Rapid Review to Strengthen Health Policy and Systems: A Practical Guide

The Alliance for Health Policy and Systems Research released a publication titled Rapid Review to Strengthen Health Policy and Systems: A Practical Guide at the Global Evidence Summit 2017.

Rapid reviews offer an efficient alternative to traditional methods like systematic reviews to generate the necessary context-sensitive knowledge needed to inform decisions on health systems questions. The Guide explores approaches and methods for conducting rapid reviews, including planning, conducting, and promoting the use of rapid reviews, as well as highlighting key challenges for the application of rapid reviews in low- and middle-income countries. The Guide also includes recommendations on when and how to use rapid reviews.

The target audience for the Guide includes decision-makers (e.g., policy-makers, health systems managers), researchers, and commissioners and funders of reviews.

Dr. Andrea C. Tricco and Dr. Etienne V. Langlois hosted a webinar on the Guide in which they outlined the usefulness of rapid reviews for providing actionable and relevant evidence to make informed decisions, describe how to engage knowledge users in the conduct of rapid reviews, and discuss different rapid review methods that can be used in various contexts. The live event occurred on October 31, 2017, with the recording and slides available for those who were not able to attend.

Click here for more information and to download the Guide.