Objectives: The workshop will provide a practical guide for researchers wishing to develop dissemination strategies for their systematic reviews.

Summary: For over a decade, the Centre for Reviews and Dissemination (CRD) at the University of York, UK, has provided researchbased information about the effects of interventions used in health and social care. The centre has always actively disseminated the findings from good quality systematic reviews to policy makers, professionals and the public in a range of formats, including printed and electronic. Based on an understanding of both theories and research into the ways by which different audiences become aware of, receive, access, read and use research findings, CRD has developed its own approach to dissemination. This gives due consideration to the following key attributes:

- characteristics of the research message;

- source of the research message;

- characteristics of the audience(s) targeted;

- setting in which the message is received;

- presentation of the research message;

- communication channel(s) utilised.

The facilitators will explain how they define the term dissemination and introduce and discuss the CRD approach and experience with a focus on the following key areas:

- identifying and developing the message;

- identification and analysis of potential audiences;

- selection of appropriate communication channels;

- planning and implementing dissemination strategies;

- monitoring the impact of dissemination activities.

The workshop will be interactive with participants encouraged to ask questions and share their own experiences. Given this, participants are encouraged to bring real examples of their own reviews/protocols so that the discussion will focus on the development of strategies that can actually be used in practice.

Level of knowledge required to attend: basic.