Evidence Aid Project

The Cochrane Collaboration’s Evidence Aid project was established by The Cochrane Collaboration following the tsunami in the Indian Ocean in December 2004. It uses knowledge from Cochrane Reviews and other systematic reviews to provide reliable, up-to-date evidence on interventions that might be considered in the context of natural disasters and other major healthcare emergencies. Evidence Aid seeks to highlight which interventions work, which don’t work, which need more research, and which, no matter how well meaning, might be harmful; and to provide this information to agencies and people planning for, or responding to, disasters.

Evidence Aid has three main elements. The first provides an urgent response to the evidence needs that arise during and in the short-term after the event, by bundling together very brief summaries of the findings of systematic reviews of relevance to, for example, the management of injuries. The second provides a context specific resource for the evidence needs that arise during the subsequent weeks and months. These collections should also be useful as part of the planning for disaster risk reduction and alleviating the impact of a disaster. Finally, the third element is a process to gather information about the need for evidence and to seek to ensure that this need is met through up-to-date systematic reviews of the relevant research.

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