Public Health Wales has launched a new style of report that is designed to give decision and policymakers a rapid overview of current research, enabling them to take swift action and make important decisions in key areas of interest.
The new reports will be mainly driven by stakeholder needs and will ultimately aim to use a systematic methodology to provide officials with a robust evidence baseline that can be subsequently used to inform future decisions and work – all in much quicker time than usual.
Public Health Wales say that, depending on the scope of the request, the reports can be undertaken within one to three months.
Hannah Shaw, Principal Evidence and Knowledge Analyst for the Public Health Wales’ Evidence Service, said: “These new agile scoping reports are an exciting addition to the extensive range of reports that we develop for policymakers.
“They’re designed to provide an overview of the available evidence and because we work closely with stakeholders from the beginning these can be completely tailored to the stakeholders areas of interest. Whilst they don’t identify all available research or always determine the generalisability of findings to a Welsh context, they provide a valuable picture of reliable evidence on a topic and identify specific areas of interest for stakeholders to develop and inform their work.
“Importantly, because they utilise the secondary-level evidence, which are generally pre-existing good quality systematic reviews, we are often able to provide the report much more quickly that would be possible for other types of evidence work.”
Public Health Wales’ Evidence Service has already developed several of these reports, including a paper detailing the evidence base for risk and protective factors associated with smoking initiation and cessation, free school meals, palliative care, and more.
To give feedback on the reports, email [email protected].
