Background: Evidence-based public health policy requires high quality systematic reviews, it is important to know how they work.
Objectives: To assess the methodological quality of systematic reviews in public health policy.
Methods: An overview of systematic reviews of public health policy was conducted in 2014. The topic focused on health human resources. All kinds of systematic reviews were included. We searched 14 electronic databases and websites, two researchers conducted the screening, data extraction and quality assessment independently. A Measurement Tool to Assess Systematic Reviews (AMSTAR) was used to assess the methodological quality of the included studies.
Results: In total 80 systematic reviews about health human resources were included in this overview.
1. Characteristics of the included systematic reviews: most of the studies (86.25%) were conducted in developed countries; 17 Cochrane Systematic Reviews were included.
2. Topic distribution: all the included systematic reviews were categorized into four main themes, four were about the recruitment of students’ education, two were about position support, four were about economic incentives and others were organization management strategies.
3. Quality assessment by AMSTAR: three levels of the quality were identified, the score range from 0 to 4.5 equates to low quality, from 5 to 8.5 equates to middle quality, and the score range from 9 to 11 equates to high quality. For the included systematic reviews, the highest score was 10.5, the lowest score was 3, and the average score was 7.168 ± 1.779. Fifty-five systematic reviews were of middle quality (68.75%), 19 were of high quality (23.75%) and six scored less than 5. Analysis of the 11 items of the AMSTAR tool showed that items 3, 6, 9, and 11 met the criteria better and other requirements of the items were not conducted well.
Conclusions: Methodological quality systematic reviews in public policy need to be improved, especially for developing countries.