Background: There is a world-wide trend toward patient involvement in their health care and in all levels of health research. The Canadian Institutes of Health Research as well as the Cochrane Musculoskeletal group has adopted this approach, in the hopes that it will produce research findings that have greater relevance and usefulness to consumers are more relevant to consumers and more likely to be used by them when making health care decisions.

Objectives: To showcase the many different ways consumers are involved with the Cochrane Musculoskeletal Group.

Methods: The Cochrane Collaboration is an international, independent, not-for-profit organization dedicated to making up to date, accurate health information available worldwide. The Cochrane Musculoskeletal group is one of many groups within the Cochrane Collaboration. Consumers within the Musculoskeletal group have many different roles including: • Providing comments on systematic reviews and protocols • Helping to guide research priorities • Evaluating decision aids and plain language summaries • Oral and poster presentations at national and international conferences • Promotion of the Cochrane Library • Knowledge translation • Recruitment and training of new consumers • Mentoring new consumers • Joining author teams in writing a systematic review • Consumer representation on the Cochrane Musculoskeletal editorial board.

Results: The role of consumers within the Cochrane Musculoskeletal Group continues to expand due to the support and encouragement of the Group’s staff. There are many ways that consumers can become involved at a meaningful level.

Conclusion: Within the Cochrane Musculoskeletal Group there are many roles that consumers can assume including promoting widespread use of The Cochrane Library Consumers support and work with Collaboration staff to have full access to The Cochrane Library available for all Canadians. A challenge faced by the consumer group is recruiting more members from countries where English is not the first language.