Table 1 Potential opportunities presented by living evidence syntheses for adaptive policy
From: Living evidence and adaptive policy: perfect partners?
Theme from Cochrane KT Framework | Potential opportunities presented by living evidence |
|---|---|
1. Prioritization and co-production of reviews—Producing reviews which meet the needs of policy-makers | • Policy makers can shape reviews to meet their needs as these vary over time • Syntheses which are high priority for policy-making are selected to be ‘living’ where they address priority questions for policymakers, there is uncertainty in the existing evidence, and it is expected that new evidence will arise and could change the conclusion of the review • Evidence teams can be dynamic and include, or engage with, the same or different policy-makers in a variety of ways over time, as questions and interests change |
2. Packaging, push and support to implementation—Ensuring policy-makers receive and can act on reviews and products | • A ‘news feed’ of updated summaries of evidence in specific topics can be disseminated regularly through social and other media • Policy-makers can sign-up to be notified when important new evidence is identified in their topics of interest, or researchers can forward to policy-makers with known areas of interest |
3. Facilitating pull—Growing policy-makers’ capacity to find and use reviews | • Policy-makers can be confident that reviews are both reliable and up-to-date, containing and appraising all relevant research, whenever they access them |
4. Exchange—Engaging with policy-makers to support their evidence informed decision making | • Ongoing nature of production enables a stronger relationship between reviewers and policy-makers leading to better understanding of needs • Topics and questions can be revised and adapted as policy interests or contextual factors evolve over time |
5. Improving climate—Advocating for evidence informed health policy-making | • Always up-to-date nature of reviews means review producers can rapidly disseminated and demonstrate availability of relevant, reliable evidence when issues gain policy interest, addressing a frequently cited barrier to evidence-informed policymaking and improving the climate for evidence use |