Cochrane Canada has received the following letter of support from Health Evidence™. 

Dear Dr. Grimshaw,

Launched in 2005, Health Evidence™ is a comprehensive registry of reviews evaluating the effectiveness of public health and health promotion interventions. We provide over 90,000 visitors per year access to over 4,300 quality-rated systematic reviews, with links to full text, plain language summaries, and podcasts, where available. The Health EvidenceTM repository has indexed and appraised over 900 Cochrane reviews. With such a large portion of our content sourced from Cochrane, we feel obligated to share our concern that Cochrane Canada’s funding will not be renewed. 

Our mission is to make evidence easily accessible, while developing organizational and individual capacity for evidence-informed public health decision making. It’s not surprising, then, that Cochrane reviews are considered a gold standard by Health Evidence™ and our users, and that Cochrane reviews are the most highly-accessed content in www.healthevidence.org. Through Twitter, webinars, and our monthly communications to our users, we disseminate actionable findings from Cochrane reviews to public health professionals across Canada, and worldwide. 

Cochrane Canada is an essential resource for our public health audience, providing high quality reviews necessary to make informed decisions in selecting, tailoring, and implementing public health interventions. Beyond the scope of public health, Cochrane is often the first resource relied upon by nearly every health field from medicine to policy and program planning. Cochrane provides knowledge users across Canada and the world with the ability to make informed decisions in practice and policy, ultimately impacting health care systems and population health worldwide. 

The rigour and standards of Cochrane reviews enable end users to more easily appraise, adapt and translate evidence into practice. Cochrane’s capacity to conduct and report high quality health research in Canada is a truly invaluable and appreciated resource. We strongly encourage the Canadian government to support knowledge translation and continue funding Cochrane Canada!

Sincerely, 

Maureen Dobbins RN, PhD

Scientific Director, National Collaborating Centre for Methods and Tools & Health Evidence™