If Cochrane reviews are to inform decision making, they need to be relevant. In infectious diseases, CIDG editors listen to policy maker priorities in malaria and diarrhoea, and this helped produce reviews that had high impact (amodiaquine for malaria, for example). On the other hand, editors also watched emerging policies in other areas to identify topics for reviews. This has helped produce reviews that have often not been elicited by policy makers, but are highly relevant, and have often challenged policy (community distribution of anthelminth drugs, for example).

The presenter will argue that review priority setting through dialogue with people with policy influence is a core role of a Cochrane editorial team, but that any scientific endeavour is anti-authoritarian by it’s very nature, and there is a need to identify reviews that policy makers may not want to be carried out.