Reviews to feed into the upcoming WHO guideline on pre-eclampsia – a call for author teams

 

Rationale

The World Health Organization (WHO) has prioritized a number of PICOs to feed into its upcoming guideline on pre-eclampsia. These questions cover interventions relevant to the prevention, identification, and management of pre-eclampsia and its complications, and will require up-to-date systematic review evidence to inform the guideline development process.

Cochrane is therefore commissioning a series of new reviews to address priority questions identified by WHO. The reviews will be developed in close alignment with the WHO guideline process. Given the importance of pre-eclampsia as a major cause of maternal and perinatal morbidity and mortality globally, these reviews have the potential to directly inform international recommendations and clinical practice.

Call

We are looking for author teams to take on new Cochrane reviews in this area. Teams should be prepared to work closely with Cochrane and WHO to ensure that the reviews address the needs of the guideline. This will include adhering to the agreed PICO, prioritizing the outcomes required for guideline decision-making, and planning relevant subgroup and sensitivity analyses in advance. 

A new protocol will be required that is up-to-date with current Cochrane methodology. Given the accelerated timeline, author teams should have sufficient methodological expertise and capacity to develop the protocol and conduct the review within the specified deadlines.

We particularly welcome applications from teams that include early-career researchers and researchers based in low- and middle-income countries, recognizing the importance of developing capacity and ensuring diverse perspectives in evidence synthesis.

Timeline: The team taking this on should be ready to begin work as soon as possible, with initial protocol development beginning in mid-November and proposed protocol submission by mid-December. WHO has requested that initial review data be sent to them by the end of April 2027. The guideline will be launched at FIGO in November 2027, by which time the reviews will need to be published. This means that submission to the Cochrane Library will need to take place by the end of June 2027 at the latest.

Review topics 

Author teams are welcome to apply for more than one review topic. The priority PICOs are the following: 

1. In pregnant women (P), do dietary programs or specific diets (I) compared to usual diet (C), improve maternal or perinatal outcomes, particularly the onset of pre-eclampsia (O)?
2. In pregnant women with hypertensive disorders of pregnancy, does more intensive maternal and fetal surveillance, including increased monitoring frequency, compared with standard surveillance, improve timely detection of disease progression and fetal compromise, and reduce adverse maternal and perinatal outcomes without increasing unnecessary interventions?
3. In pregnant women with hypertensive disorders of pregnancy (P), does a tighter systolic and/or diastolic blood pressure treatment threshold or target (I), compared with a less-tight threshold or target (C), improve maternal and perinatal outcomes (O)?
4. In health facilities providing maternal care, does the use of formal protocols for the prevention, diagnosis and management of hypertensive disorders of pregnancy, compared with usual care, improve quality of care and maternal and perinatal outcomes?
5. Among healthcare providers involved in maternity care, does simulation-based training for the recognition and emergency management of hypertensive disorders of pregnancy, compared with conventional training without simulation, improve provider competencies, quality of care and maternal and perinatal outcomes?
6. In women with hypertensive disorders of pregnancy, does task sharing of selected prevention, screening, monitoring and management interventions with trained non-physician health workers, supported by appropriate supervision and referral mechanisms, compared with physician-led care, improve coverage, timeliness, quality of care and maternal and perinatal outcomes?

What support is available?

As a default, no funding is available to pay authors to conduct these reviews. However, the WHO may be able to make small financial contributions available. Authors will need to negotiate directly with the WHO.

Cochrane will offer the following:

• Commissioning support. Working with the Commissioning Editor means expedited proposal acceptance and responses to queries throughout review production.  
• Search support. For those who need it Cochrane Information Specialists can run the searches and (capacity dependent) may be able to use machine learning to reduce some of the screening burden.
• Support from Covidence. For priority intervention reviews, Cochrane can refer authors for Covidence premium support. This service involves support from an advisor within Covidence to facilitate data extraction and transfer (capacity dependent).  
• Cochrane Engage. Our online Engage platform can be used to find volunteers for various aspects of the work including volunteer co-authors.

Application

To apply, please send an expression of interest to Emma Sinervo (emma.sinervo@ki.se, Cochrane Maternal, Newborn and Child Health Thematic Group) and Roses Parker (rparker@cochrane.org, Cochrane Commissioning Editor) by midnight, 8 November 2026 CET including:

• Proposal form: Proposal form [.docx]
  • Please list all proposed authors in the relevant section (question 5). 
  • Please note that at least one author (lead or last author) needs to have led at least one Cochrane review. Please link their Cochrane review(s) or CD number in the table. 
  • Please clarify if you have a clinical expert in this field or if you need the Thematic Group to find you one. 

Panel for assessment

• Commissioning Editor
• Cochrane Maternal, Newborn, and Child Health Thematic Group
• Deputy Editor-in-Chief
• WHO staff

Producing an impactful review

This review has been commissioned because we think the topic is important and we think there is sufficient new evidence to support a meaningful synthesis. But until we run the search, we don’t know that the synthesis will be meaningful and impactful. If you run your search and discover that there isn't much evidence to synthesize, please reconnect with me and we will explore whether it is worth continuing with a full Cochrane systematic review or not. It may be that your work can be written up as a shorter piece of work for a different journal such as Cochrane Evidence Synthesis and Methods.