Are public health strategies relevant to non-communicable disease in China covered in the Cochrane Library?

Tags: Poster
Zhang F1, Garner P2
1Chongqing Medical University, China, 2Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, Britain

Background:

Non-communicable diseases are becoming more common in China, and relevant, evidence-based public health strategies are important for prevention.

Objectives:

We sought to appraise the adequacy of the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews in relation to coverage of priority health problems in China.

Methods:

We drew on a variety of data sources to identify the key non-communicable disease problems: national China epidemiological surveys, national health statistical yearbook, World Health Organization surveillance data and special studies. We then mapped this against public health policies that global policy makers have identified as potentially important to tackle these problems and their implementation status or effects. In the third step we assessed whether these public health policies were covered by reviews on The Cochrane Library.

Results:

The analysis is in progress. Cardiovascular diseases and diabetes mellitus are increasing in China. A variety of fiscal, regulatory, education and communication, and primary health care policies have been identified to minimise morbidity and mortality. Our early results of mapping these policies against systematic reviews in the Cochrane Library suggest good coverage in some areas of public health strategies (such as preventing smoking), but not in others where there is a complete absence of reviews. The full analysis will be complete by the time of the Colloquium.

Conclusions:

High level identification of priority public health topics probably will help the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews increase its relevance to public health in China.