Cochrane Summaries website wins plain language award

Only recently launched, the Cochrane Summaries website (summaries.cochrane.org) has received global attention, which reached a pinnacle when The Cochrane Collaboration was awarded the runner-up trophy for the best public website by the Plain English Campaign, which has been “fighting for crystal-clear communication since 1979.” David Tovey, the Editor in Chief of the Cochrane Library, explains that "The Cochrane Summaries website aims to deliver the credible, accessible, and impartial information that patients and carers need to improve understanding and promote shared decision making."

A spokesperson for the Campaign indicated that Cochrane Summaries earned the 2011 runner-up award because of its unique ability to use plain language summaries to explain medical research.  “The Collaboration is the preeminent source for appraisals of medical trials, but those conclusions are only useful to the people they reach. Plain Language Summaries achieve that goal,” expressed Catherine McIlwain, the Consumer Co-ordinator for The Cochrane Collaboration.

Each year, a handful of the best (and worst) examples of plain language are publicly honoured by the Plain English Campaign. It reviews documents and websites to ensure that public information is presented in a clear fashion. Websites are judged for their content, design and layout. The design of Cochrane Summaries, focusing on easily accessible information, merited this recognition.

“On the [old] Cochrane Library, these summaries were freely available underneath the Abstract – [but] you had to know they were there. The logical next step was, therefore, to provide the summaries by themselves on the Collaboration website,” points out Janet Wale, prior convenor for the Cochrane Consumer Network. “This brought the information to a place where the public can readily access it; and provides a stimulus for Review Groups to put added effort into the summaries. It is a great introduction to the Cochrane Library.”

The Plain English Campaign awarded the prize to The Cochrane Collaboration at a ceremony at The Cavern Club in Liverpool, UK on 9 December 2011. McIlwain and Frances Kellie, Deputy Managing Editor of the Cochrane Pregnancy and Childbirth Group, accepted the award on behalf of the organisation.

While accepting the award, McIlwain stated, “The Cochrane Collaboration believes that information is the building block of change. For that change to occur, evidence of the effects of medical treatments (or the lack thereof) must be available to the public. Cochrane Summaries provides those details in plain language so that consumers can make informed decisions about their health care.”