Abstract
The Cochrane Collaboration is 20 years old this year. Established in 1993, the Collaboration has sought to provide an up-to-date, critical evidence base for all those involved in health care decision-making at a variety of levels. This article illustrates the work of the Cochrane Oral Health Group, based at the University of Manchester, UK.
Keywords
International celebrations are taking place throughout 2013 to mark 20 years’ existence of The Cochrane Collaboration, culminating later this year in celebrations at the 21st Colloquium in Quebec, Canada (September 19-23, 2013). A quote from The Lancet summarizes the value of the Collaboration well: “The Cochrane Collaboration is an enterprise that rivals the Human Genome Project in its potential implications for modern medicine” (Naylor, 1995).
Today, over 26,000 people from around the world contribute to The Cochrane Collaboration’s work, which is carried out by 53 Cochrane Review Groups (CRGs) consisting mostly of volunteer health care professionals. Half of these groups are based in the UK and receive infrastructure funding from the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR), including the Cochrane Oral Health Group (COHG).
The COHG is now comprised of over 1,200 oral health care professionals, researchers, and consumers from over 40 different countries around the world, publishing 133 systematic reviews, 69 review updates, and 66 protocols to date (as of April 2013), with further reviews and protocols in preparation.
To ensure the sustainability of priority reviews for the profession and that they remain of high quality and up to date, the COHG established its Global Alliance in 2010 as an international enterprise. International groups and organizations are working in partnership to strategically direct and fund methodological support. Already, the Global Alliance has made enormous improvements to the evidence base available in orthodontics and pediatric dentistry.
The most frequently accessed reviews and the percentages of reviews in different clinical areas are shown in the Table and Figure.
Top 10 Cochrane Oral Health Reviews Accessed Worldwide in 2011*
As reported by Wiley (publisher of The Cochrane Library and Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews) in Sept., 2012.
Division of published oral health systematic reviews on The Cochrane Library by sub-topic.
The COHG appreciates being informed of relevant ongoing randomized controlled trials (RCTs) to ensure that its Specialised Register of trials remains as comprehensive as possible. This also enables newly completed trials to be incorporated into the relevant reviews as quickly as possible. If you are involved in a RCT that falls within the COHG’s scope, you are encouraged to inform the COHG by e-mail to the address below.
Similarly, we welcome dialogue with guideline development groups (GDGs) in relation to forthcoming topics identified through the GDG’s own priority setting. Through this dialogue, the COHG will not only inform such groups of relevant systematic reviews currently being worked on, but will also consider registering future Cochrane review titles of clinical relevance so that the evidence base might be widened in the near future.
If you would like to be involved in, or know more about, the work that the COHG undertakes, please contact the editorial base at
Footnotes
NIHR, Department of Health UK funding supports the editorial base in Manchester.
The authors declare no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the authorship and/or publication of this article.