EPPI Christmas everyone!

For research teams everywhere, it seems the last few years since the COVID-19 pandemic began have been exceptionally busy. 2022 has been another very busy year for us here at the EPPI Centre. So, we thought we’d look back over the year and share some of our highlights!

Shiny EPPI people!

This year it’s been wonderful to welcome three new team members.

• Rachel Edwards joined the team undertaking primary and secondary research to examine the influence of embedded researchers in public health decision-making settings.
• Gareth Hollands joined the team working on examining equity in public health intervention reviews and the team working with the International Public Policy Observatory on COVID-19 (IPPO).
• Anastasia Koryakina joined the team supporting our review software EPPI Reviewer.

We also celebrated one of our longest serving team members, Rebecca Rees, becoming a Professor of Social Policy and Head of the Social Science Research Unit (SSRU) where the EPPI Centre is based!

New reviews published in 2022
Reviews published this year for the London-York NIHR Policy Research Programme Reviews Facility with our partners at the Centre for Research and Dissemination and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine include:

• COVID-19 and population mental health: a systematic review
• IPPO living map and rapid evidence review on COVID-19 misinformation
• Digital interventions for alcohol and drug misuse prevention, treatment and recovery: systematic maps of research and available interventions

We’ve also produced a number of reports for the International Public Policy Observatory on COVID-19. Including our most recent review on misinformation in COVID-19.
Please do visit our website for a comprehensive list of published reviews.

New methods work

Handling Complexity in Evidence from systematic reviews and meta-analyses of Public Health Interventions (CEPHI): This year we’ve been developing and testing four new methods for synthesizing evidence to better account for context than standard statistical meta-analysis approaches as part of this NIHR funded project. This work was underpinned by coproduction, and supported by the UCL Co-Production collective. Watch out for publications on this in 2023!

Examining the dimensions of equity (Research England Policy Support Fund): We are examining the methods used by systematic reviewers to conceptualise possible dimensions of health equity impacts of public health interventions, such as using a PROGRESS-Plus approach. These dimensions include socioeconomic status, race/ethnicity and gender/sex. We are also looking at the practical and conceptual issues encountered in applying such methods.

Key publications and presentations

We have been busy sharing our knowledge too.

Several team members contributed to and presented at a virtual conference in partnership with Manipal in India: International Conference on indigenizing systematic review evidence to local context for informing policy and practice decisions organized by Manipal College of Nursing, Manipal, Public Health Evidence South Asia, PSPH, MAHE in collaboration with Social Science Research Unit, Social Research Institute, University College London, UK.

We thoroughly enjoyed hosting a hub for the 2022 What Works Global Summit. The EPPI Centre team presented several papers and were delighted that the best session award went to a session on innovative approaches in evidence synthesis, which included three EPPI Centre presentations on the CEPHI project!

Here’s a few of the team’s publications from this year …

• Is a one-size-fits-all ‘12-month rule’ appropriate when it comes to the last search date in systematic reviews? | BMJ Evidence-Based Medicine
• Applying machine classifiers to update searches: Analysis from two case studies | Research Synthesis Methods | Wiley Online Library
• Machine learning reduced workload for the Cochrane COVID-19 Study Register: development and evaluation of the Cochrane COVID-19 Study Classifier | Systematic Reviews
• Consumption and effects of caffeinated energy drinks in young people: an overview of systematic reviews and secondary analysis of UK data to inform policy | BMJ Open
• ‘Leading  from the front’ implementation increases the success of influenza vaccination drives among healthcare workers: a reanalysis of systematic review evidence using Intervention Component Analysis (ICA) and Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) | BMC Health Services Research

Looking forward to 2023 ...

New projects

We have two exciting new projects lined up for 2023!

A new round of funding from the International Public Policy Observatory means we’ll continue to contribute to reviews about the best ways to mitigate social harms associated with COVID-19.

We were also delighted to be successful in our bid to become one of the newly funded National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) Evidence Synthesis Groups. We're extremely excited to be drawing on a range of cutting-edge methods to produce reviews during this five-year contract including: Engagement with stakeholders to ensure relevance; Co-production to ensure equity and inclusivity; Evidence-to-decision methods to ensure utility and impact; and Automation and continuous surveillance to ensure up-to-date evidence.

Events

We’re very excited that the 2023 Cochrane Colloquium will be on our home turf in London and hope to catch up with many people there!
And, we’re also very much looking forward to hosting some further excellent seminars as part of the London Evidence Syntheses and Research Use Seminars newly relaunched in collaboration with colleagues at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM). We’re trialling a hybrid format that we hope means we can connect with reviewers well beyond our London setting. Kicking off the 2023 seminars, will be a seminar on PPI in systematic reviews: challenges and possible solutions? On 25th January – we hope you can join us!

Wishing you all a wonderful festive break!

Image: "christmas tree lights" by pshab is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0..