The Cochrane Effective Practice and Organisation of Care (EPOC) group conducts, supports and publishes systematic reviews of the global evidence to guide health system decision-making to improve health services and population health outcomes.
Our reviews cover:
- Implementation strategies
- Service delivery interventions
- Financial arrangements
- Governance arrangements
EPOC is part of Cochrane, a global network across more than 130 countries. Our reviews are published in the Cochrane Library.
The editorial offices of the Cochrane EPOC group work together closely, and are based in:
- Oxford at the Nuffield Department for Population Health, University of Oxford, UK (funded by NIHR)
- Oslo at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health, Norway (funded by the Norwegian Institute of Public Health); and
- Melbourne at the Monash Department of Clinical Epidemiology at Cabrini Institute, Australia (supported by Cabrini Institute and Monash University).
EPOC also conducts methodological research to support evidence synthesis of health system topics.
Examples include:
Examples include:
- Methods for qualitative evidence synthesis. In 2013, EPOC produced the first qualitative evidence synthesis (QES) to be published in the Cochrane Library. This was led by EPOC staff in Oslo and included the development of the GRADE-CERQual approach. Supporting review authors to produce QES is now a core part of our work.
- Guidance on the methods to conduct reviews, published here: tools to support our reviews
- Guidance on the conduct of systematic reviews of complex interventions, this includes conceptualising complex systematic review topics and dealing with complexity in systematic reviews.
- Collaborations with methods groups, examples include the revised risk of bias tool and synthesis without meta-analysis (SWiM).
The EPOC group collaborates with a number of global institutions, including the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Global Evidence Synthesis Initiative. We have supported WHO extensively in the development of health systems guidelines (for example on digital interventions) through playing a key role in shaping the scope of health systems reviews, providing technical support to the review teams, and acting as review authors and editors.