Special session at Cochrane Colloquium 2023 - Going farther, faster together: Implementing the recommendations of the Evidence Commission report

>> Download the slides from this special session at the Cochrane Colloquium 2023

One year has passed since the publication of the report of the Global Commission on Evidence to Address Societal Challenges (henceforth the Evidence Commission). We see reasons for optimism, as well as reasons to double down on efforts to implement the report’s recommendations. While government policymakers in some countries (like those newly elected in some Latin American countries) are open to new approaches to decision-making and evidence use, many policymakers, organizational leaders and professionals have largely returned to pre-pandemic approaches. While some funders and donors and some impact-oriented evidence producers have piloted coordination mechanisms, many evidence producers continue to operate without coordination and to generate significant research waste. While many citizens have become more aware of the potential value of evidence, many others have become more distrustful of decision-makers and evidence.

This Special Session has two overarching objectives:

• to provide an overview of the Evidence Commission’s three implementation priorities
• formalizing and strengthening domestic evidence-support systems
• enhancing and leveraging the global evidence architecture
• putting evidence at the centre of everyday life
• to explore ways to promote, contribute to and/or lead efforts to implement the Evidence Commission’s recommendations and implementation priorities.

The Evidence Commission Secretariat and its partners in 12 countries are conducting Rapid Evidence-Support System Assessments (RESSAs) and sharing lessons learned through the RESSA Country Team Leads Group. The goal in each country is to:

1. identify what is going well that needs to be systematized and scaled up;
2. identify gaps that should be prioritized to address; and
3. work with decision-makers, organizational leaders, professionals and citizens to push for improvements.

The Evidence Commission Secretariat and its partners are exploring ways to develop one or more viable models and to seek funding and the support of evidence producers to pilot the model and then to scale it up based on lessons learned.

Efforts are also underway to partner with citizen-serving non-governmental organizations and citizen leaders to identify what works to:

1. help citizens judge what others are claiming or more generally find (and receive) reliable information;
2. make evidence available to citizens when they are making choices;
3. engage citizens in asking questions and answering them (with new research or with existing evidence); and
4. make evidence-based choices the default or easy option.