In August 2015 the Cochrane Editorial Unit announced the first call for applications to the Cochrane Review Support Programme which was open to all Cochrane Review Groups. We received 32 applications from 21 Groups.  To evaluate the applications we convened an international assessment panel comprising seven Cochrane contributors and consumers of Cochrane Reviews, who generously shared their time and expertise:

Hilda Bastian, National Center for Biotechnology Information, National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, USA

Dr Urbà González, Unit of Dermatology, CLĺNICA GO&FER, Barcelona, Spain

Prof Sally Green, Cochrane Australia, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia

Dr Richard Lehman, Hightown Surgery, Oxford, UK

Dr Mbah P Okwen, Centre for the Development of Best Practices in Health, Yaoundé Central Hospital, Yaoundé, Cameroon

Dr Sera Tort, Cochrane Editorial Unit, Girona, Spain

Dr Jorge Zepeda, Secretary of Health of Florianópolis, Brazil / University of Leeds, UK

The panel members assessed the applications according to the criteria outlined in the application form and gave each review an overall score out of 10. The maximum possible score for each review was 70 (10 points x 7 assessors) and we set our funding cut-off at 50+. On that basis there were nine awards of £5,000 to produce single reviews and one award of £10,000 (2 x £5,000) to produce a suite of six reviews. The successful reviews were:

• Interventions to reduce antibiotic prescribing for acute respiratory tract infections in primary care: An overview of systematic reviews (Acute Respiratory Infections Group)
• Partial breast irradiation for early breast cancer (Breast Cancer Group)
• Exercise for depression (Common Mental Disorders Group)
• Atypical antipsychotics for aggression and psychosis in Alzheimer’s disease (Dementia and Cognitive Improvement Group)
• Sublingual immunotherapy for allergic rhinitis (ENT Group)
• Pelvic organ prolapse (suite of six reviews) (Gynaecology and Fertility Group)
• Fixed-dose combination therapy for the prevention of cardiovascular disease (Heart Group)
• Treatment with disease modifying drugs (DMDs) for people with a first clinical episode suggestive of multiple sclerosis (Multiple Sclerosis & Rare Diseases of the CNS Group)
• Proton pump inhibitors for functional Dyspepsia (Upper GI and Pancreatic Diseases Group)

Applications for the second funding round will open in late February 2016 and will be advertised via the usual Cochrane communication channels.