Gray M. Health Policy and Public Health, NHS Executive Anglia and Oxford RHA, Old Road, Headington, Oxford 0X3 7LF, UK.
The English Research and Development Programme has been developed not only to promote research but also to promote:
the dissemination of research findings,
the promotion of the use of research findings,
the promotion of an evaluative culture.
The main aim has been to create evidence-based health care and this comprises a range of different issues, all of which will be supported by the work of the Cochrane Collaboration, notably:
evidence-based patient choice in clinical practice,
evidence-based public choice and purchasing of health service,
evidence-based health service management, in both primary and secondary care,
evidence-based education.
A number of initiatives have been developed to
change the culture and skills of the health service,
notably:
a planned programme of critical appraisal skills training for decision-makers, which will use the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews;
an evidence-based patient choice initiative, which will be using the Cochrane Reviews on schizophrenia and stroke;
an evidence-based purchasing initiative, which has used the information about steroids in pre-term labour to influence the commissioning of health services;
the development of Centres of Evidence-Based Clinical Practice which are modelled on the McMaster University approach to education, but which seek to change clinical practice nationally by changing examinations, training curricula, journals and textbooks: this work will also be based on the work of the Cochrane Collaboration.
The proposed workshop will describe how the work of the Cochrane Collaboration is linked to evidence-based health care.
