Articles - Evidence Based Systematic Reviews

Community-Based Interventions for the Prevention and Control of Infectious Diseases of Poverty

This thematic series of eight papers provides an overview on infectious diseases of poverty and integrated community-based interventions, describes the analytical framework and the methodology used to guide the systematic reviews, reports findings for the effectiveness of community-based interventions for the prevention and control of helminthic NTDs, non-helminthic NTDs, malaria, HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis and proposes a way forward. While previous reviews focus on process and effectiveness of integrated community-based interventions under real life field conditions, this series of papers evaluates the efficacy of such interventions with respect to disease or prevention outcomes.

Living Systematic Reviews: An Emerging Opportunity to Narrow the Evidence-Practice Gap

The current difficulties in keeping systematic reviews up to date leads to considerable inaccuracy,  hampering the translation of knowledge into action. Incremental advances in conventional review updating are unlikely to lead to substantial improvements in review currency. A new approach is needed. The authors propose living systematic review as a contribution to evidence synthesis that combines currency with rigour to enhance the accuracy and utility of health evidence.