Background: Goal 2 of Cochrane’s Strategy 2020 is to make evidence accessible. To do this, Cochrane Consumers and Communication Group aims to increase public understanding of research and the role of evidence in informing practice and policy.

Method: We created a short, accessible, online animation to explain the concepts of systematic reviews and meta-analysis.
Stages:
1. We wrote a script and worked with an animator to visualise the ideas and produce an animated video.
2. We involved the public early by sharing a demonstration through our existing networks, along with a survey. We also involved interested members of the public at refinement and editing stages.
3. We worked with Cochrane to co-ordinate the publication of the video using the Cochrane website, YouTube channel and Twitter account in January 2016.
4. We licensed the video under Creative Commons, so that anyone could use and adapt it.

Results: The video was published online on 27 January 2016. By 20 April, over 7800 had viewed it (www.youtube.com/watch?v=egJlW4vkb1Y).
Our team was contacted by a number of international Cochrane Centres who wanted to translate the resource. We worked with them to translate the video into different languages using a combination of subtitles and voice-overs.

Conclusions and next steps: We were surprised by the volume of the viewing statistics. The continued growth rate in viewing will lead us to seek detailed statistics by country so that we can prioritise translations, aiming to ensure that most major languages are represented before the Colloquium 2016.

This work demonstrates the value and impact of free online learning resources. It will inform our Group’s future learning strategy. It potentially informs the development of Cochrane knowledge translation strategies and informs future models of how Cochrane can support the public to understand and value the evidence.