The BME Collaboration (Best Evidence Medical and Health Professional Education)
The BEME is an international group of individuals, universities and professional organizations committed to the development of evidence informed education in the medical and health professions through (1) the dissemination of information which allows teachers and stakehholders in the medical and health professions to make decisions on the basis of the best evidence available; (2) the production of systematic reviews which present the best available evidence and meet the needs of the user; and (3) the creation of a culture of best evidence education among individuals, institutions and national bodies. This organization is european based.
Campbell Collaboration Reviews of Interventions and Policy Evaluations
The international Campbell Collaboration (C2) is a non-profit organization that aims to help people make well-informed decisions about the effects of interventions in the social, behavioral and educational arenas. Its objectives are to prepare, maintain and disseminate systematic reviews of studies of interventions. It acquires and promotes access to information about trials of interventions. C2 builds summaries and electronic brochures of reviews and reports of trials for policy makers, practitioners, researchers and the public. The C2 Reviews of Interventions and Policy Evaluations Database (C2-RIPE) contains reviews about education, crime and justice, social welfare and methods. educational arenas.
C2's objectives are to prepare, maintain and disseminate systematic reviews of studies of interventions. We acquire and promote access to information about trials of interventions. C2 builds summaries and electronic brochures of reviews and reports of trials for policy makers, practitioners, researchers and the public.
The C2 Reviews of Interventions and Policy Evaluations Database (C2-RIPE) contains reviews about education, crime and justice, social welfare and methods.
Canadian Task Force on Preventive Health Care
The CTFPHC serves as a practical guide to health care providers, planners and consumers to determine the inclusion or exclusion, content and frequency of a wide variety of preventive health interventions on the basis of its evidence-based recommendations.
Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews
Cochrane reviews are based on the best available information about health care interventions. They explore the evidence for and against the effectiveness and appropriateness of treatments (medications, surgery, education, etc) in specific circumstances. The complete reviews are published in The Cochrane Library, either on CDROM or via the Internet. It is available by subscription, but you should be able to browse The Cochrane Library at your nearest medical library if you don't have your own subscription. It is published four times a year. Each issue contains all existing reviews plus an increasingly wider range of new and updated ones. It is published and distributed by Wiley InterScience. It is also distributed by a number of other distribution partners. It is not available for sale from Cochrane Centres.
Database of Abstracts of Reviews of Effects (DARE)
DARE contains summaries of systematic reviews that have met strict quality criteria. Reviews must be about the effects of interventions. The database covers a broad range of health and social care topics. It can be used for answering questions about the effects of interventions, as well as for developing guidelines and policy making.
Effective Public Health Practice Project (EPHPP)
The EPHPP is a resource for evidence-based public health decision making in Ontario at the provincial level and in Canada the federal level. It conducts systematic reviews on the effectiveness of public health interventions, and summarizes recent, high-quality reviews produced by other organizations. Although the EPHPP reviews focus on public health interventions, review methodology and results are frequently of interest to a broader audience of service and research professionals. The range of review topics is broad.
EPPI-Centre's Database of Promoting Health Effectiveness Reviews (DoPHER)
DoPHER is a specialized register concentrating on reviews. It currently contains over 1,200 reviews, which have been identified as a result of conducting systematic reviews within EPPI-Centre. The database was last updated with references located for systematic reviews conducted up to December 2003. Work is currently in progress to update it for systematic reviews conducted up to January 2005. DoPHER will be updated with searches of several sources for January 2004 to October 2005. From January 2006, it will be updated and maintained on a quarterly basis to keep it as current as possible.
EPPI-Centre's Health Promotion Review Documents
Systematic review documents about a number of different topic areas that are relevant to chronic disease prevention are available in PDF format. Specific systematic reviews look at promoting healthy behaviors in young people and in children.
Evidence-Based Practice Centers Evidence Reports
The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality created Evidence-based Practice Centers in 1997 to synthesize existing scientific literature about important health care topics and promote evidence-based practice and decision making. The majority of the evidence reports are clinical reports.
Guide to Community Preventive Services (Community Guide)
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Community Guide filters scientific literature on specific health problems. This literature can be large, inconsistent, uneven in quality and even inaccessible. The Community Guide summarizes what is known about the effectiveness, economic efficiency and feasibility of interventions to promote community health and prevent disease. The Task Force on Community Preventive Services makes recommendations for the use of various interventions. The recommendations are based on the evidence gathered in the rigorous and systematic scientific reviews of published studies, which are conducted by Community Guide review teams. Review findings are published in peer-reviewed journals and also available on the Community Guide website.
Health Evidence from McMaster University
Access to 4,801 quality-rated systematic reviews evaluating the effectiveness of public health interventions.
Health Systems Evidence from McMaster University
Health Systems Evidence is a continuously updated repository of syntheses of research evidence about governance, financial and delivery arrangements within health systems, and about implementation strategies that can support change in health systems. Health Systems Evidence also contains a continuously updated repository of economic evaluations in these same domains, descriptions of health system reforms, and descriptions of health systems, as well as a variety of types of complementary content (e.g. World Health Organization documents about health systems).
National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) Public Health Evidence Base
The NICE Public Heath Evidence Base consists of evidence briefing papers and evidence reviews across a range of topics. These provide an account of the state of the evidence, identify gaps in the research base and make recommendations for future research. The briefing papers are not being updated. See the NICE Public Health Intervention Guidance entry for more recent publications.
National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) Public Health Intervention Guidance
The NICE Public Heath Intervention Guidance makes recommendations on types of interventions that help to reduce the risk of developing a disease or condition, or that help to promote or maintain a healthy lifestyle. Examples of interventions would be giving advice (e.g. general medical practice to encourage exercise), providing services (e.g. a needle exchange scheme for injecting drug users), and providing support (e.g. for new mothers to enable the uptake and continuation of breastfeeding).
U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF)
An independent panel of experts in primary care and prevention systematically reviews the evidence of effectiveness and develops recommendations for clinical preventive services. The USPSTF conducts rigorous, impartial assessments of the scientific evidence for the effectiveness of a broad range of clinical preventive services; these include screening, counseling and preventive medications. Its recommendations are considered the "gold standard" for clinical preventive services. The USPSTF mission is to evaluate the benefits of individual services based on age, gender and risk factors for disease; make recommendations about which preventive services should be incorporated routinely into primary medical care and for which populations; and identify a research agenda for clinical preventive care.
1. NHS Centre for Reviews and Dissemination. Undertaking systematic reviews of research on effectiveness: CRD Guidelines for those carrying out or commissioning reviews. CRD Report 4. University of York, UK: NHS, Centre for Reviews and Dissemination; 1996.