A systematic review of relevance to the Portal addresses health promotion and chronic disease prevention. Systematic reviews provide a summary of the literature on a particular topic. These reviews summarize the learnings into generalizable principles. By definition, systematic reviews summarize, appraise and communicate the results and implications of otherwise unmanageable quantities of research 1. Systematic reviews bring together separately conducted studies (sometimes with conflicting findings) and synthesize the results. In this way they contribute to the evaluation of both existing and new technologies and practices.
Systematic reviews will not provide details on specific programs or interventions, but they may reference these as examples to illustrate the findings generated from the review. The Canadian Best Practices Portal for Health Promotion and Chronic Disease Prevention has selected 13 systematic review databases to provide links to.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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 behaviours in young people and in children.
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.
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.
During the summer 2007, health-evidence.ca refined their search process to enhance the breadth of Obesity and Social Determinants of Health search strategies. 170 new references to systematic reviews and meta-analyses were added over the summer, of which 100 were assessed as being of strong methodological quality.Over 1065 relevant titles are currently included in the health-evidence.ca registry.
The health-evidence.ca website provides quality research evidence to public health decision makers. The site saves user-time searching, screening and rating the systematic review evidence by compiling it in a free, searchable online registry. Users can locate references to review literature in the form of systematic reviews and meta-analyses, which are gathered through a comprehensive search of electronic databases, journal tables of contents and reference lists.
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.
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).
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.
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