![]() The six National Collaborating Centres for Public Health were created by the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) in 2005 to strengthen public health in response to the 2003 Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) epidemic. The production of high-quality syntheses, including critical appraisal of included studies, is particularly important in the current COVID-19 “infodemic”. A systematic and rigorous process should be maintained with respect to searching, study selection, data extraction, and quality assessment. As RRs may have a greater likelihood of bias due to expedited processes, transparency in method is important, with explicit identification of departures from systematic review methods. A number of different methodological approaches to conducting a RR exist in order to ‘streamline’ the approach, including limiting the number of databases or timeframe searched, using only a single reviewer for screening, data extraction and/or critical appraisal, or omitting steps such as critical appraisal, meta-analysis, and fulsome write-up. RRs can be defined as “a form of knowledge synthesis that accelerates the process of conducting a traditional systematic review through streamlining or omitting a variety of methods to produce evidence in a resource-efficient manner”. As a result, several global evidence synthesis organizations pivoted to producing COVID-19-related rapid reviews (RR). The time to conduct a full systematic review and guideline (> 1–2 years ) vastly exceeds the time available to make urgent decisions during public health crises. An up-to-date guideline based on high-quality systematic reviews is considered the best source of evidence for decision-making. best practice guidelines, systematic reviews) represent the highest levels of research evidence, summarizing and interpreting results of individual studies and contextualizing them within a larger body of knowledge. An analysis of Web of Science and Scopus found 23,634 COVID-19-related documents from January-June 2020 this, compared to a PubMed search revealing 28,300 cardiovascular disease-related publications in all of 2019. This has been further exacerbated with an explosion of COVID-19 evidence due to the increased availability of pre-prints that have not yet undergone peer review, and as publishers expedite steps in the peer-review process to make evidence available in a timely manner. Public health decision-makers are always challenged with integrating research into decision-making. The development, evolution, and lessons learned from our process, presented here, provides a real-world example of how review-level evidence can be made available – rapidly and rigorously, and in response to decision-makers’ needs – during an unprecedented public health crisis.Ĭoronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is an urgent public health crisis requiring prompt decision-making due to rapidly evolving policy and practice needs. To date reviews have been accessed and cited around the world, and a more fulsome evaluation of impact on decision-making is planned. Reviews receive an average of 213 downloads per week, with some reaching over 7700. From May 2020 to July 21, 2021, we have answered more than 31 distinct questions and completed 32 updates as new evidence emerged. Rapid reviews are typically completed and disseminated within two weeks. We synthesize the findings into a final report that includes key messages, with a rating of the certainty of the evidence using GRADE, as well as an overview of evidence and remaining knowledge gaps. We develop and conduct a comprehensive search strategy and critically appraise all relevant evidence using validated tools. ResultsĮach week, the Rapid Evidence Service team receives requests from public health decision-makers, prioritizes questions received, and frames the prioritized topics into searchable questions. ![]() In response to this challenge, the National Collaborating Centre for Methods and Tools developed a Rapid Evidence Service, building on internationally accepted rapid review methodologies, to address priority COVID-19 public health questions. This research speed and volume, along with variability in quality, could overwhelm public health decision-makers striving to make timely decisions based on the best available evidence. ![]() ![]() The COVID-19 public health crisis has produced an immense and quickly evolving body of evidence.
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