Background: The Cochrane Effective Practice and Organisation of Care (EPOC) Group is dedicated to producing reviews reflecting user priorities. The Cochrane Health Promotion and Public Health (HPPH) Field has identified priority topics, many of which meet the criteria of EPOC reviews. The EPOC Review Group Co-ordinator used part of his Cochrane Visiting Fellowship time to identify mechanisms for how EPOC and the HPPH Field could work together to bring these review topics forward to publication, to expedite review publication and possibly improve the quality. Other components such as identifying appropriate authors, recruiting and training editors with a specialty in public health or health promotion, and addressing specific dissemination strategies for these reviews could also be discussed. All of these components could facilitate the production and publication of Cochrane reviews in key areas.

Objectives: To work with the HPPH Field to develop a plan to publish Cochrane reviews relevant to both HPPH and EPOC.

Methods: Meetings were held over five days with staff, editors and members of EPOC and HPPH. The initial meetings focused on defining the scope of the problem, and identification of possible solutions. The solutions were distributed to members of the two groups and feedback was sought. Following the development of the proposal, the concept was circulated to all editors of the two groups and other individuals for final feedback.

Results: The results, including the key aspects of the process and the final proposal will be presented.

Conclusions: It is hoped that this use of the Cochrane Visiting Fellowship will facilitate the process of publication of topics relevant to HPPH. Furthermore, the proposed solutions could be applied to other fields and review groups to enhance appropriate review publication. The support of the Cochrane Visiting Fellowship towards this project is gratefully acknowledged.