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      Decision-makers’ experiences with rapid evidence summaries to support real-time evidence informed decision-making in crises: a mixed methods study

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          Abstract

          Background

          There is a clear need for research evidence to drive policymaking and emergency responses so that lives are saved and resources are not wasted. The need for evidence support for health and humanitarian crisis is even more pertinent because of the time and practical constraints that decision-makers in these settings face. To improve the use of research evidence in policy and practice, it is important to provide evidence resources tailored to the target audience. This study aims to gain real-world insights from decision-makers about how they use evidence summaries to inform real-time decision-making in crisis-settings, and to use our findings to improve the format of evidence summaries.

          Methods

          This study used an explanatory sequential mixed method study design. First, we used a survey to identify the views and experiences of those who were directly involved in crisis response in different contexts, and who may or may not have used evidence summaries. Second, we used the insights generated from the survey to help inform qualitative interviews with decision-makers in crisis-settings to derive an in-depth understanding of how they use evidence summaries and their desired format for evidence summaries.

          Results

          We interviewed 26 decision-makers working in health and humanitarian emergencies. The study identified challenges decision-makers face when trying to find and use research evidence in crises, including insufficient time and increased burden of responsibilities during crises, limited access to reliable internet connection, large volume of data not translated into user friendly summaries, and little information available on preparedness and response measures. Decision-makers preferred the following components in evidence summaries: title, target audience, presentation of key findings in an actionable checklist or infographic format, implementation considerations, assessment of the quality of evidence presented, citation and hyperlink to the full review, funding sources, language of full review, and other sources of information on the topic. Our study developed an evidence summary template with accompanying training material to inform real-time decision-making in crisis-settings.

          Conclusions

          Our study provided a deeper understanding of the preferences of decision-makers working in health and humanitarian emergencies about the format of evidence summaries to enable real-time evidence informed decision-making.

          Supplementary Information

          The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12913-023-09302-0.

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          Most cited references34

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          Evidence summaries: the evolution of a rapid review approach

          Background Rapid reviews have emerged as a streamlined approach to synthesizing evidence - typically for informing emergent decisions faced by decision makers in health care settings. Although there is growing use of rapid review 'methods', and proliferation of rapid review products, there is a dearth of published literature on rapid review methodology. This paper outlines our experience with rapidly producing, publishing and disseminating evidence summaries in the context of our Knowledge to Action (KTA) research program. Methods The KTA research program is a two-year project designed to develop and assess the impact of a regional knowledge infrastructure that supports evidence-informed decision making by regional managers and stakeholders. As part of this program, we have developed evidence summaries - our form of rapid review - which have come to be a flagship component of this project. Our eight-step approach for producing evidence summaries has been developed iteratively, based on evidence (where available), experience and knowledge user feedback. The aim of our evidence summary approach is to deliver quality evidence that is both timely and user-friendly. Results From November 2009 to March 2011 we have produced 11 evidence summaries on a diverse range of questions identified by our knowledge users. Topic areas have included questions of clinical effectiveness to questions on health systems and/or health services. Knowledge users have reported evidence summaries to be of high value in informing their decisions and initiatives. We continue to experiment with incorporating more of the established methods of systematic reviews, while maintaining our capacity to deliver a final product in a timely manner. Conclusions The evolution of the KTA rapid review evidence summaries has been a positive one. We have developed an approach that appears to be addressing a need by knowledge users for timely, user-friendly, and trustworthy evidence and have transparently reported these methods here for the wider rapid review and scientific community.
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            Qualitative Data Analysis for Applied Policy Research

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              Assessing and presenting summaries of evidence in Cochrane Reviews

              Cochrane Reviews are intended to help providers, practitioners and patients make informed decisions about health care. The goal of the Cochrane Applicability and Recommendation Methods Group (ARMG) is to develop approaches, strategies and guidance that facilitate the uptake of information from Cochrane Reviews and their use by a wide audience with specific focus on developers of recommendations and on healthcare decision makers. This paper is part of a series highlighting developments in systematic review methodology in the 20 years since the establishment of The Cochrane Collaboration, and its aim is to present current work and highlight future developments in assessing and presenting summaries of evidence, with special focus on Summary of Findings (SoF) tables and Plain Language Summaries. A SoF table provides a concise and transparent summary of the key findings of a review in a tabular format. Several studies have shown that SoF tables improve accessibility and understanding of Cochrane Reviews. The ARMG and GRADE Working Group are working on further development of the SoF tables, for example by evaluating the degree of acceptable flexibility beyond standard presentation of SoF tables, developing SoF tables for diagnostic test accuracy reviews and interactive SoF tables (iSoF). The plain language summary (PLS) is the other main building block for dissemination of review results to end-users. The PLS aims to summarize the results of a review in such a way that health care consumers can readily understand them. Current efforts include the development of a standardized language to describe statistical results, based on effect size and quality of supporting evidence. Producing high quality PLS and SoF tables and making them compatible and linked would make it easier to produce dissemination products targeting different audiences (for example, providers, health policy makers, guideline developers). Current issues of debate include optimal presentation formats of SoF tables, the training required to produce SoF tables, and the extent to which the authors of Cochrane Reviews should provide explicit guidance to target audiences of patients, clinicians and policy-makers.
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                Author and article information

                Contributors
                ahkhalid@ohri.ca
                Journal
                BMC Health Serv Res
                BMC Health Serv Res
                BMC Health Services Research
                BioMed Central (London )
                1472-6963
                25 March 2023
                25 March 2023
                2023
                : 23
                : 282
                Affiliations
                [1 ]GRID grid.412687.e, ISNI 0000 0000 9606 5108, Centre for Implementation Research, , Canadian Institutes of Health Research Health System Impact Fellowship, Ottawa Hospital Research Institute, ; Ottawa, ON Canada
                [2 ]GRID grid.412687.e, ISNI 0000 0000 9606 5108, Centre for Implementation Research, , Ottawa Hospital Research Institute, ; Ottawa, ON Canada
                [3 ]GRID grid.21100.32, ISNI 0000 0004 1936 9430, School of Global Health, , York University, ; Toronto, ON Canada
                [4 ]GRID grid.498702.0, ISNI 0000 0004 0635 5689, Health in Emergencies, , Canadian Red Cross, ; Ottawa, ON Canada
                [5 ]GRID grid.28046.38, ISNI 0000 0001 2182 2255, Faculty of Medicine, , University of Ottawa, ; Ottawa, ON Canada
                [6 ]GRID grid.25073.33, ISNI 0000 0004 1936 8227, Faculty of Health Sciences, , McMaster University, ; Hamilton, ON Canada
                [7 ]GRID grid.25073.33, ISNI 0000 0004 1936 8227, Department of Health Research Methods, Evidence and Impact, , McMaster University, ; Hamilton, ON Canada
                Author information
                http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8525-2455
                Article
                9302
                10.1186/s12913-023-09302-0
                10039327
                36966293
                1dbe6efd-7991-4b2a-ac94-a1fc379a3384
                © The Author(s) 2023

                Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver ( http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.

                History
                : 18 October 2022
                : 16 March 2023
                Funding
                Funded by: FundRef http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100000024, Canadian Institutes of Health Research;
                Award ID: 177493
                Award Recipient :
                Categories
                Research Article
                Custom metadata
                © The Author(s) 2023

                Health & Social care
                knowledge translation,evidence-informed decision-making,evidence summaries,science communication,evidence,data

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