Global Evidence Summit 2024: Cochrane Planetary Health & other highlights

News

1 Oct

Earlier this month, over 2,000 evidence enthusiasts from 90 countries gathered in Prague for the Global Evidence Summit 2024. The event was designed to provide a multi-disciplinary and cross-cultural platform to exchange ideas about how best to produce, summarise and disseminate evidence to inform policy and practice to improve people’s lives across the world. Key themes included: the sustainable development agenda; the importance of research integrity making evidence accessible; evidence translation and implementation; advocating for greater evidence communication; and global evidence to local impact.

The Cochrane Australia/ALEC contingent at the Global Evidence Summit 2024

An enthusiastic contingent from Cochrane Australia and the Australian Living Evidence Collaboration (ALEC) journeyed to the Czech Republic to present at and participate in the big event, including Cochrane Australia’s Professor in Evidence Synthesis Methods Tari Turner.

‘The GES offered an amazing opportunity to share our work on the global stage, and join with friends and colleagues from across the evidence community,’ Tari says. ‘Participating in a number of panel discussions really highlighted the global interest in living evidence and living guidelines.’

ALEC Guidelines Program Manager Miranda Cumpston echoed these sentiments saying ‘The summit really highlighted that ALEC is at the forefront of living evidence synthesis, both at home and abroad. We all gained so much from hearing from colleagues from around the world about exciting developments and innovations in the field, including how we can consider climate impact in our work.’

‘A real highlight for us was the announcement of the new Cochrane Planetary Health Thematic Group, which will see experts in health and climate come together in a new global collaboration that will build the evidence base and address some of our most critical challenges.’

Miranda is set to play a leading role in Cochrane Planetary Health, as co-director with Dr Maria-Inti Metzendorf in Germany and Denise Thomson in Canada. The three co-directors had much to talk about and plan throughout the week-long event.

‘It’s been seven years since the last GES, so it was great to see the diversity of content, shared goals and synergies across research groups,’ adds ALEC Director of Evidence and Methods and Cochrane Australia researcher, Heath White. ‘It was very useful to hear not only about the amazing success stories from around the world, but also people sharing their challenges and failures, as these are often the catalysts for improvement.’

As the new Chair of the Guidelines International Networks Updating and Living Guidelines Working Group Heath was also excited to see researchers from across the globe come together to share knowledge and advance methods in living evidence synthesis and research.