Systematic reviews in public health: old chestnuts and new challenges
Mark Petticrew
Department of Public Health and Policy,
Bulletin of the World Health Organization (BLT) Volume 87, Number 3, March 2009
Full article text [HTML] | Full article text [pdf 90kb]
“…..Evidence on interventions to improve public health is in short supply, particularly evidence on social determinants. Systematic reviewers therefore face a real challenge in making best use of the sometimes poor, often sparse and usually heterogeneous evidence available to them. It is easy to set narrow inclusion criteria for a review and then sift through the evidence before concluding that there isn’t enough – and what there is, isn’t very good anyway. Such “evidential nihilism” is probably not helpful to decision-makers, and public health systematic reviewers need to continue to develop new methods and better frameworks within which different types of research evidence can be integrated to inform decision-making….”
Evidence for public health decision-making: towards reliable synthesis
Elizabeth Waters
McCaughey Centre,
Bulletin of the World Health Organization (BLT) Volume 87, Number 3, March 2009
Full article text [HTML] | Full article text [pdf 130kb]
“…..Public health decision-makers are often overwhelmed with large quantities of data, evidence, reviews and summaries. As the volume of information increases, the need for trusted sources of synthesis becomes greater.1
If we recognize the need for good methods of summarizing research that address policy makers’ information needs in a reliable and timely manner, then how do we agree on what those methods are? …”
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