Research Priority Setting

In March 2015, Cochrane Consumers and Communication (based in the Centre for Health Communication and Participation) started a wide-ranging consultation process. We wanted to choose five new topics for our Cochrane Reviews, and to make sure they would be as useful as possible to the people who need to use, or might be affected by our research: health policy makers, health professionals, researchers, consumers and carers, and the wider community. So we asked representatives from all these areas to share their priorities.

The following Cochrane Review topics were selected for our first round of priority topics:

1. Improving communication about end of life care
   Cochrane Review title: Interventions for communication about end of life care among health professionals and patients and their families or carers
2. Patient and family involvement in patient safety
   Cochrane Review title: Interventions to increase patient and family involvement in escalation of care for acute life threatening illness
3. Improving future doctors’ communication skills
   Cochrane Review title: Interventions for improving medical students’ communication skills in doctor-patient consultations
4. Consumer engagement strategies
   Cochrane Review title: Methods of consumer involvement in developing healthcare policy and research, clinical practice guidelines and patient information material
5. Promoting patient-centred care
   Cochrane Review title: Interventions to promote patient-centred care approach in clinical consultations

For more information the priority Cochrane Review topics, and the teams who are working on the reviews, take a look at our final report [PDF 338KB]

Research team

• Anneliese Synnot
• Sophie Hill, Associate Professor

Project Steering Group

There is an 11-member Steering Group with people with expertise in consumer and carer issues, clinical and quality improvement, health policy and research.

Publications from project

• Synnot A, Tong A, Bragge P, et al. 2019 Selecting, refining and identifying priority Cochrane Reviews in health communication and participation in partnership with consumers and other stakeholders. Health Research Policy and Systems. 17, 45. (Open access)
• Synnot A, Bragge P, Lowe D, et al. 2018 Research priorities in health communication and participation: international survey of consumers and other stakeholders. BMJ Open 8:e019481 (Open access)
• Synnot A. 2016. Stakeholder priorities for research in health communication and participation: Findings from the Cochrane Consumers and Communication priority setting project [PDF 339KB}, Centre for Health Communication and Participation, La Trobe University, Melbourne.
• Cochrane Community Blogpost: Cochrane Consumers and Communication Group: A wide-ranging consultation process, Nov 2016
• Workshop materials from ‘Practical approaches to undertaking research priority setting in health’, delivered with colleagues from the University of Sydney at the Australasian Cochrane Symposium, Melbourne, November 2015. Including:
• Our slides [PDF 554KB]
• Workshop materials [PDF 648KB] - including a priority setting appraisal framework we developed for the workshop
• Additional useful links document [PDF 57KB]