Background: Barriers to using evidence to inform policy have been widely documented. Many of these barriers relate to availability, accessibility, and relevance of evidence. A survey of policy makers in the Australian Government Department of Health and Ageing (DoHA) was conducted to establish knowledge, attitudes, current use and barriers to the use of evidence. There was strong support for using evidence in health policy decision making among respondents. However, the perceived barriers among respondents were that using evidence based approaches would increase workload and was time consuming.
Objectives: To encourage and support evidence-based approaches to policy making in Australia by providing accessible evidence in the form of summaries of Cochrane reviews relevant to policy makers within DoHA.
Methods: The Policy Liaison Initiative is a collaboration between the Australasian Cochrane Centre and DoHA which aims to address these and other barriers, encouraging and supporting evidence-based approaches to policy making in Australia. Hence the Evidence-Based Policy Network (EBPN), a community of practice of policy makers, was established at DoHA with a dedicated website to disseminate Initiative outputs including regular bulletins, seminars, workshops, a helpdesk and web-based summaries of Cochrane reviews in National Health Priority Areas. The summaries are designed to help policy makers within DoHA quickly identify relevant Cochrane reviews and their findings, health care interventions that work and those that don't work, and priority areas for future research.
Results: Based on a single review, each summary includes an outline of the conclusions for each intervention included in the review; a list of the identified research gaps; bibliographical details; and a direct link from the title to the full text review so that more information can be accessed quickly. The review authors' conclusions are summarised using standardised language and a coding system. They are not reinterpreted. It is made clear that the summaries must be read in conjunction with the full review when making decisions.
Conclusions: The summaries and resources provided through this Initiative have the potential to increase the use of Cochrane reviews to inform health policy and an evidence-based research agenda in Australia.