Wednesday, January 26, 2022

In this free Lifeology course, learn what an infodemic is and what you can do to slow and prevent the spread of misinformation. 

Lifeology’s tagline is ‘The place where science and art converge’. They offer a platform that brings together scientists, artists, and storytellers to help people better understand and engage with science and health information and research. One of the main ways they meet their objectives is through beautifully illustrated, science-backed, bite-sized ‘flashcard’ courses about science and health-related topics aimed at the general public and students.

Image from the Lifeology's 'What is an infodemic and how can we prevent it?' course

For World Evidence-Based Healthcare (EBHC) Day, they collaborated with Cochrane to create a free course. The 41 slides walk the user through the  story of Ronald who has been misguided by misinformation and teaches what an infodemic is and how to slow the spread of misinformation.

Image from the Lifeology's 'What is an infodemic and how can we prevent it?' course

Paige Jarreau, co-founder of Lifeology, said "At Lifeology, we believe that science communication in any format, including our flashcard courses, is far better when it is the product of collaboration between scientists and professional creatives like storytellers and artists. We were pleased to be able to work closely with people from Cochrane to create this course on infodemics. We've produced a beautifully illustrated free course that is practical in its tips to combat misinformation and accessible through its plain language, empathetic storytelling and relatable imagery  - it's also available in English, French, German, Malay, Simplified Chinese, and Spanish !"

Image from the Lifeology's 'What is an infodemic and how can we prevent it?' course

Jordan Collver, the illustrator of the Lifeology course, said "This was an exciting project to work on. We had some fun with metaphors and with well known memes in this course while keeping the story empathic and relatable in a global context.'

View the Lifeology course 'what is an infodemic and how we can prevent it?' in:

•  English
• French
• German
• Malay
• Simplified Chinese
• Spanish

Learn more about Lifeology: 

• Interview with Lifeology
• Lifeology website
• Lifeology on Twitter
• Lifeology on Instagram
• Lifeology on Slack

Thursday, June 2, 2022

Tuesday, January 18, 2022

Cochrane Crowd is a citizen science platform  where a global community of volunteers help to classify the research needed to support informed decision-making about healthcare. Cochrane Crowd volunteers review descriptions of research studies to identify and classify clinical trials.

 A new task has just gone live on Cochrane Crowd. It is a citation screening task that we are doing in partnership with The Healthcare Improvement Studies Institute (THIS Institute).

It forms a part of a methodological study that aims to assess the accuracy of crowdsourcing the screening of search results. Unlike some of the previous studies we’ve done, this one is a little bit different. Instead of asking you to assess a record for possible relevance, we want you to assess it for irrelevance! Our hypothesis is that a crowd can still make a big difference in weeding out the obviously irrelevant records, and that by framing the task in this way, we will reduce the chances of possibly relevant records being rejected.

Are you up for joining this task? If so, head to crowd.cochrane.org and log in. On your tasks page you should see a task called: Training for healthcare professionals in electronic fetal monitoring using cardiotocograph.

We are going to run this study as a randomised study. When you click on the training module, you will be randomised to one of three tasks. Each of the three tasks will look exactly the same. The difference between the three tasks is the agreement algorithm in the background. This algorithm provides a ‘final’ classification on a record based on a certain number and order of individual classifications made by contributors. We are testing three different agreement algorithms as part of this methodological study.

There is of course a training module. It should only take around 10-15 minutes to complete. Once done you will be able to screen some ‘real’ records. Do as many as you like. If you manage to do 250 or more, you will get named acknowledgement in any write-ups of this methods study and be able to download a certificate.

As always, this kind of work would not be possible without the help of this fantastic community. If you are able to take part, then thank you very much indeed from the teams at THIS Institute and Cochrane Crowd.

If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with me: anna.noel-storr@rdm.ox.ac.uk

With best wishes to all and happy citation screening!

Anna and Sarah

• Visit Cochrane Crowd here
• Read The THIS-Crowd Exclusion Study FAQ's
• Follow Cochrane Crowd on Twitter

Friday, January 14, 2022

Location: UK based role with occasional global travel
Salary: £110-120,000 per annum
Contract type: Permanent
Date closing: 06/02/2022

Cochrane is a global independent community of more than 100,000 people who search for and summarize the best evidence from health and care research to help our beneficiaries make informed choices about health and care.  

Our members and supporters come from more than 220 countries worldwide including researchers, health professionals, patients, carers, and people passionate about improving health and care outcomes for everyone, everywhere.

Chief Executive
£110, 120,000 per annum
UK based role with occasional global travel

Cochrane’s work providing accessible, credible information to improve global health - has never been more important or relevant than it is today.

This Chief Executive role is an extraordinary opportunity for an inspirational, experienced and authentic leader, passionate about evidence and health care, to join Cochrane and work with a highly committed and engaged Board and talented staff team to lead the development of a new long-term strategy.

We are seeking someone with experience working in a multi-stakeholder environment, ideally in a global context, with exceptional interpersonal and communication skills with proven capacity to develop influential internal and external relationships.  Thoughtful, curious, and with a supportive leadership style; you will bring a strong track record of leading teams; fostering a high-performing culture; driving organisational change and growing income.  Critically, you will share our vision of a world of better health for all people where decisions about health and care are informed by high-quality evidence.

Cochrane is a global community and we value the diverse range of experience that this brings.  We strive to be an equal opportunities employer and welcome application from people from all races, religions, genders, sexual orientation, lived experience or ability.

• For further information, the role and how to apply please download the full appointment brief here  
• Closing Date: Sunday 6th February 2022
• If you require this document in an alternative format, please contact executiveadmin@prospect-us.co.uk or call 020 7691 1920

Thursday, January 13, 2022 Category: Jobs

Senior Research Integrity Editor, Lisa Bero, discusses this subject in a recent Nature article.

Never has it been more important to foster trust in scientific evidence than in the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. Cochrane is committed to independence, transparency, and integrity in healthcare research. The Research Integrity Team works to support and strengthen this commitment through research, policy development and implementation, advocacy and community outreach.

Recently, Senior Research Integrity Editor, Lisa Bero, has written a World View in Nature on the topic of working together to tackle the issue of problematic studies – studies where there are serious concerns about the trustworthiness of the data or findings. In the article she explains the tools and resources Cochrane uses as described in its policy for ‘Managing potentially problematic studies’, to empower reviewers to act when they suspect an issue. 

Research Integrity Editor, Stephanie Boughton, says “It was great to highlight Cochrane’s leading work in this area. We are building upon Cochrane’s strong history of conducting meta-research to detect research integrity problems. I hope all systematic review authors take up Lisa’s call to action and use tools described in Cochrane’s policy for ‘Managing potential problematic studies’ when they suspect an issue.”

• Read the full article by Lisa Bero in Nature
• Find out more about Cochrane’s Research Integrity Team  

Wednesday, January 19, 2022

Specifications:  Part Time, 1 day per week
Location: UK based (remote)
Application Closing Date: 25 January 2022

Cochrane UK is seeking a dynamic, self-motivated Transition Support Project Manager to lead and manage a support service for UK-based Cochrane Review Groups (CRGs) and those who work with them during a period of transition to a new review production model. 

You will join a small and friendly team at Cochrane UK and will work closely with the UK-based CRGs, Cochrane’s Editorial and Methods Department (EMD) and Cochrane Support Service to develop and operate processes to minimize disruption during the transition period.   

You will have in-depth knowledge and understanding of the existing Cochrane publication model and editorial processes.  You will have experience of the processes involved in conducting and editing systematic reviews and submitting funding bids.  You will have excellent communication and project management skills with the ability to build effective stakeholder relationships.

The role will be for 1 day per week with the potential to increase if, and when,  the requirements of the project change over the next 12 months.   

This role can be arranged either as a secondment (with your employer’s permission) or with you working as a self-employed contractor. 

If you would like more information please contact Therese Docherty, Business & Programme Manager (therese.docherty@cochrane.nhs.uk) for the full job description and person specification.

Deadline for applications: 25 January 2022.

Monday, January 10, 2022 Category: Jobs

Location: Flexible location (remote working) in the UK.
Specifications: Permanent contract.
Hours: Full-time week (flexible working considered) – 37.5 hours.
Salary: £40,000 per annum.
Application Closing Date: Monday 31 January (Midnight GMT).

This role is an exciting opportunity to use your problem-solving skills to make a difference in the field of health care research.  

As the Cochrane Library Business Analyst, you will gather, investigate, validate, and document business requirements using workshops, user research, user cases, and task and workflow analysis. You will ensure requirements are sufficiently detailed, reviewed, signed off, and kept up-to-date and are fully traceable. You will create and manage functional specifications, and contribute to identifying and validating appropriate solutions to support business objectives.

You will act as a key liaison between the relevant Cochrane stakeholders and departments, our publisher and their outsourced development vendor, to gather requirements, ensure that technical needs are well defined, that feature implementation goals are met, and that go-to-market activities are successfully performed.

Cochrane is a global, independent network of health practitioners, researchers, patient advocates and others, responding to the challenge of making vast amounts of research evidence useful for informing decisions about health. We do this by synthesizing research findings to produce the best available evidence on what can work, what might harm and where more research is needed. Our work is recognised as the international gold standard for high quality, trusted information.

• For further information on the role and how to apply, please click here. 
• The supporting statement should indicate why you are applying for the post, and how far you meet the requirements, using specific examples. Note that we will assess applications as they are received, and therefore may fill the post before the deadline.
• Deadline for applications: Monday 31 January (Midnight GMT).

Tuesday, January 11, 2022 Category: Jobs

This review provides insight into the effectiveness of measures implemented in the school setting to contain the COVID-19 pandemic.

While there are limitations to this review, the review demonstrates that a range of different measures can be effective at reducing COVID-19 transmission, especially when multiple interventions are implemented together. Importantly, the review demonstrates that schools can stay open (or reopen) safely when prevention measures are implemented effectively. The effectiveness of interventions is influenced by many things, including the levels of community transmission. Given the rapid and widespread advancements in prevention and containment measures, most notably, the COVID-19 vaccines and increases in testing capacity, as well as the rise of more transmissible variants of the virus, an update to this review may yield very different results.

What was studied in the review?
In order to reduce the spread of the virus that causes COVID-19, many governments and societies put mitigation measures in place in schools. However, we do not know whether these measures work with regards to reducing the spread of the virus, or how these measures affect other aspects of life, such as education, the economy or society as a whole.

Key messages
Reopening schools or keeping schools open while having a broad range of measures in place can reduce transmission of the virus that causes COVID-19. Such measures can also reduce the number of people who will need to go to hospital due to developing COVID-19. However very little is known about other consequences of these measures, such as those linked to education, resources, and physical or mental health, as this knowledge is mostly based on studies modelling the real world. More studies set in the real world using real-world data are needed.

Lead author Shari Krishnaratne explains:

“This review provides insight into the effectiveness of measures implemented in schools to contain the COVID-19 pandemic. Whilst the review addresses a very important question there are limitations to the evidence it provides. We searched for studies for the review in December 2020, at a time when there was a lack of real-world evidence. As such, most of the studies included in this review use modelling. This review therefore shows an overall absence of real-world evidence about the effectiveness of these measures. However, there is enough evidence from the modelling studies and in other reviews such as one on travel measures for us to have some confidence that there is likely to be a positive effect on transmission, but how an intervention works in one location might not be the same as in another.
 
There are limitations to the evidence, but it does suggest that schools can stay open (or reopen) safely when prevention measures are implemented effectively. The effectiveness of interventions is influenced by many things, including the levels of community transmission. Given the rapid and widespread advancements in prevention and containment measures, most notably, the COVID-19 vaccines and increases in testing capacity, as well as the rise of more transmissible variants of the virus, an update to this review may yield very different results.”

What are measures implemented in the school setting?
Measures in the school setting can be grouped into the following four broad categories.

1. Measures reducing the opportunity for contacts: by reducing the number of students in a class or a school, opening certain school types only (for example primary schools) or by creating a schedule by which students attend school on different days or in different weeks, the face-to-face contact between students can be reduced.
2. Measures making contacts safer: by putting measures in place such as face masks, improving ventilation by opening windows or using air purifiers, cleaning, handwashing, or modifying activities like sports or music, contacts can be made safer.
3. Surveillance and response measures: screening for symptoms or testing sick or potentially sick students, or teachers, or both, and putting them into isolation (for sick people) or quarantine (for potentially sick people).
4. Multicomponent measures: measures from categories 1, 2 and 3 are combined.

What is the aim of the review?
The authors aimed to find out which measures implemented in the school setting allow schools to safely reopen, stay open, or both, during the COVID-19 pandemic.

What did we do?
They searched for studies that looked at the impact of these types of measures in the school setting on the spread of the virus that causes COVID-19, the impact on the healthcare system (i.e. how many hospital beds are needed), as well as important social aspects (i.e. how often students attended school). The studies could focus on students, teachers and other school staff, as well as on families and the whole community. They could use real-life data (observational studies) or data from computer-generated simulations (modelling studies).

View the video in German, French, or Spanish

What are the main results of the review?
The authors found 38 relevant studies. Most of these were modelling studies (33 studies). Five studies used real-world data. Twenty studies were conducted in North or South America, 16 in Europe and two in China.

Below we summarise the main findings by category.

1. Measures reducing the opportunity for contacts
   The authors found 23 modelling studies assessing measures to reduce the opportunity for contacts. All studies showed reductions in the spread of the virus that causes COVID-19 and the use of the healthcare system. Some studies also showed a reduction in the number of days spent in school due to the intervention.
2. Measures making contacts safer
   The authors found 11 modelling studies and two real-world studies looking at measures, such as mask wearing in schools, cleaning, handwashing, and ventilation. Five of these studies combined multiple measures, which means we cannot see which specific measures worked and which did not. Most studies showed reductions in the spread of the virus that causes COVID-19; some studies, however, showed mixed or no effects.
3. Surveillance and response measures
   We found 13 modelling studies and one real-world study assessing surveillance and response measures. Twelve studies focused on mass testing and isolation measures, while two looked specifically at symptom-based screening and isolation. Most studies showed results in favour of the intervention, however some showed mixed or no effects
4. Multicomponent measures
   They found three studies that looked at multicomponent interventions, where it was not possible to determine the effect of each individual intervention. These included one modelling study and two real-world studies. These studies assessed physical distancing, modification of activities, cancellation of sports or music classes, testing, exemption of high-risk students, handwashing, and face masks. Most studies showed reduced transmission of the virus that causes COVID-19, however some showed mixed or no effects.

How confident are we in the findings of this review?
Confidence in these results is limited. Most studies used models, that is, they estimated the effects of the interventions rather than observing outcomes. As the models are built on assumptions about how the virus spreads and how people behave, we lack real-world evidence. Many studies were published as 'preprints' without undergoing rigorous checks of published studies, which further limits confidence. Also, the studies were very different from each other (for example, with regards to the levels of transmission in the community).

How up to date is this evidence?
The evidence is up-to-date to December 2020. It is expected this review will be updated in Spring 2022.

• Read the full review
• Visit the Cochrane Public Health group website

Monday, January 17, 2022

The 2021 Journal Citation Report has been released by Clarivate Analytics, and we are delighted to announce that the Journal Impact Factor for the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews (CDSR) is now 12.008. This is an increase on the 2020 Journal Impact Factor, which was 9.289.

The CDSR Journal Impact Factor is calculated by taking the total number of citations in a given year to all Cochrane Reviews published in the past two years and dividing that number by the total number of Reviews published in the past two years. While Journal Impact Factor is a useful measure of average citation frequency, we recognize that it is not the only measure of success or impact.  

Some highlights from the CDSR 2021 Journal Citation Report:

• CDSR is ranked 19th of the 172 journals in the Medicine, General & Internal category
• CDSR received 92,845 cites in the 2021 Journal Impact Factor period, compared with 81,212 in 2020 
• The 5-Year Journal Impact Factor is 11.956 compared with 9.871 in 2020

Cochrane Library’s Editor in Chief, Karla Soares-Weiser, commented: “I am delighted to see a rise in Impact Factor for the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews. Cochrane’s efforts to publish high quality reviews on COVID-19 have clearly made an impact, as several of these make up our top 20 cited reviews for 2021. All of these data demonstrate the continuing usage and impact of Cochrane Reviews and reflect enormous credit on our many thousands of contributors and groups.”

• Read about how the CDSR Journal Impact Factor is calculated

 

Thursday, June 30, 2022

The Science Basement Podcast is a podcast hosted by young scientists and scientists-in-training who share their excitement about science and science communication. They have conversations with scientists and other guests with the aim of making complicated ideas understandable to non-scientists, while showing why science matters.

Here we highlight some episodes where they talked to people in the Cochrane Community: 

Let's talk about an epidemic of misinformation Episode 5 with Anastasiia & Eleanna with guest Tiffany

• Available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and SoundCloud

Tell us if you are not confused when you scroll your newsfeed or change TV channels and see a whole array of opinions on each and every topic. One example you can probably relate to is the COVID crisis: vaccines or no vaccines, masks or no masks - which information is true? Who should we listen to in the end?

 

The name of this problem is “infodemic”. It means just what you think it means. In this episode, we are talking to Tiffany Duque, a senior advisor at Cochrane, about infodemic, expanding to the topic of misinformation in research and how to manage it.

In 2021, they spoke with members of Cochrane over three episodes:

Episode 1 - Cochrane Reviews in times of COVID-19 with Dr John Lavis

• Available on Spotify, iTunes, and SoundCloud

Tomàs Garnier  Artiñano and  Lea Urpa interview Dr. John Lavis. John is a member of the Cochrane editorial board, member of the Cochrane knowledge-translation advisory group, and founder and director of the McMaster Health Forum, which hosts COVID-END. John speaks about what we know about COVID-19 so far, the importance of evidence synthesis and Living Systematic Reviews, how the media covers science, and Cochrane's Plain Language Summaries, translation work, and how Cochrane works with patients and careers. 

 Episode 2 -  Systematic Reviews: How do scientists collect information? 

• Available on Spotify, iTunes, and SoundCloud

Giuliano Didio and Elmo Saarentaus discuss with the Cochrane Reveiwer Fiona Stewart about what is a systematic review and... how to make one. Fiona is a Network Support Fellow for Cochrane, an international not-for-profit organisation for independent health care research. She has over ten years of experience working in health services research and has published several systematic reviews on topics ranging from pregnancy to urinary incontinence to obesity. Fiona explains what a systematic review is, how we involve the public in our work, how our plain language summaries makes our evidence accessible, and the importance of our knowledge transfer and translation work. 

Episode 3 - How can we assess scientific information?

• Available on  Spotify, iTunes, and SoundCloud

In this episode Eleanna Asvestari & Katja Kaurinkoski discuss with Jack Nunn the importance of making science accessible and how to assess critically all the information around us. Jack  is the founder and Director of the non-for-profit education organisation Science for All, and co-creator of ‘Standardised Data on Initiatives (STARDIT), a PhD researcher at the Department of Public Health at La Trobe University,  recently appointed member of the Cochrane Consumer Network Executive and part of  Cochrane's Advocacy Advisory group.

Learn more about the Science Basement podcast by following them on Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter. 

Tuesday, August 15, 2023

The global Cochrane community are walking and raising money for the annual Anne Anderson Award, which is given to a Cochrane member who has contributed meaningfully to the promotion of women as leaders and contributors to the organization.

Who is Anne Anderson?
Anne Anderson was a contributor to the stream of thinking and effort that gave birth to evidence-based health care. A clinically qualified reproductive physiologist, Anne had an active interest in women’s health, co-editing the first edition of Women’s Problems in General Practice with Ann McPherson and contributed to Effectiveness and Satisfaction in Antenatal Care (1982), edited by Murray Enkin and Iain Chalmers. She was discussing with Marc Keirse and Iain Chalmers the possibility of co-editing a companion volume on elective birth, however her premature death from breast cancer in 1983 ended her involvement. Anne Anderson was 46 years old when she died. Iain Chalmers, Murray Enkin and Marc Keirse went on to publish Effective Care in Pregnancy and Childbirth (ECPC) in 1989, dedicating the book in part to Anne. ECPC, through its systematic approach to assessing the research literature, is widely acknowledged to have led to development of Cochrane. 

What is the Cochrane Anne Anderson Award?
In the footsteps of Anne Anderson, many outstanding women continue to contribute and inspire other women to improve health knowledge for the good of their communities. Often these women are quiet achievers who might otherwise not be recognized. The goal of the Anne Anderson Award is to recognize and stimulate individuals contributing to the enhancement of women’s visibility and participation in the Cochrane leadership. The award is given to a Cochrane member who has contributed meaningfully to the promotion of women as leaders and contributors to the organization. 

The Anne Anderson Award winner receives a plaque from Cochrane honouring her contributions, as well as a cash award. The recipient designates the cash award to assist a woman from a low-resource setting with Cochrane activities.

What's the Anne Anderson Walk?
The Cochrane Colloquium, our annual flagship event, brings together the world’s most influential health researchers, scientists, academics, opinion leaders, clinicians, and patients to promote evidence-informed decision-making. It is here that the award is given out and the fundraising walk is held. The annual Anne Anderson Walk is a cherished annual social event, where attendees explore the Colloquium host-city by foot with a guide. Donations by participants are made to next year's Anne Anderson Award. 

Given current COVID-19 circumstances, Cochrane community's will be not be gathering in 2022 for a Colloquium. However, we are walking  together virtually and sharing pictures of our walks.

How can I participate?
All Cochrane Members and Supporters are welcome to participate in this virtual walk and fundraising effort! 

• Make a donation to the Anne Anderson Award 
• Submit a picture of your walk
• Anne Anderson Blog Series:
  • Karla Soares-Weiser
  • Catherine Marshall
  • Jackie Ho
  • Sarah Tanveer
  • Cindy Farquhar
  • Eva Madrid

Thursday, February 10, 2022

Getting involved in Cochrane’s work means becoming part of a global community. Connect with Cochrane Groups across the world through the Cochrane International Mobility programme!

The Cochrane International Mobility programme builds on previous successful student exchanges involving Cochrane Centres around the world. A broader initiative involving multiple Cochrane Groups has  been launched by Cochrane People Services Department.

Successful applicants will complete a placement in a host Group, learning more about the production, use and knowledge translation of Cochrane reviews.

Gain skills and experience

Arrangements are flexible and placements can vary in length, depending on the project plan. Placements are typically self-funded. Participants completing postgraduate study have benefitted from university funding, and some Groups can offer work space or accommodation. Training and mentoring support is offered in different areas, specific to Groups' expertise.

Learn from each other

Cochrane International Mobility offers opportunities for learning and training not only for participants but also for host staff. Cochrane Croatia welcomed a student intern as part of the fledgling programme.

“I’m very grateful to Cochrane Croatia for hosting me and for this wonderful experience, and I’m sure I’ll be using all the skills I learned as I continue on in my academic career,” said Sarah Tanveer, Cochrane International Mobility participant, Summer 2019.

Tina Poklepović Peričić, Co-director, Cochrane Croatia added, “This was an encouraging experience for us all, and spending time with Sarah, exchanging experiences, teaching and working with her was a true refreshment to our Centre.”

Apply now

Find out more about the programme on Cochrane Training or search for opportunities on Cochrane Engage.

Read profiles of participants

 

 

Tuesday, October 29, 2024

Cochrane's strength is in its collaborative, global community.  Our 100,000+ members and supporters from more than 130 countries work together to produce credible, accessible health information and help inform health decision making. Though we are spread out across the globe, our shared passion for health evidence unites us. 

We want to come together and tell our collective and individual Cochrane stories!
To share your #MyCochraneStory please contact support@cochrane.org with the following:

• A photo: At your desk, at Cochrane event, or a headshot.
• Your country of residence: Our community is diverse and we want to celebrate this!
• Your Cochrane Story: We want to hear about what Cochrane work and achievements you are most proud of! 3-4 sentences about yourself and your story and any URLs that could be included.
• Social media handles: We will give your Twitter or Instagram account a tag; just let us know your handles!

 Phil Käding, from Germany, first learned of Cochrane when studying pharmacy. Since joining Cochrane's volunteer platform, Cochrane Engage, he has contributed to numerous translation projects and provided consumer feedback on several Cochrane reviews. Phil has also been an active participant on the citizen science platform, Cochrane Crowd, and has attended Cochrane Training webinars and seminars. He sees his involvement in Cochrane as playing an important role in directing his academic path towards clinical drug development and trials (Good Clinical Practice) and is now pursuing postgraduate studies in this field. Phil especially appreciates the inclusive and collaborative nature of Cochrane, involving patients, professionals, and scientists from different backgrounds. He encourages anyone interested in evidence-based medicine, regardless of speciality, to get involved!

 Jessica D’Urbano, from Italy, is currently studying Occupational and Space Medicine in Friuli-Venezia Giulia. She loves both patient interaction and solitary research and scientific writing. Along with spending time with her daughter, Jessica volunteers for Violawalkhome,  an international project supporting people in danger walking on the street. As a proud Cochrane Member, Jessica values Cochrane's role as a global reference for healthcare workers and patients. Engaged in the Cochrane US Mentoring Program with a mentor and cohort of six mentees, she actively contributes to the citizen science platform Cochrane Crowd and undertakes interesting volunteer tasks on Cochrane Engage.  Jessica recommends both platforms for their opportunities to contribute to real research, learn about evidence synthesis, and find enjoyment in the process!  

Anthony Uwandu-uzoma, from Nigeria, based in United Kingdom, holds a degree in Medicine and Surgery and a Masters in Public Health.  He is a research assistant in a University of Bolton project, focusing on the mental health experiences of nursing and pre-registration nursing students in the UK. With a mentoring background spanning over 50 Public Health Masters students, Anthony shares his expertise through his blog that helps train students in public health data analysis, epidemiology, health promotion, and critical writing skills. An enthusiastic Cochrane contributor, Anthony actively participates in the citizen science platform, Cochrane Crowd. He also dedicates time to tasks within our volunteer hub, Cochrane Engage. In 2023, Anthony was selected to participate as a mentee in the Cochrane US Mentoring Program. Anthony actively contributes to these Cochrane initiatives, as he feels it underscores his unwavering dedication to upholding the rigorous methodology and research standards for which Cochrane is renowned. 

Sowmyashree Hanumantha Setty, from India, is a second-year master's student at Tufts University School of Engineering majoring in Biomedical Engineering. Tufts University is a Cochrane US Affiliate Centre. Under the mentorship of Dr. Shayesteh Jahanfar, Sowmyashree discovered her passion for impactful research after undertaking the Cochrane Standard Author Training. In addition to her role as a Teaching Assistant in systematic review courses, Sowmyashree has contributed to reviews on pregnancy and childbirth and pioneered initiatives like "Incorporating Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion into Cochrane Systematic Reviews with AI" alongside Dr. Jahanfar. Sowmyashree draws immense inspiration from collaborating with her Cochrane colleagues. She is eager to persist in her current work, contribute to additional reviews, and embark on leading her own project in the future. For Sowmyashree, Cochrane represents the gold standard of systematic reviews and a community that fosters growth and personal development - it's where passion meets impact! 

Jheng-Yan Wu, a dietitian hailing from Taiwan, has been actively involved with Cochrane since 2018, when he first encountered the principles of evidence-based medicine and Cochrane's work. Their dedication led them to become a Cochrane Supporter in 2021 by translating evidence from English to Traditional Chinese. In 2022,  Wu embarked on a personal challenge of learning about the methodology behind systematic reviews and conducting meta-analyses. He fully immersed himself in the Cochrane Handbook, diligently absorbing valuable techniques along the way. The commitment was so profound that he decided to get the Cochrane logo on his arm as a cherished tattoo, serving as a constant reminder to apply his acquired knowledge in clinical practice. This act symbolizes his unwavering passion and aspiration to one day publish in the prestigious Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews.

Karina Tapinova, discovered Cochrane during her medical school courses on pharmacology and epidemiology and began using Cochrane Reviews to uncover evidence on commonly used medical products in her country, Kazakhstan. To her surprise, she learned that many home remedies relied on by her family and local clinicians had no scientific evidence of benefit to support their use. After completing her studies, she began working as a research assistant at her university and is now responsible for writing systematic reviews. As Karina delved deeper into the Cochrane Collaboration, having completed its interactive modules, using the Cochrane Handbook, and participating in educational webinars, she became a volunteer translator for Cochrane Russia and took on tasks through Cochrane Crowd, which greatly expanded her knowledge. In summer 2022, Karina was fortunate to participate in the US Cochrane Mentorship program - a wonderful opportunity that she never could have imagined during her medical school days. As a mentee of Cochrane Russia, she began working on translating into Russian and recording Cochrane podcasts with her husband, Eugene, and as of 2023, she started editing translations of the Plain Language Summaries of Cochrane Reviews, prepared by volunteer translators. Karina is also currently involved in organizing international webinars. To her, the Cochrane Collaboration represents not only a gold standard of systematic reviews, but also a community of incredible people, opportunities for growth, and personal development.

Rosnani Zakaria, a family medicine specialist and medical lecturers at Universiti Sains Malaysia in Kelantan, Malaysia. She graduated from St. Andrews University and The University Of Manchester in late 1990 and early 2000s and completed family physician training from Academy of Family Physician Malaysia & RACGP in 2012. Rosnani started to get involved in editing Malay PLS with Cochrane Malaysia in 2015 and loved the experience, as Community education is her passion. Rosnani is also a researcher in several medical fields.

Marwa Badawy, from Egypt has a Bachelor's degree in Medicine and Surgery and is now a General practitioner at Ministry of Health in Egypt. Marwa is an active researcher and a scientific writer with four publications and more to come! When the Cochrane Mentorship program opened, it ignited fire in her to be part of Cochrane family, to join this prestigious research association to learn from her professors and to make good connections. She participated with four projects with her amazing mentor: Dr. Jahanfar and learned alot. Marwa also has successfully passed the Cochrane Systematic Review Standard Author training, and is also a volunteer at Cochrane Crowd in the "Covid Quest Lite" Project, screening more than 100 papers.She is working right now on a new Cochrane project in the public health field with her mentor, Dr. Jahanfar, on a review in screening, and will work on analysis and writing with her. Marwa is enthusiastic to work in Cochrane as her long term plan.

Ahmed Azam, from Egypt is a highly motivated physiotherapy researcher involved in clinical research since his early years in school. Ahmed uses his research skills in methodology and statistics, and has two years experience in conducting clinical research and meta-analysis models to evaluate the safety and efficacy of novel treatments. He developed a model for medical student research in Egypt, provided the evidence synthesis workshops for trainees in 2021, and currently maintains a bi-annual clinical research training for Arab doctors with +400 people benefiting from the training. Ahmed first joined Cochrane in December 2020 when he signed up for Cochrane Crowd. Within days, he classified more than 5,000 records with 95% accuracy, and earned four Cochrane Crowd badges. He also completed the newcomer and student pathways. Ahmed first earned his Cochrane membership in December 2020 until 2027 and is proud to continue to be a Cochrane member.

Jyothsna Kuriakose, from India, is an early career professional specializing in the field of palliative medicine pertinent to oncology. Her areas of special interest include research methodologies in palliative care and complex symptom management. The first ever encounter she had with Cochrane was as a postgraduate student when she had to present Cochrane reviews relevant to palliative care for the departmental journal clubs in the hospital. Since then, it was her dream to work with Cochrane. She has had the opportunity to do a peer review for the Cochrane PaPaS group. A proud member of Cochrane since July 2022, she is one of the mentees in the Cochrane US Mentoring Program Year 2 (2022-2023). She is excited to be a part of this platform and is looking forward to learning from and contributing to the many works of Cochrane.

Paola Andrenacci from Argentina has worked as a nutritionist for more than 20 years, specializing in liver diseases and is passionate about evidence-based nutrition, dissemination and translation of knowledge. Paola is a participant in the inaugural Cochrane US Mentor Program. As a collaborator of Cochrane Nutrition, Paola was invited to participate in the writing of Prioritization exercise: WHO evidence-based guide for nutrition and in the translation from English to Spanish of 14 nutrition summaries for the Cochrane Nutrition Newsletters. Through Tiffany Duque, she received a full scholarship for WHO/Cochrane/Cornell Summer Institute (training completed in July 2022). She also had the opportunity to complete another training at Tufts University School of Medicine (affiliate of Cochrane US)  and training was completed in October 2022. Paola was co-chair for International Women's Day  and is now the coordinator of the Cochrane US Mentoring Program Y2 as well as program mentor and mentee at the same time! Finally, Paola was accepted to be part of the ExME (S4BE in Spanish) dissemination committee and author of the blog.

Esra Bilir, from Turkey, is a gynecology and obstetrics resident in Germany. She completed the “Gender Studies Certificate Program” at The Center for Gender Studies at Koc University, Turkey and “Postgraduate Certificate in Epidemics and Ethical Global Health” at AUSN, USA. She also attained MSc in Data Science. Currently, she is pursuing MSc in Global Health. Her research focuses on gynecologic oncology, research methodology, and biostatistics. Since medical school, she is inspired by high-quality research and evidence-based medicine. Dr Bilir has been proud to hold  Cochrane Membership since August 2022. She is currently a mentee in Year 2 (2022-2023) Cochrane US Mentoring Program. She is thrilled to join this extraordinary cohort of people around the globe and to work with Cochrane experts to further improve her skills in research methodology. Dr Bilir is looking forward to a productive future with the Cochrane team. 

Moriasi Nyanchoka, from Kenya, has a background in Public Health Nutrition and is a researcher interested in global public health. He is passionate about evidence synthesis in global health and its utilisation to inform policy and decision-making. He is also interested in knowledge translation, communication, and dissemination of research synthesis. Moriasi joined Cochrane in April 2022 when he signed up for Cochrane Crowd, our Citizen Scientist platform. He has classified 11,096 records, participated in 4 Global screening challenges, and earned 12 Cochrane Crowd badges. He earned his Cochrane Membership in June 2022 and is proud to be a Cochrane Member. Moriasi is currently a mentee in the Cochrane US Mentoring Program. He is excited to join the Year 2 (2022-2023) Mentorship cohort and thrilled to work with Cochrane mentors to further his skills in evidence synthesis and contributions.

Mohammed K. Al-Haggagi is an Egyptian physical therapist and researcher interested in neuroscience, neurorehabilitation, biomechanics, and electrophysical agents. He is passionate about knowledge, scientific methodology, and continuous learning in order to provide the best treatment for patients. He joined Cochrane for the first time in September 2021, when he signed up for Cochrane Crowd. He had classified 5000 records, and he soon earned five Cochrane Crowd badges and completed the newcomer and student pathways. Among these is the gold badge in clinical trial identification, which he earned with 100% accuracy. He first earned his Cochrane membership in July 2022, and is proud to continue to be a Cochrane member. The Cochrane Task Exchange was the door that turned him to the Early Career Professional network. This opportunity has helped him collaborate with researchers across the globe whom he only knew by their names from their books and papers. He now has his own international research team, leads about 6 other research teams in different medical schools, works on many papers (systematic reviews and meta-analysis, cross-sectional studies, CT, ... etc), and has given him access to invaluable training resources. He is proud to be a Cochrane member.

Santiago Castiello-de Obeso was raised in Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico but now resides in Oxford, UK. He recalls the first time he heard about Cochrane when a friend told him that vitamin C did not prevent the common cold. He enquired into this and his friend explained what a meta-analysis was. Santiago was astonished at the idea of combining all studies into one and realised how much sense that made. Inspired by this, Santiago started working on a Cochrane review with Cochrane Schizophrenia and was part of the inauguration of Cochrane Mexico. Santiago is currently Chair of the Early Career Professional Network. He is certain that whatever the future holds, Cochrane will be there.

Nelly Darbois is a French physiotherapist and science writer. For the past 3 years, she has been writing articles on rehabilitation for patients and caregivers, based on Cochrane reviews. Her website receives up to 45,000 visits/month. Nelly a contributor to Cochrane Crowd and Cochrane France and she also edits Wikipedia pages based on Cochrane reviews.

Cheng Hsien Hung, from Taiwan, works in a regional hospital, and specializes in adverse drug reaction assessment and pharmacist education. He was first introduced to the Cochrane Systematic Reviews in 2017 when learning Evidence-Based Medicine. Since 2018, he learned critical appraisal of randomized controlled trials and non-randomized controlled trials through the Cochrane Taiwan course and tried to apply what he learned in clinical practice. In 2021, he participated in an Evidence-Based Medicine promotion activity held by Cochrane Taiwan and received positive feedback on his use of interesting memes to promote Cochrane Systematic Reviews. He has been learning many valuable skills through Cochrane and hopes to use high-quality Cochrane reviews to help more people in the future.

Mojtaba Keikha, is an Iranian researcher, and PhD student in Epidemiology at Kerman University of Medical Sciences. He is a member of Cochrane Trainers Network and a member of Cochrane Iran. Motjaba collaborated as a facilitator, mentor and coordinator in several Cochrane workshops in Iran. He is the author of two Cochrane articles published in the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews and also does tasks in Cochrane Crowd and Cochrane Task Exchange.

Fatemeh Mirzaei, from Iran, is a 6th-grade dental student at Golestan University of Medical Sciences. She joined Cochrane in February 2022, starting her activity in Cochrane Crowd, our citizen scientist platform. In less than one month, her contributions granted her full Cochrane membership. She has earned 9 badges, contributed to 6 tasks, and has earned over 1,671 membership points. When she took part in the "HPV vaccination programme" and "The COHeRe Project" challenges, she screened more than 300 records!

Pratibha Mary Thomas, from India is working as an Assistant Professor of Physical therapy. Her specialization and area of expertise is in Musculoskeletal Disorder and Sports and she also volunteers as a manuscript reviewer in various International journals. Prathibha started her journey with Cochrane in March 2022 and progressed through each step of making her contribution to Cochrane by being associated with the Cochrane Crowd activities and from being a Supporter to earning a Cochrane membership. The Cochrane Crowd activities helped her to a great extent in gaining comprehensive knowledge especially regarding RCT's, which are considered as a gold standard of evidence. The Health Evidence with Cochrane Evidence Essentials section provided Pratibha with valuable insights on how to utilize and apply evidence into practice, so that she could deliver the best treatment options to her patients. Along with all these, being an academician, Cochrane served as a guiding tool of how to impart research knowledge to her students. Pratibha has now contributed to 7 tasks, earned 9 badges, participated in the global challenge on "COVID Quest Lite" and also participated in the Screen4Me challenge by the Metabolic and Endocrine Disorders group.

Nila Pillai, comes from a midwifery background with three grandchildren. She first got into Cochrane back in 2012 through a research project, the SEA URCHIN project, using Cochrane evidence to reduce neonatal infection. After the research project she was invited to take on the position of Cochrane Support Coordinator for Cochrane Malaysia and her main role has been managing their translation initiative,  Ringkasan Cochrane Bahasa Malaysia.  She has been doing this for 7 years. Nila really enjoys working with the volunteer translators and editors who have responded amazingly to the project and she credit the success of the project to them. She's proud to be a part of the Cochrane Malaysia team!

Paul Ogongo, from Kenya is a Research Scientist in Pathogen Immunobiology program at the Institute of Primate Research, Nairobi, Kenya. He joined Cochrane in 2013 after being introduced by his colleague Dr. Jael Obiero. Paul's first involvement was as a peer reviewer with Cochrane Infectious Diseases group  for the review, ‘’Circulating antigen tests and urine reagent strips for diagnosis of active schistosomiasis in endemic areas.’’ in 2013. Paul has been an author with Cochrane STI group of the updated review, “Topical microbicides for preventing sexually transmitted infections” and another registered review, “Nifuratel-Nystatin combination for the treatment of mixed infections of bacterial vaginosis, vulvovaginal candidiasis, and trichomonal vaginitis.” Paul's areas of research are immunology and diagnostics of infectious diseases. Currently, and his research focuses on human T cell immune responses to Mycobacterium tuberculosis infection. He is excited about the networking and mentorship opportunities that comes with being a member of Cochrane and thrilled at the birth of the newest member of the Cochrane family, Cochrane Kenya.

Jael Apondi Obiero, from Nairobi, Kenya, is a Senior Research Scientist in reproductive health at the Institute of Primate Research, where she uses nonhuman primates as models for preclinical research. Jael first heard about Cochrane Reviews in 2007 at a Research Methods Course on Randomised Trials, Systematic Review Method and Good Clinical Practice organised by the Effective Care and Research Unit in East London, South Africa. She thereafter proceeded to register her first Cochrane review, “Topical microbicides for preventing sexually transmitted infections” with the Sexually Transmitted Infections Review Group. This review published in 2012, and we published an update in 2021. Jael registered her second Cochrane Review title “Nifuratel-Nystatin combination for the treatment of mixed infections of bacterial vaginosis, vulvovaginal candidiasis, and trichomonal vaginitis” with the same review group thereafter, and in 2015, she received the Aubrey Sheiham Evidence-Based Healthcare in Africa Leadership Award from Cochrane to conduct this Cochrane Review. She has mentored other Cochrane authors in her region, and is happy to have used her Cochrane experience to contribute to the birth of the newest Cochrane baby on the globe, Cochrane Kenya, which is launching in June 2021

Julián Balanta-Melo, from Colombia, is an Assistant Professor at the Universidad del Valle School of Dentistry. As a Specialist in Oral Rehabilitation (Prosthodontics), he has implemented the Evidence-Based Dentistry principles in his clinical practice and his preclinical/clinical teaching since 2010. In 2018, during the final year of his PhD training in dental sciences in Chile, he was introduced to Cochrane by Professor Julio Villanueva Maffei, and performed his training in the Cochrane Associate Centre based in the Universidad de Chile Faculty of Dentistry. In 2020, he peer-reviewed two intervention reviews from the Cochrane Oral Health Group, a new one regarding the control of dental aerosols in clinical settings and one update about oral hygiene care for critically ill patients, both of priority interest during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. As a scientist, he is interested in the mammalian craniofacial bone biology and the impact of several clinical interventions on its homeostasis, from a translational research approach. Linked to his research interest, he is currently the first author of an ongoing Cochrane Systematic Review (protocol stage) with the Cochrane Movement Disorders Group from Portugal. His priorities in Colombia include the improvement of both the access to and the understanding of the high-quality evidence among clinicians, students/residents and patients, with the outstanding support of Cochrane Colombia and the Ibero-American Cochrane network.

Peter Gichuhi Mwethera, from Nairobi, Kenya, joined Cochrane in 2007 after being introduced by Prof. Charles Wiysonge and authoring a review for Cochrane STI. He currently works at a Primate Research Centre in Nairobi called the Institute of Primate Research (IPR) as a Senior Research Scientist in Reproductive Health. IPR is a premier biomedical primate institute whose mandate is to improve health by ethically utilizing the non-human primates. It is a WHO collaborating Institute and is also aaalac accredited. He also runs a company called Medicals Africa Limited, which administers reproductive health products that we developed, patented, and commercialized as a result of his research over the last 14 years. He is very passionate about reproductive health issues because reproductive health is one of the most neglected aspects of human health. His Cochrane review, Topical microbicides for preventing sexually transmitted infections, was updated in 2021. Following the outbreak of Covid pandemic, his institution was designated a Covid testing centre by the Kenyan Government, and he was appointed to coordinate the testing.

Nkengafac Villyen Motaze, from Cameroon, attended his first training on Cochrane reviews in 2010, organized by the Effective Care Research Unit in East London, South Africa. He proceeded to register his first Cochrane title in 2011, a few months prior to enrolling for his masters in Epidemiology. His first Cochrane review was published in 2013, and it served as his masters project. Ten years later, he has published several systematic reviews, facilitated about a dozen training sessions, and mentored novel authors in low- and middle-income countries. He has peer-reviewed Cochrane reviews for Effective Practice and Organization of Care and the Pregnancy and Childbirth review groups, and he is a member of the Cochrane Africa Network. As he prepares for his PhD graduation, which is coming up in a couple of months, he is embarking on an update of his first Cochrane review, while taking up further mentorship roles to ensure continuity and contribute to increasing the number of Cochrane authors on the African contintent.

Anelisa Jaca, a Postdoctoral Research Fellow based in the South African Medical Research Council, Cochrane South Africa, is a Medical Scientist by qualification. She did her MSc and PhD around cancer research specifically focusing on determining the biological pathways that contribute towards the development and progression of colon and stomach malignancies. After obtaining her PhD, she transitioned to Evidence-based Medicine, where she learnt about methods used to synthesise medical research evidence, important for making healthcare decisions and policy. Her current area of focus at Cochrane South Africa is on vaccine implementation research, around the factors that drive vaccine hesitancy in South Africa. She is also interested in fighting against the burden of cervical cancer through addressing Human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine hesitancy in the South African context. 

Meghan Bohren, based in Australia, is a Senior Research Fellow in Gender and Women’s Health at the University of Melbourne and an Editor with Cochrane Effective Practice and Organisation of Care (EPOC). She was first introduced to Cochrane whilst  a PhD student and working with Metin Gülmezoglu at the WHO Department of Sexual and Reproductive Health and Research. At the time they were exploring how to better integrate qualitative evidence into WHO guidelines, in order to better understand people’s values, preferences and experiences of healthcare, as well as factors affecting implementation of interventions or models of care. Claire Glenton and Simon Lewin mentored Meghan in this space, and she was excited to join Cochrane Effective Practice and Organisation of Care as an editor in 2015. Meghan sat down with the Cochrane Early Career Professionals (ECP) group and shared some thoughts as part of the #WhereAreTheyNow series.

Alicia Aleman is currently based in Uruguay and works with the Cochrane Collaborating Group of Uruguay. She became aware of the Cochrane Library in 1995 when she was doing an internship at the Centro Latinoamericano de Perinatología, a center associated with the Pan American Health Organization/World Health Organization (PAHO/WHO). That year, the director of the center began promoting the use of scientific evidence in perinatal and  obstetric clinical practice and the use of the Cochrane Library in clinical decision-making. Since then, Alicia has been involved in teaching evidence-based medicine and in 2002, started her first Cochrane review (Bed rest during pregnancy for preventing miscarriage). After that, she continued working from the Faculty of Medicine (of which Alicia is an Associate Professor in the Department of Preventive and Social Medicine), giving courses in Evidence-Based Medicine, systematic reviews and clinical practice guidelines. In 2009, the Uruguayan Cochrane Group was created (coordinated by Dr. Oscar Gianneo) within the Ibero-American Cochrane network and in 2012 she did an internship at the IberoAmerican Cochrane Center.  Alicia is a contributor to the Uruguayan Cochrane group, giving courses, supporting translations, and collaborating with the active search programs for randomized studies published in Uruguay. Alicia sat down with the Cochrane Early Career Professionals (ECP) group and shared some thoughts as part of the #WhereAreTheyNow series in English and Spanish

Amr Elsareih, from Egypt, is a physical therapist interested electrophysical agents, especially electrical stimulation in neurological physical therapy, neurorehabilitation, and evidence-based practice. He first joined Cochrane in December 2019 when he signed up for Cochrane Crowd. Within days, he had classified more than 1000 records, and he soon earned eight Cochrane Crowd badges and completed the newcomer and student pathways. Among these is the purple badge in clinicial trial identification, which he earned with 99% accuracy. He's participated in Screen 4 Me classification for two systematic reviews. He first earned his Cochrane membership in January 2020, and is proud to continue to be a Cochrane member!

Matthew Page, from Australia, is a Senior Research Fellow at the School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine, Monash University. He is also a Co-Convenor of the Cochrane Bias Methods Group. In the final months of Matthew's undergraduate degree in psychology, he decided he should get some work experience for a year, before returning to study as a clinical neuropsychologist. Matthew saw an ad for a research assistant position at what was then the Australasian Cochrane Centre (now Cochrane Australia) and went for it, having taken an interest in meta-analysis during his psychology degree. Lucky for him, he got the job, started working there in 2008, fell in love with systematic review methodology, and gave up on his initial plan so he could focus on developing the science of how to conduct and report systematic reviews optimally. Matthew sat down with the Cochrane Early Career Professionals (ECP) group and shared some thoughts as part of the #WhereAreTheyNow series. 

Celeste Naude is currently based in South Africa. She is the Co-Director of Cochrane Nutrition and an Associate Editor with Cochrane Effective Practice and Organisation of Care (EPOC). Celeste is a mid-career professional and sat down with the Cochrane Early Career Professionals (ECP) group and shared some thoughts as part of the #WhereAreTheyNow series.  Celeste credits her introduction to and involvement with Cochrane to Prof Jimmy Volmink who introduced her to evidence synthesis research and the field of evidence-based health care. Jimmy, who was the Director of Cochrane South Africa at that point, invited Celeste to assist in a project called Supporting Policy-relevant Reviews and Trials (SUPPORT). At that time, the Cochrane EPOC satellite in Norway was coordinating efforts to produce SUPPORT Summaries of all low- and middle-income-relevant EPOC reviews and to make them freely available online. From there, Celeste joined an author team on a Cochrane review, and was subsequently involved in establishing and launching Cochrane Nutrition in 2016, the only Field hosted in a low and middle-income country. Celeste sat down with the Cochrane Early Career Professionals (ECP) - learn more and read her advice.

Cristian Herrera is currently based in France and Spain and is an Associate Editor for the Effective Practice and Organization of Care (EPOC) group and an editor in the Chilean EPOC satellite. When Cristian was a fifth year medical student, he joined a recently created health policy and systems research team at the P. Universidad Católica de Chile that was working on a Cochrane review. This connected him with the world of Cochrane and with the EPOC Group through a larger project led by a team from the Norwegian Knowledge Centre for the Health Services (this team is currently working in the Norwegian Institute of Public Health). So, starting out as an author was his entrance door to Cochrane. Cristian sat down with the Cochrane Early Career Professionals (ECP) - learn more and read his advice. Read in English and Spanish.

Zohra Lassi is a NHMRC Early Career Research Fellow at the University of Adelaide and a Feedback Editor with Cochrane Acute Respiratory Infections Group. She was first introduced to Cochrane Systematic Reviews while working as a Research Fellow at the Aga Khan University, Pakistan under the mentorship of Prof Zulfiqar Bhutta. Her very first Cochrane Systematic Review was with Cochrane Pregnancy and Childbirth Group on “Community based intervention packages for reducing maternal and neonatal morbidity and mortality and improving neonatal outcomes”. Zohra's first review led her to receive the Kenneth Warren Prize from  Cochrane for preparing a review of high methadological quality and relevant to health problems in developing countries. Since then, she has prepared more than 15 Systematic Reviews and Protocols.  

Jesse Uneke, from Nigeria, is the Director and Founder of the African Institute for Health Policy and Health Systems, Ebonyi State University, Nigeria. Jesse is also an Associate Editor with the Effective Practice and Organisation of Care (EPOC) group. Jesse was introduced to Cochrane by Dr Simon Lewin and got involved with the Cochrane Nigeria Centre. Jesse sat down with the Cochrane Early Career Professionals (ECP) - learn more and read his advice.

Joshua Vogel, from Australia, is a Principal Research Fellow at the Burnet Institute and an Associate Editor with Cochrane Pregnancy and Childbirth.  Joshua was first introduced to Cochrane & Cochrane Reviews while a PhD student. He had the good fortune to be working under Metin Gülmezoglu at the Department of Sexual and Reproductive Health and Research at WHO in Geneva. Metin is a long-time Cochranite and had been deeply involved with Cochrane Pregnancy and Childbirth since the 1990’s. Joshua explains his first review was pretty modest (with only 3 trials) but he was hooked from there on. Joshua sat down with the Cochrane Early Career Professionals (ECP) - learn more and read his advice.

Nayaar Islam, from Canada, is a MSc Epidemiology student who was introduced to Cochrane by her graduate thesis supervisor, Dr. Matthew McInnes, who is a member of the Cochrane COVID-19 Diagnostic Test Accuracy Group. Nayaar is the lead author of the first and second updates of the Cochrane ‘living’ systematic review titled “Thoracic imaging tests for the diagnosis of COVID-19”, and she will continue to support future updates of this review. Nayaar is grateful for the opportunities she has been offered through Cochrane, such as collaborating with an international team of Cochrane scientists, being interviewed for a featured Cochrane Podcast, and of course, leading the production of high-quality evidence to inform healthcare decisions during the COVID-19 pandemic. Being a part of #TeamCochrane has been an extremely rewarding experience for Nayaar and she is excited to continue with her involvement!

Jun Xia, is based in the UK and China, and is the Co-director of the Nottingham Ningbo GRADE Centre Network and an Editor for the Cochrane Schizophrenia Group. She was introduced to Cochrane by Professor Clive Adams, the founding Editor of Cochrane Schizophrenia Group. He introduced her to the concept of evidence-based medicine, the history and mission of Cochrane, and taught her the skills of conducting a rigorous systematic review. She stayed with the Schizophrenia Group for the next 15 years and worked as a review author, trainer, and now as the Group’s Editor. A major part of her work involves bring Cochrane reviews to China, where she delivered over 80 workshops in the past decade. In 2019, together with nine other Chinese universities/hospitals, she helped to formed the Cochrane China Network, to expand the reach and advocating for evidence-based healthcare decision making. Jun spoke with the Cochrane Early Career Professionals - learn more and read her advice! 

Martin Ringsten, from Sweden, first became involved in Cochrane through a one-week systematic review course introducing the Cochrane Methodology conducted by Cochrane Sweden in 2018. The course really matched his interest in evidence-based medicine at the time. Afterwards, he started to contribute to Cochrane Sweden as a volunteer, together with his usual clinical work, further studies, and teaching at Lund University. This all led him to take a position at Cochrane Sweden in 2020 as a Project coordinator and researcher in combination with doing a PhD in Medical Science. In his current work, he initiates, organizes, and executes different projects, like organizing courses and workshops, expanding our network within Sweden and collaborating with different people and organizations to expand the reach of resources and reviews from Cochrane. For him, being able to work towards facilitating the creation and implementation of high-quality evidence in healthcare and making decisions more evidence-informed is something he values and feels truly lucky to be doing on a daily basis!

 

Eyelin Ahmadi, from Iran, is a nurse that became acquainted with Cochrane while learning about treatment options for her hospitalized patients. She soon began using Cochrane evidence to educate her patients and encouraged her colleagues to use the Cochrane Library to read the latest synthesized health evidence. Eyelin earned her Cochrane membership by translating evidence from Persian for Cochrane reviews, participating in review production by assisting with data extraction, and as a consumer peer reviewer of Cochrane reviews. She has volunteered for tasks on Cochrane TaskExchange, and she's proud to be a part of Cochrane!

Cathal Cadogan, from Ireland, is a Senior Lecturer at the School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, Trinity College Dublin. He is also an Associate Editor with the Effective Practice and Organisation of Care (EPOC) group. Cathal first got involved with Cochrane when he began working with Prof. Carmel Hughes as a post-doctoral research fellow in Queen’s University Belfast. Cahal remembers his first task as part of that role was to update the existing Cochrane review on interventions to improve appropriate polypharmacy for older people. The experience taught him a lot about the Cochrane review process and has helped him in conducting other systematic reviews. Cahal spoke with the Cochrane Early Career Professionals - learn more and read his advice!

Cynthia S Srikesavan, from the UK, is a Postdoctoral researcher in Physiotherapy at the University of Oxford. She has been part of Cochrane since 2013 and has contributed as a Cochrane author on two reviews. Between 2014 and 2016, she was part of Cochrane South Asia as a volunteer translator of plain language summaries and a podcast producer in Tamil. Her Cochrane translation work in Tamil was recognised at the University of Oxford’s OxTALENT annual awards 2016, and she was the runner-up for her submission "High Quality Physiotherapy Evidence in Tamil" in the Academic Podcasting category. Her video resource explaining the findings of a Cochrane review won first prize at the Cochrane UK and Ireland Symposium 2017. She is so proud to be part of Team Cochrane!

Masahiro Banno, from Nagoya, Japan, joined Cochrane in 2019 as a co-author of an ongoing Cochrane review. He is a psychiatrist and has translated more than 100 plain language summaries of Cochrane reviews from English to Japanese as a 2020 top 5 translator for Cochrane Japan, and he has reviewed more than 20 Cochrane reviews (protocols or full reviews) as a regular peer-reviewer for Cochrane Schizophrenia. He has been involved in 3 ongoing Cochrane reviews. He also worked as a lecturer for the 2019 and 2020 Cochrane Diagnostic Test Accuracy (DTA) workshops held by Cochrane Japan. This led to the development of CAST-HSROC, a software for meta-analysis of DTA, with Dr. Yuki Kataoka and Dr. Yasushi Tsujimoto, the main lecturers of the workshop, and the publication of a paper on the software. He hopes that by playing a variety of roles at Cochrane, he can broaden his horizons and contribute in some small ways to making the world a better place.

 
Nimisha Kumar,  from the United States, is a fourth-year medical student and hopeful future OB/Gyn coming off of a research year as the inaugural Cochrane Fellow of the recently established US Satellite of the Cochrane Pregnancy & Childbirth Group (US-PCG) at the Indiana University School of Medicine. During her time as the Fellow, she has worked on three PCG reviews, carried out a prioritization process, and served as liaison to the Cochrane US Network. As part of the US Network, she served as part of the Opioid Workgroup, designed to update and initiate reviews geared towards addressing the effects of the opioid epidemic in the US with regards to mothers and infants. Learn more about her story in this news item and video!

Chris Rose, from Norway, is a statistician with the Cochrane Effective Practice and Organisation of Care (EPOC) group, Norwegian Satellite. In 2018, he was appointed as a statistician at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health, with part of his salary funded to work as a statistical editor for Cochrane EPOC. Chris' Cochrane-related work is a mix of peer-reviewing (of protocols and submitted systematic reviews), consulting (performing analyses for review teams that are not supported by RevMan), and teaching (delivering training on systematic reviewing). Chris spoke with the Cochrane Early Career Professionals - learn more and read his advice!

 

Abhijna Vithal Yergolkar, from India, is a pharmacy student who learned about Cochrane from a teacher. She joined Cochrane in September 2019 when she started screening RCTs on Cochrane Crowd. To date, she has done more than 31,000 classifications and earned 6 badges, with 92-99% accuracy for RCT identification. She has taken part in 10 global challenges and completed 8 Screen 4 Me tasks, and she was one of the top three screeners in the Chile Challenge 2019. Abhijna is also a part of Cochrane TaskExchange, where she has contributed to 20 tasks and has learned a lot from participating in systematic reviews. She is currently working on a Cochrane Review for the Lung Cancer group, and she looks forward to contributing more to evidence-based medicine through this and future research. Being a part of Cochrane completely changed the way she sees evidence-based medicine and helped her to connect with researchers all around the world. She feels very fortunate and is thrilled to be a part of Cochrane!

Mohammad Shahbaz, an epidemiologist from Iran, first became involved in Cochrane by screening abstracts on Cochrane Crowd and for Screen4Me projects there. Soon, he had evaluated more than 1100 abstracts and earned his Cochrane membership! After becoming a member, he continued to contribute as part of the Crowd and has also attended methods webinars, read Cochrane reviews, and used online Cochrane learning materials. He participated in Cochrane International Mobility in Croatia under the direction of Dr. Tina Poklepović Peričić. Mohammad will begin a PhD in epidemiology and causal inference post-COVID. He is so proud to be a part of the Cochrane Community, strongly believes in the collaboration evident in Cochrane programs and tasks, and knows he is helping contribute to public health problems by being involved with Cochrane!

Fatima Abbas, from Syria, is a doctor, recently graduated from Damascus University. She has been a member of the Cochrane Community since 2014, when she joined the group now called Cochrane Gut with a group of fellow medical students from Syria, publishing a Cochrane Review protocol and working on the full Review. She later joined the Cochrane Trainers' Network and became a Cochrane champion in Syria by leading and coordinating 4 training workshops to introduce medical students and young career professionals to Cochrane, help them learn the flow of Cochrane work, how to write a systematic review protocol, and share basic knowledge about systematic reviews and meta analysis. More than 7 publications resulted from these workshops during the time of crisis in Syria, with very limited resources and a great passion to work among the working group members. She founded an educational research group in Syria through which she was promoting evidence-based medicine practice, sharing the latest evidence among residents and peer-teaching her colleagues on how to use evidence in practice. She is now in an internship program in France. She feels privileged to be a part of the Cochrane community, and hopes to connect with other colleagues in person to exchange ideas, experiences and learn from all.

René Spijker, from the Netherlands, is an Information Specialist and Senior Scientist with Cochrane Netherlands, a member of the Information Specialist Executive, a member of the Cochrane Council and  a Co-Author of the Diagnostic Test Accuracy (DTA) handbook. 

René first got involved with Cochrane as he felt he needed a career change from a molecular biology science background and applied on a joint information specialist job between Cochrane and the medical library. Reading up on Cochrane, of which he hadn’t heard before, sparked his interest as it was international, had admirable goals, was involved with science, but most importantly, also focused on the application of the outcomes. René spoke with the Cochrane Early Career Professionals - learn more and read his advice!

Hebatullah Abdulazeem, from Egypt and living in Germany, is a family physician with great interest in scientific research. She first joined Cochrane Crowd in March 2018, and within 3 months, she had classified more than 5,000 records, which were part of Crowd's 2nd birthday total of 2 Million classifications! After that very enthusiastic start, she has now completed more than 25,000 classifications, and she received her 5-year Cochrane membership with excitement. Via the Cochrane Task Exchange platform, she has been involved with more than 20 systematic reviews, and has worked with extraordinary people from all over the world. She has even tried to help other people learn about TaskExchange in her native language, Arabic. She also participated with the PICO annotators and in the QA Dashboard. She is thrilled that joining Cochrane is possible for experts or citizen scientists!

Vighnesh Devulapalli, from India, is a Third Year Medical student at Dr.NTR University of Health Sciences in Vijayawada. He joined Cochrane as a volunteer in May 2020, earning a five-year Cochrane membership from his contributions to Cochrane Crowd in just a few short months.  His contributions include a total of 20846 classification of records, with an accuracy rate of 99% in ICTRP identification, 98% in CT identification and 89% in RCT identification. Apart from that, he has participated in 4 Global Crowd Screening Challenges, including the global screening challenge on World Evidence-Based Healthcare Day, where he was one of the top screening members (screened close to half of 10,000 records), for which he received an appreciation mail and reward. He has since been inducted into a special group of screeners for Cochrane Crowd for certain screening tasks, and he continues to contribute. Vighnesh is actively completing Cochrane Interactive Learning modules and is a member of Students 4 Best Evidence (S4BE), for which he is currently drafting a blogpost.

Ana Beatriz Pizarro Nule, from Colombia, first earned her Cochrane Membership in 2018 as a Cochrane Crowd citizen scientist supporting screening challenges and by offering her skills on Cochrane Task Exchange. She represented Colombia as a content creator for the 2019 Virtual Cochrane Colloquium, has written blogs for Students for Best Evidence (S4BE), and collaborated with the Cochrane-Wikipedia partnership. This year, she became part of Cochrane Interantional Mobility with Cochrane Sweden, and shared her experience in June at the Early Career Professionals online meet-up about research collaborations. She is the Consumer Network Coordinator for Cochrane Colombia and author of an ongoing Cochrane review. She is currently serving as dissemination and outreach coordinator of the upcoming Spanish version of S4BE "Estudiantes x La Mejor Evidencia". What she values most about being a Cochrane member is that it allows her to be part of an international community that shares her passion for improving health evidence.

Chun Hoong Wong, from Malaysia, joined Cochrane in 2017 as a volunteer translator for Cochrane Malaysia. As an outpatient pharmacist at a government health clinic, Chun Hoong believes that health information should not be restricted to healthcare professionals, but needs to be accessible and comprehensible in languages that people understand. He started with the translation of podcasts and Plain Language Summaries (PLS)  from English to Malay and has now success-fully performed over 700 translations to Malay. In 2018, he expanded his translation activities to Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese with Cochrane China  and Cochrane Taiwan  for the translation of abstracts and/or PLS. He became the first volunteer at Cochrane First Aid in 2019, only days after the Field’s launch, and is now active as a knowledge translation product generator and translator for them, creating blogshots in English and then translating  them to the other languages in which he is fluent. More details on Chun Hoong’s Cochrane story can be found in his recent blog  for Cochrane First Aid.

Xun Li (Tina), from Beijig City, China, first joined Cochrane China back in 2007 as an undergraduate student and began to translate abstracts of Cochrane reviews. She translated more than 10 of the Cochrane review abstracts in the CAM field and published them in Chinese journals. At the same time, she joined CENTRAL database establishment by translating the citations of trials about traditional Chinese medicine that were published in Chinese. Since 2014, she has coordinated the simplified Chinese translation and dissemination of Cochrane evidence. Currently, her team has submitted more than 25000 citations to CENTRAL, and 1240 abstracts and plain language summaries of Cochrane reviews have been translated into simplified Chinese. More than 500 of these have been disseminated with China social media WeChat. She is proud to see how researchers in China have progressed in recent years; there are now more than 400 volunteers in China working for the translation and dissemination of Cochrane knowledge. 

Yasushi Tsujimoto, from Osaka City, Japan, joined Cochrane in 2019 as a part of Cochrane Japan. He is a full-time nephrologist and has been involved in more than 10 Cochrane reviews, including in Cochrane Kidney and Transplant. He has been working to promote Cochrane’s activities with social media such as Twitter or Facebook in Japan. Since he became the PR manager, Cochrane Japan’s Twitter following has increased enormously. He credits the Japanese translation team for the great job they are doing, which has led to an increase in outreach and widespread awareness. He is also interested in building on-line education system that allows health care workers to learn more effectively.

Tiffany Duque, from the United States, joined Cochrane this year as the Coordinator for the Cochrane US Network (@Cochrane_US).  She has worked in global public health for 20 years and currently lives with her family in the Los Angeles area of California.  She joined Cochrane in June and has been very impressed with the dedication, warmth, and positivity from all of the US Network members as well as from Cochrane staff.  She is thrilled to join such a reputable organization and looks forward to the opportunity to grow, create collaborations, advocate for, and promote sustainability within both the US Network and Cochrane as a whole.  If you haven’t had the chance to connect with Tiffany, she’d love to hear from you.  Here’s hoping for in-person meetings in 2021 so she can meet all of her colleagues! 

Jordi Pardo Pardo, born in Barcelona but living in Quebec, is currently Co-Managing Editor of Cochrane Musculsokeletal. Jordi joined Cochrane in November 1997. He came in as a young journalist that had no idea about health research, but he fell in love with the organization and has played many roles in it, from the Iberoamerican Cochrane Centre, the Lung Cancer Group, the Campbell and Cochrane Equity Methods Group and Cochrane Musculoskeletal. Jordi really enjoyed contributing with the first steps of the Spanish translation of reviews, and how they experimented with different processes to make the dream of having all Cochrane reviews in Spanish a reality. Jordi enjoys Colloquia so much that he helped to organize two and provided countless hours in committees for several others. Jordi also enjoyed contributing on the two waves of the Capacity Building for Managing Editors Survey. Getting an insight of the needs of those who oil the process of editing a review to get it out with the level of quality that Cochrane expects was a great opportunity to see how differently we all work, a challenge to find common ways to improve and a pleasure to see the amount of talent we have in the organization.

Roses Parker, from England, joined Cochrane in September 2019 after completing her PhD in December 2018 and having a baby in January 2019. She is the Network Support Fellow for the MOSS Network. She has enjoyed working on the Plain Language Summaries project, and completing an audit of MOSS prioritisation work. Roses is particularly proud of the citation rates for MOSS Reviews in Wikipedia and setting up the SoMe Cuppa Club for MOSS members to discuss and encourage each others’ social media use. New projects she's looking forward to include a stakeholder engagement project, increasing collaboration with Cochrane Methods and Fields, and a Network Innovation Fund project to investigate the optimal methods for the use of ‘pain’ as an outcome in systematic reviews of post-operative pain management.

Mikhail Kukushkin, from Russia, joined Cochrane in 2016. He started off contributing to Cochrane's Russian Translation Project as a volunteer translator and then as a volunteer editor, successfully reaching nearly 600 translated/edited Cochrane Plain Language Summaries. It has been a great pleasure and honor for him to work at Cochrane Russia and contribute to Russian Translations of Cochrane Evidence and to Cochrane Russia's evaluation of quality of machine translators in Memsource. He noticed that during the last 3-4 years, Cochrane’s publicity in Russia increased substantially, and he is very happy and proud of this. He hopes that in future, Cochrane's work won't face significant obstacles, both in Russia and globally, because now is not the time for misunderstanding between the participants of health care systems.

Rachel Klabunde, from Chile, joined Cochrane in 2019 helping the Cochrane Chile team to plan the 2019 Cochrane Colloquium in Santiago. She now works as part of the Community Support team in People Services and as a Communication Officer in the Knowledge Translation Department of the Cochrane Central Executive Team. Due to widespread violence and civil unrest in Santiago, the Cochrane Colloquium was canceled. Our annual event would have featured a four-day, wide-reaching scientific programme entitled ‘Embracing Diversity’ as well as a Gala Dinner open to all delegates. Due to the cancellation, all the pre-ordered food including catering provisions for a three-course Gala dinner was donated to a local charity in Santiago. Turning this negative moment into something positive is definitely something to be proud of!

Muriah Umoquit, from Canada, joined Cochrane in 2015. Working in the Knowledge Translation Department of the Central Executive Team, she  is a self-proclaimed 'Cochrane Fangirl'. Knowing how daunting rows of academic posters can be, she was thrilled to work on a project bringing branded #BetterPoster templates to disseminate Cochrane work at Colloquia and other academic conferences.  You can view many of these posters from our virtual 2019 Colloquium - including hers!

 

We want to come together and tell our collective and individual Cochrane stories! To share your #MyCochraneStory please contact support@cochrane.org with the following:

• A photo: At your desk, at Cochrane event, or a headshot.
• Your country of residence: Our community is diverse and we want to celebrate this!
• Your Cochrane Story: We want to hear about  what Cochrane work and achievements you are most proud of! 3-4 sentences about yourself and your story and any URLs that could be included.

Wednesday, June 12, 2024

 See below for a listing of some important links from Cochrane. You can also use the search bar on our website to find the information you need. 

Take the #CochraneMethods Challenge

Help - FAQs and ticketed support

Cochrane Crowd - citizen scientist platform

Cochrane Engage - find volunteer tasks that match your expertise 

Cochrane Evidence Synthesis and Methods - an open access journal 

• Check if your open access fees are covered

Cochrane International Mobility Programme - virtual and in-person placements with Cochrane groups

Cochrane Library - search and read full Cochrane reviews

Cochrane Training - online and in-person training experiences 

• Cochrane Evidence Essentials - free online resource offering an introduction to health evidence and how to make informed health choices.
• Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of Interventions
• Cochrane Handbook for Diagnostic Test Accuracy

Join Cochrane

• Be involved in Cochrane as a patient or carer via Cochrane Consumer Network

Let's get social - see Cochrane's social media platforms and learn how you can earn Membership points 

Tuesday, November 19, 2024

Friday, May 20, 2022

Cochrane systematic reviews of interventions (intervention reviews) and Cochrane diagnostic test accuracy reviews (DTA reviews) are two types of systematic review.

They share the following characteristics:

• They aim to answer a specific healthcare question to help people make decisions based on up-to-date evidence from research. 
• They look for all the relevant studies to answer the review question.
• They appraise the reliability of the studies.
• They summarize the results to produce a picture of the body of evidence available. 
• They are systematic because they search for and analyze evidence in a systematic way, according to predetermined and published methods.

Intervention reviews

Intervention reviews seek to answer questions about the effectiveness of healthcare interventions (medicines, treatments or policies) on the people who receive them. For example: ‘How effective is acupuncture for treating depression’; or ‘Which treatment is most effective for treating psoriasis?’. To answer such questions, the authors of intervention reviews identify studies that compare one intervention with either another intervention, an inactive intervention (placebo), or no intervention. Depending on the number and reliability of the studies identified, intervention reviews may provide information on whether the intervention works, or whether we need more evidence before we can draw a conclusion. They may identify for whom the intervention works best, which version of the treatment works best, whether another option is just as effective, and whether it causes any unwanted effects. 

DTA reviews

DTA reviews evaluate how well diagnostic tests (index tests) identify or exclude a particular disease or condition (the target condition). We know that diagnostic tests make errors, even when they are correctly performed. There are two types of test errors: false positive test errors (the index test suggests the target condition is present when it is not) and false negative test errors (the test suggests the target condition is absent when it is not). Cochrane DTA reviews can cover all types of diagnostic tests, from antibody tests to X-rays, for any disease or condition. It is really important that diagnostic tests provide accurate results so that people can receive prompt treatment or take preventive measures if necessary, and to avoid unnecessary testing, treatment and anxiety

DTA reviews combine the results of all available test accuracy studies to determine the best possible estimate of the accuracy of an index test. Test accuracy studies most often report accuracy using sensitivity and specificity. 

Sensitivity means the proportion of people who are correctly diagnosed by the index test. Specificity means the proportion of people without the target condition who are correctly identified by the index test. Therefore, the nearer the sensitivity and specificity are to 100%, the better the test.

An alternative way to report test accuracy is using positive and negative predictive values, which tell us about the usefulness of a positive index test result and a negative index test respectively – this helps patients understand how reliable their test results are. Predictive values measure the number of positive index test results that will be true positives and the number of negative index test results that will be true negatives. The nearer the positive and negative predictive values are to 100%, the better the test. 

Cochrane DTA reviews are concerned with evaluating test accuracy. A new test may benefit patients because it offers an improvement in accuracy compared to existing tests. Alternatively, a new test may have similar accuracy to existing tests but with the advantage of being quicker, cheaper or easier to perform so that tests are available to more patients and results are obtained more quickly.

Learn more:

• What are systematic reviews?
• Read the  Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of Interventions
• What are diagnostic test accuracy reviews?
• Read the Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of Diagnostic Test Accuracy

Thursday, July 20, 2023

Cochrane systematic reviews can help us to make healthcare decisions based on up-to-date research evidence. They are systematic because they search for and analyse evidence in a systematic way, according to predetermined and published methods. Each systematic review answers a specific healthcare question by gathering all the relevant studies, assessing the reliability of these studies, then summarising their results to produce a summary of all of the available evidence.

One type of systematic review is a diagnostic test accuracy (DTA) review. In addition to investigating test accuracy, they ideally also investigate why the results may vary among studies, compare the performance of alternative tests, and help the reader to put the evidence in a clinical context. Watch the video below and read on to learn more about DTA reviews.

Cochrane DTA reviews are a type of systematic review that aim to evaluate the accuracy of diagnostic tests. They want to find out whether a new test is more accurate than an existing test, or whether it is quicker, cheaper or easier to perform. Answers to these questions help patients and healthcare workers make informed decisions about which test to use, based on up-to-date evidence. 

DTA reviews evaluate how well diagnostic tests (index tests) identify or exclude a particular disease or condition (the target condition). We know that diagnostic tests make errors, even when they are correctly performed. There are two types of test errors: false positive test errors (the index test suggests the target condition is present when it is not) and false negative test errors (the test suggests the target condition is absent when it is not). Cochrane DTA reviews can cover all types of diagnostic tests, from antibody tests to X-rays, for any disease or condition. It is really important that diagnostic tests provide accurate results so that people can receive prompt treatment or take preventive measures if necessary, and to avoid unnecessary testing, treatment and anxiety. 

DTA reviews search for all relevant test accuracy studies, appraise the studies for reliability, and combine their results. This gives the best possible estimate of the accuracy of an index test based on all the available evidence. DTA reviews are systematic because they search for and analyze evidence in a systematic way, according to predetermined and published methods.

Test accuracy studies most often report accuracy using sensitivity and specificity. 

• Sensitivity means the proportion of people with the target condition who are correctly detected by the index test. 
• Specificity means the proportion of people without the target condition who are correctly identified by the index test. 

Therefore, the nearer the sensitivity and specificity are to 100%, the better the test.

An alternative way to report test accuracy is using positive and negative predictive values, which tell us about the usefulness of a positive index test result and a negative index test respectively – this helps patients understand how reliable their test results are. Predictive values measure the number of positive index test results that will be true positives and the number of negative index test results that will be true negatives. The nearer the positive and negative predictive values are to 100%, the better the test. 

• View Cochrane DTA training for authors
• Visit the Cochrane Screening and Diagnostic Test Methods group website
• Read the Students 4 Best Evidence blog post 'Diagnostics Studies: how to get started with appraising the evidence'
• Learn more: What is the difference between a Cochrane systematic review of interventions and a Cochrane diagnostic test accuracy review?

Friday, March 22, 2024

The Early Career Professionals Network aims to provide its members with opportunities to enhance their knowledge, skills, and expertise by providing a platform for international networking with early career professionals or other members in the Cochrane community.

Though there is no one single definition of an ‘Early Career Professional/Researcher,’ bodies such as the European Research Commission, Economic and Social Research Council, and De Montfort University generally agree that an ECP is someone who is roughly within the first five years of their research activity. Informally, we also define an ECP as PhD students and post-docs.

This group has four main objectives, including international networking, representing trainees, active patient involvement, and knowledge translation.

Upcoming Events: 

Cochrane US mentoring program: past experiences and future possibilities / challenges
Date: 30 August 2022
Time: 16:00 BST (view in your time zone)
Language: English
Register: Register for free!
Join  Cochrane Early Career Professionals Network (ECP) as they host Cochrane US Mentoring Program founder, Tiffany Duque and former & current program participants.  Hear Maria and Paola’s accounts of participating in and now working with the mentoring program - what they learned, how it has helped their careers, and what is next for them in Cochrane.  Also, Year 2 mentee applicants are invited to attend to hear the final Y2 participants announced.  Tiffany will talk about what is new for Year 2, and how you can get involved.  Hosted by Ana Beatriz Pizarro, Year 1 program coordinator and Year 2 mentor.  Come to listen and stay to ask questions! A great opportunity to learn and network!  Everyone is welcome! 

Host:

• Ana Beatriz Pizarro, RN
  Co-lead, Cochrane ECP & ExME
  Member, Cochrane Editorial Board
  Year 1 program coordinator

Speakers:

• Tiffany Duque, MPH, RDN
  Senior Officer, Cochrane Geographic Groups, Networks & Fields
  Founder, Cochrane US Mentoring Program

• Paola Andrenacci, RDN
  Clinical Nutritionist - Argentina
  Coordinator – Cochrane Mentoring Program
  Year 1 mentee; Year 2 mentor

• Maria Alejandra Barrios, MD
  Professor of EBM  & Director, EBM Research Center - Colombia
  Year 1 mentee; Year 2 mentor

Related information:

• Visit the Early Career Professionals Cochrane Network page on Cochrane Community
• View videos of past events
• Follow ECP on Twitter or check out the #CochraneEarlyCareer hashtag

• Subscribe to the ECO Newsletter for a ‘one-stop-shop’ of resources, training, events, opportunities, features, blogs relevant to Early Career Researchers. Register for a Cochrane Account > My account > Communications tab > Sign up for all of the newsletters you’re interested in, including the Early Career Professionals Network newsletter.

Friday, August 19, 2022

Cochrane has a commitment to producing and sharing high quality health evidence to as broad an audience as possible. Cochrane partnered in 2014 with Wikipedia, with the joint goal of improving the quality and reliability of human health-related articles that people are accessing online.

Jennifer Dawson, PhD, is a Wikipedia Consultant for Cochrane. Her role includes maintaining and building further relations with Wikipedia, connecting new editors to the Wikipedia community, and supporting requests for engagement in Wikipedia work from the Cochrane community. We interviewed Jennifer to learn more about the Cochrane-Wikipedia partnership:

Why should we care about Wikipedia?
Millions of people around the world access health-related information on Wikipedia each day. Medical-related articles are available in over 286 languages on Wikipedia and often come up early on an internet search. The readership base varies broadly and includes members of the public, medical students, medical professionals, journalists, and policy makers (More info here). Given that so many people are consulting Wikipedia on a daily basis, we feel that Cochrane’s commitment to producing and sharing high quality health evidence includes sharing that evidence where people are accessing it.

What's Cochrane's Community contribution to Wikipedia?
As of 2023, 3400 Cochrane Systematic Reviews published in the past 10 years help inform evidence in medical articles shared on English Wikipedia. There are additional ongoing initiatives in other languages including Spanish, Dutch, and Farsi Wikipedias. Many Cochrane community members and volunteers participate in this initiative, collaborating with the Wikipedia editing community and using high-quality and trusted evidence to correct errors of omission, expand medical articles, and remove unreliable or outdated content shared on Wikipedia.

How can I get involved?
Nearly half of all Cochrane Reviews are already shared on Wikipedia! Cochrane is presently the most frequently cited peer-reviewed medical journal on Wikipedia (More info here).  But English Wikipedia includes over 36,000 health-related articles, so there are more Cochrane reviews that still can be shared on Wikipedia. There are two main ways you can get involved:

1.    Add new Cochrane Evidence to Wikipedia - Every three months, a new list of Cochrane Reviews to consider for Wikipedia is generated. Reviews to consider for Wikipedia are organized by Cochrane Review Group and can be access here:  Cochrane Review List (English).

2.    Ensure that the evidence already shared on Wikipedia is accurate, unbiased, and up to date. - Volunteers are needed to review what is presently shared in Wikipedia. Wikipedia articles that include out dated versions of Cochrane Reviews need to be updated. Cochrane maintains a list of Reviews that need updating. This list is refreshed monthly to include recently updated Cochrane Reviews: Cochrane-Wikipedia Update Project.

How can I edit Wikipedia in languages other than English?
Cochrane has active projects in many different languages including Spanish, French, and Dutch. Please visit the “Projects” tab project page to learn more about specific projects: Cochrane-Wikipedia Projects.

How can I learn how to edit Wikipedia?
Cochrane has developed and collated numerous training resources. Our newest resource, the Wikipedian in Training Resource, is the best place to begin. This resource shares suggested first steps, ideas for how to practice editing, and an example of the general workflow of editing Wikipedia and sharing Cochrane evidence.

Jennifer can be found on Wikipedia at: JenOttawa and by email at jdawson@cochrane.org. Please visit the Cochrane-Wikipedia Project Page for more information.

Friday, March 24, 2023 Category: The difference we make