Process for Writing Evidence Reviews

An evidence review is a succinct synthesis document that addresses contemporary public health challenges by summarizing the current state of knowledge and highlighting key issues to inform policies, programs and practices. The objectives of NCCID’s evidence reviews are:

• To critically assess and consolidate published research findings
• To contextualize new research findings for the Canadian setting
• To review, compare and contrast current policies and practices implemented in Canada and internationally
• To discuss how new research findings may impact current policies and practices at a local level
• Where possible, to incorporate tacit/experiential knowledge of public health practitioners who are directly involved with the issue in their work
• To highlight issues requiring further investigation/research.

An evidence review should be informative and policy- or practice-oriented. To ensure an evidence review is relevant to the information need of our target users (predominately frontline public health practitioners), they are identified in advance and are involved throughout the writing process from the initial suggestion of a topic to the final review of the completed document.  Involvement of frontline public health practitioners is accomplished through their participation on an advisory committee established for a specific evidence review series. In addition to frontline public health practitioners, an advisory committee often also includes researchers, members of academia and representatives from provincial public health authorities. Evidence reviews are written by graduate students or community health residents under the supervision of experienced faculty members from Canadian universities.

Once a topic is confirmed, a preliminary outline of the evidence review is drafted in-house. The outline is assessed by the advisory committee in terms of its comprehensiveness in scope and content of the topic and is then revised accordingly. Based on the approved outline, the writer populates subheadings of the evidence review with the relevant peer-reviewed publications. Before the writer is to begin the writing process, the advisory committee reviews the list of literature to ascertain that the captured publications are appropriate and are of high quality. The advisory committee is also asked to suggest additional publications pertinent to the evidence review. The completed document is revised by the writer based on feedback from the advisory committee before publication.

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