Background: Over the past years, Cochrane Brazil (CB) has assisted authors to develop systematic reviews through individualised support sessions for those interested in learning and understanding the Cochrane methodology, in addition to providing support for authors of ongoing reviews who need CB to clarify issues during the review process. The support is conducted by the team of researchers affiliated to the CB, and it involves all steps of the systematic review process: PICO (participants, intervention, comparator, outcomes) definition, title registration, protocol elaboration, searches in databases, conducting the review, qualitative ('Risk of bias' and GRADE assessments), and quantitative (meta-analysis) data assessments.

Objective: To describe the assistance that was provided at the CB to Brazilian researchers, for all development steps of a Cochrane systematic review, during an 18-month period between October 2014 and April 2016.

Results: One-hundred and thirty-six instances of assistance were provided during the period analysed. The most frequent types of assistance provided concerned: search strategy 36% (49/136), meta-analysis 18% (25/136), and PICO definition and title registration 16% (22/136) (Graph 1).

Conclusion: Individual assistance conducted at the CB has helped the development and quality of Cochrane Systematic Reviews.