When and how should policymakers be involved in developing living clinical guidelines?

Living clinical guidelines give clinicians and consumers up-to-date, evidence-based guidance to support their care decisions. Applying clinical guidelines into practice can be complex, and may be influenced by issues outside the clinical setting, such as health system policies. Health policymakers have the opportunity to influence implementation of evidence-informed care through health policies that enable or hinder clinicians from applying evidence-based guidance in practice. One way to prepare a guideline to be implemented, is to involve policymakers throughout the guideline development process. In this way, potential policy hurdles can be considered and resources to support implementation of a guideline can be provided. At present, we do not know if living guideline producers are actively engaging with policymakers, and if so, how. Important research questions include: What is the purpose of policy engagement in a living guideline? How does policy engagement influence the usefulness of a living guideline? What model is best for engaging with policymakers in living guidelines in a meaningful way? This PhD project will focus on understanding how living guideline producers currently involve policymakers in the development of living guidelines and what works when involving policymakers in living guidelines. The project will involve literature reviews and mixed methods research approaches, including coding of quantitative and qualitative data. This program of work is embedded within the Australian Living Evidence Collaboration and Cochrane Australia and as such benefits from extensive networks in living evidence synthesis development and knowledge translation.