15:30 Monday July 15th

Systematic reviews are important tools for healthcare decision making. Involving stakeholders (e.g. patients, the public, policy makers and healthcare professionals) in the planning, doing and dissemination of systematic reviews is one possible way to increase their relevance and uptake as well as reduce waste. Part of the rationale for this is to ensure that the review outputs answer questions of importance to those who are most likely to use them.

However, uncertainties remain on the best ways to do this. Recent scoping reviews on the topic confirmed the limited evidence base to draw upon as well as highlighting the need for better reporting of involvement methods.^[1],^[2]  Tools such as the new ‘ACTIVE framework’ (part of the Authors and Consumers Together Impacting on eVidencE project) may help.^[3] But there remains a lack of an evidence base on the impact of such tools, the support needed by stakeholders,  the expectations about how stakeholder input will be used and implemented and whether the involvement should be tailored to the review type.

In this workshop, colleagues from Oxford (UK) and Toronto (Canada) will come together to facilitate a participant-led exchange of knowledge, experiences and ideas. The discussion will aim to explore these challenges as well as possible solutions for the future.

^[1] Tricco, A.C., Zarin, W., Rios, P., Nincic, V., Khan, P.A., Ghassemi, M., Diaz, S., Straus, S.E. and Langlois, E.V., 2018. Engaging policy-makers, health system managers, and policy analysts in the knowledge synthesis process: a scoping review. Implementation Science, 13(1), p.31.

^[2] Pollock, Alex, et al. “Stakeholder involvement in systematic reviews: a scoping review.” Systematic reviews 7.1 (2018): 208.

^[3] Pollock, Alex, et al. “Development of the ACTIVE framework to describe stakeholder involvement in systematic reviews.” Journal of health services research & policy (2018): 1355819619841647.