strategy’s success.
Our vision
We will improve the lives of people worldwide by addressing the most critical health needs and helping close the health equity gap.
Our strategic priorities
Over the next five years, we will attract new funding and commission creation of evidence aimed at addressing these critical areas of health need, driven by factors such as poverty, ageing, infectious disease, and climate change:
- Maternal, newborn and child health – enhancing care during pregnancy and childbirth, reducing ill health among babies and children, and improving sexual health, family planning and fertility services.
- Multiple chronic conditions – confronting the challenges of ageing and co-morbidity, by meeting the complex needs of people who combine chronic conditions such as cancer, cardiovascular disease, HIV infection and mental health disorders.
- Infectious disease and pandemics – reducing deaths from major transmissible diseases such as malaria and tuberculosis, focusing on neglected tropical diseases, and responding to outbreaks and potential pandemics.
- Climate health and sustainability – growing our understanding of how climate change, urbanisation, and pollution are affecting human health through their impact on air, water, soil, and infectious diseases, and investigating ways in which health care can become more sustainable.
We will also continue to maintain a diverse programme of research, by supporting the publication of author-initiated reviews across global health.
Our endeavours
We will work in the following ways to maximise our impact for people worldwide:
- Promote equity – requiring that every Cochrane review should consider how to close the relevant health equity gaps.
- Enhance methods – creating innovative ways of synthesising evidence to address complex new priorities such as comorbidity and climate health.
- Strengthen global capacity – working through partnership to support people in low-income settings to produce and use evidence that meets their health needs.
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Cochrane is consulting members of the Consumer Network on its new, draft Scientific Strategy. Please take 15 minutes to give us your views. Survey closes Thursday 11th April 2024. Cochrane is writing a new Scientific Strategy to guide what evidence it produces over the next 5 years. Your views are vital. Would you please take 15 minutes to read the draft (found INSIDE the survey) and answer three questions. The survey link is here. .
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Join a call with your Consumer Network Executive and give us your feedback on the Scientific Strategy in person!
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Join a meeting with members of the Cochrane Consumer Network Executive and Cochrane staff to hear abut the strategy and give your feedback on 18th April 2024 14.00 - 15.00 UK time. Register to attend here.
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The latest evidence from Cochrane and other trusted sources
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Below is a selection of recent evidence. You can find Cochrane evidence at the Cochrane Library here, and freely accessible, plain language summaries of Cochrane evidence here.
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Psychological therapies for depression in older adults residing in long‐term care settings
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Depression is common amongst older people residing in long‐term care facilities. Currently, most residents treated for depression are prescribed antidepressant medications...but are psychological therapies effective? A new Systematic Review looks at the evidence from 19 studies with 873 participants with depression. Key messages – Psychological therapies (sometimes known as talking therapies) may treat symptoms of depression better than non‐therapy approaches in older adults living in long‐term care (LTC) facilities (for example, nursing or residential homes and assisted‐living facilities). – Psychological therapies may also be better than non‐therapy approaches for increasing quality of life and psychological well‐being (an individual's emotional health and overall functioning) in the short term. The evidence for these effects is very uncertain, limiting our confidence in the findings. The evidence could be strengthened by better reporting and higher‐quality RCTs of psychological therapies in LTC, including trials with larger samples, reporting results separately for those with and without cognitive impairment and dementia, and longer‐term outcomes to determine when effects wane. Read the full Cochrane Review and the Plain Language summary here.
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Podcast: Is shock wave treatment better than surgical procedures for removing kidney stones?
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Listen to Cochrane lead author, Vasun Setthawong from Rangsit University in Thailand, talk about the latest systematic review findings here. (4.30) You can also read the full review here.
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From experience to expertise: Patients lead as authors in Cochrane's widely-used breast cancer review
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From experience to expertise: Patients lead as authors in Cochrane's widely-used breast cancer review has a long history of collaborating with healthcare consumers. Read the remarkable story of a group of patients & advocates who wrote a full Cochrane review! The link can be found here.
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Compression therapy for preventing venous leg ulcers returning
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A venous leg ulcer is a long‐lasting sore that occur in the legs of people with venous disease. They can be caused by a blockage or sluggish blood flow in the vessels that carry blood back up the legs to the heart. Up to 1% of adults will have a leg ulcer at some time! This Cochrane review includes evidence from 8 studies with 1995 participants. Key messages - A high level of compression may be more effective for preventing ulcers returning than a lower level of compression or no compression. - In the long term, people may be more likely to continue using stockings with lower compression. - More research is needed! In the included studies, most participants knew which treatment they were receiving, there was considerable variation in the duration of the studies, and some studies enroled few people.
Did you know that Cochrane updates its reviews as more evidence becomes available? This review was first published in 2000 - this is the third update! Read more here.
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Exercise‐based cardiac rehabilitation for adults with heart failure
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This updated Cochrane review included 60 trials with 8,728 participants with heart failure. Cardiac rehabilitation programmes can involve exercise training and may also provide education on lifestyle and risk factor management, plus counselling and psychological support. Key messages - Compared to no exercise, there was no evidence of a difference in deaths from any cause in patients with heart failure. - Participating in exercise‐based cardiac rehabilitation likely reduces the risk of hospital admissions from any cause and heart failure‐related hospital admissions, and likely results in important improvements in health‐related quality of life assessed by the 'Minnesota Living with Heart Failure' questionnaire. ‐ Importantly, this updated review provides additional evidence supporting the use of alternative modes of exercise‐based cardiac rehabilitation delivery, including home‐based and digitally‐supported programmes. ‐ Future studies should recruit people not usually represented in studies, such as older patients and women with heart failure, and people with preserved ejection fraction heart failure. Read the full review here.
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Podcast: Can music and vocal interventions benefit preterm infants and their parents?
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The Cochrane Neonatal group has produced several hundred systematic reviews of interventions that might help to improve the care and treatment of preterm infants and their families. In this podcast, one of the group’s researchers, Dirk Bassler, talks with lead author Friederike Haslbeck, a clinical music therapist and senior researcher at the University Hospital Zurich, Department of Neonatology in Switzerland, about the September 2023 review looking at music and vocal interventions to improve neurodevelopmental outcomes for preterm infants.
Listen to the podcast here. (5.40)
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Cochrane examines the evidence base for the effectiveness and implementation of Hospital at Home programmes
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Hospital at Home provides hospital-level care at home, for people who would otherwise be inpatients in hospital. One type of Hospital at Home is to avoid admission to hospital. This is called Admission Avoidance Hospital at Home. These services replace an admission to hospital, for people whose condition would normally need treatment in a hospital bed, for example for a flare-up of a lung condition. Instead, a doctor can refer a patient they assess as being suitable to receive treatment for an illness in their own home (or the place where they usually live, including in residential care), for a limited time. Another type is called Early Discharge Hospital at Home. These services shorten the length of time people need to stay in hospital after being admitted as an inpatient, for example following surgery or treatment for an illness or condition. The care patients would usually receive from healthcare professionals in a hospital bed is instead provided in their home, and is not expected to compromise the quality of care. These two updated Cochrane reviews demonstrate HaH's clinical and cost-effectiveness but also show the lack of effective scale-up strategies. An accompanying Cochrane Library editorial strongly suggests that the future direction of HaH research must move beyond repeating clinical and cost-effectiveness studies comparing HaH to usual care and instead focus on identifying and testing strategies to increase adoption and sustainability across different healthcare systems. Read more here.
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A warm welcome to April English who has joined us this week as the new Consumer Support Officer
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I'm delighted to let you know that April English has joined the Cochrane Central Executive Team as Consumer Support Officer. She'll mostly be working on the GALENOS project but also on some other consumer related isues too. Here's a little about her: April English has been involved in the public health space in Canada and Ireland for over 10 years. She holds a Master of Public Health, and a Bachelor of Physical and Health Education, Specalizing in Health Promotion. April is passionate about bridging the gap between what we know from research and what is actually done, to achieve better health outcomes for all. This passion drove her to the field of knowledge translation and implementation - synthesizing, translating, disseminating and applying evidence. As a rare disease patient herself, she is particularly driven to apply patient and public engagement and involvement in all aspects of her work, leading to a greater capacity for and likelihood of implementation of policy and practice. From research to engagement to policy and programme implementation, April has experience in each step of the evidence-informed decision-making process. From an international to a community audience, she also has experience working in the governmental, academic, private, not-for-profit, and consultancy sectors. Outside of work, you will find her capturing and editing travel and hiking adventures for her YouTube passion project. If she isn’t outside, you may find her mastering her homesteading dream (likely baking) or training at the gym!
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Cochrane celebrates second anniversary of shared commitment to public involvement in health and social care research
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Cochrane marks the second anniversary of the commitment to Public Involvement in Health and Social Care Research, a pledge launched in March 2022. This commitment underscores Cochrane's ongoing efforts to enhance its practice of public involvement in health and social care research. Read more about how we're responding to the commitment here.
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Cochrane Consumer Stipends for the Global Evidence Summit - now open!
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Are you a healthcare consumer and interested in coming to this year's exciting Patients Included Global Evidence Summit? You can now apply for financial support to attend. Read more here.
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The four organising partners of GES2024, Cochrane, JBI, Guidelines International Network, and The Campbell Collaboration are thrilled to be joined by the World Health Organization (WHO) as a co-sponsor, who will also support and facilitate communication and collaboration between all those working on the synthesis, dissemination, and implementation of evidence to promote evidence-based decision-making worldwide. Read more about the #PatientsIncluded summit here.
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Two surveys - your views invited!
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SURVEY 1The Joanna Briggs Institute and the University of Adelaide seek to understand the perspectives of those involved in evidence syntheses as they relate to the involvement of knowledge users* in the evidence synthesis process. This project is being conducted by the JBI Knowledge User Methodology Group. JBI is a global organisation promoting and supporting evidence-based decisions that improve health and health service delivery. You are being invited, as a member of the global evidence synthesis community to complete a brief online survey that is expected to take no more than 10 minutes. The survey can be found here.
SURVEY 2GIN-McMaster Guideline Development Group are seeking your valuable feedback on how to improve the consideration of equity in guideline development by filling in an online survey which will take 20-25 minutes. This survey is part of an official methodological framework that will be employed in the development of the Canadian Guidelines on Post-COVID-19 Condition. The survey is found here.
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