Cochrane Network Wants to Connect

[A Former User]

Cochrane is a watchword in health evidence, and they rely on 13,000 volunteers around the world

Richard Morley is hoping to build a network of contacts in Canada who might collaborate in the future. There's information about Cochrane Canada here http://canada.cochrane.org/

He wants to reach out to patients and patient organisations to join their work to produce and spread the best health evidence. There's an interactive graphic that explains more about this, here: http://cochranetraining.gomocentral.com/content/14e21383-9eab-48c9-b906-0c3f571abe0f/web

Richard is inviting us to join their network. It's free, and there are many ways to be involved, from helping to prioritise important reviews, identifying outcomes that are important to patients, helping as part of the review team, checking that abstracts and plain language summaries can be understood by patients and carers and helping to spread the word about evidence based medicine and new research.

Members of the network enjoy a wide range of benefits from free membership, including:

• Opportunities to help produce Cochrane evidence in a range of ways

• Cheaper rates for attendance at a range of Cochrane events

• Stipends to attend local Cochrane meetings and its annual meeting (Colloquium)

• The ability to stand, and vote in elections, for membership of the Cochrane Consumer Network Executive

• Monthly news bulletins and quarterly newsletters that keep you up to date about issues inside and outside Cochrane

• Training and learning opportunities (with new ones coming soon)

• News of new ways of being involved (for example Task Exchange, Cochrane Crowd.)

You can join by completing a short form here: http://consumers.cochrane.org/join-us

ALSO

I tweeted this last week:

Anyone can be involved in Cochrane Crowd which is another opportunity that looks fascinating.

Webinar here http://bit.ly/2wQYyF0 Training modules will help you get started.

@Cochrane_Crowd on Twitter

[A Former User]

Wow, Annette thanks - much... it is so great to hear about Cochrane "literally" taking patients seriously versus just words. Their invitation, making it relatively easy to be INVOLVED is very encouraging.

The info and your input are much appreciated.

Best regards,

Denyse

[A Former User]

Thanks Denyse

I'm glad this can be useful to you. It sounds like a good idea to me too.

By the way I got an invitation to their Annual Meeting, but it occurs in 2 weeks in South Africa. Not going to happen.

I found out this week that a research group I supported as a patient managed to get funded. They are thrilled and see a need for more patient partners.

They are called REACH and have a SPOR operating grant of $5 million. This is part of what they will be doing.

Knowledge Translation and Synthesis (Updated: 2017-03-22)

• Support the development of guidelines and engaging patients and other stakeholders in the process through knowledge synthesis for a range of diseases and health conditions;

• Coordinate outputs and relevant practices from jurisdictional SUPPORT Unit knowledge translation efforts;

• Develop a national comprehensive knowledge translation (KT) strategy in collaboration with national and international groups;

• Demonstrate that the systematic reviews generated by the team will use methodologies that include data from various study designs (e.g., Randomized and Controlled Clinical Trials (RCTs/CCTs), observational studies, etc.), for a range of diseases and health conditions;

• Develop and utilize methodologies that will enable end users, such as clinicians and health policy makers, to make pragmatic decisions that incorporate the best available evidence, even when the evidence may be seen as sub-optimal.