Cochrane Iran is participating in the 10th Iranian National Epidemiology Congress, which is being held in Tehran from November 29, 2023, for three days at the Razi Conference Hall of the Iran University of Medical Sciences. The Cochrane Iran thematic panel entitled " Secondary Studies, Cochrane Iran, and Evidence-Based Practice in Clinical Medicine and Public Health" was held on the first day of the congress. Catherine Spencer, CEO of Cochrane, gave the opening speech of the panel. The video and text of her speech are given below:

The Cochrane Collaboration has been pivotal in encouraging policymakers and clinicians to take an evidence-based approach, ensuring that evidence, national or personal, looks for quality and trustworthy evidence remains vital. We're in a world where misinformation is right, As our tagline says. We still stand for trusted evidence, informed decisions, and better health.
Cochranes undergone significant changes to enable us to adapt to the environment. Our review production process was too slow and we've responded to that by changing our production process and the way in which we write reviews to ensure that they can be produced in a more timely manner.

We also know that we need to respond to global and national priorities to remain relevant and to be focused. We have an opportunity to increase diversity, equality, and inclusion of content and contribution by growing our community. Funders now expect Open Access and relevance of content and we need to ensure the financial sustainability of Cochrane.

We also know that our products and technology can enhance research and we're working hard to make sure that we increase functionality of both the Cochrane Library and continue to provide tools that really assist with your research. We continue to play a vital role in the world through our evidence, methods, training, and advocacy. And as one of our geographic groups, you play an essential part in the role of spreading Cochrane methods, training, and advocacy and also helping us identify what are the key priorities for improving health in your country.

We've recently developed our strategy and this is shortly to be signed off by the governing board. We've spent a great deal of time consulting with people across the community to understand where our focus should be for the next four years. Our vision is a world where health and well-being decisions are based upon timely, trusted, and relevant evidence. And our mission is that we are an independent organization that collaborates with global partners to produce accessible. Trusted evidence and advocates for its use to deliver better, more equitable health for all.

We've got three main goals which focus firstly on impact and relevance to make sure that we're producing research which has real impact and is relevant to things like the Sustainable Development Goals and national Priorities and addresses things like the global burden of disease.

We also want to increase diversity, inclusion, inclusion and equity. We know that we can ensure that more people from more places around the world are trained and able to produce research which is applicable to their setting and we also want to improve advocacy and collaboration, although this might be changed to partnership and collaboration and we really recognize the need to ensure that we continue to build and inspire our community. And lastly, our fourth goal is all about sustainability, making sure that we've got a strong organization for the future to support Cochrane moving forward and continuing to play its vital role.
So I'm just going to focus now on the first two of those goals to give you a little bit more information about what we're trying to achieve. This strategy is focusing Cochrane on the most critical global health needs, providing trusted evidence for people that need it most. So we're going to focus to direct our efforts and our resources and our expertise on the most critical global health needs. And we're looking worldwide. We're looking at what our priorities both at a global level but also at a regional and national level, we're providing trusted evidence and we know that our evidence is trustworthy and very strong.
We want to make sure that evidence reaches the people who need it most. In some instances that would be guideline developers or it may be governments or researchers or clinicians or patients and their families. That's our aim.

So how will we achieve this? Well, for goal one. Goal two, we want to make sure that we develop evidence and methods that meet the most critical global health needs. So this goal has two strands. We're developing evidence of systematic reviews and we want to develop the right systematic reviews which answer the right questions. But questions are getting more complex. Issues like climate change are very difficult to untangle and we also have multi-morbidity on the rise, social protection, the social and commercial determinants of health, I could go on. These need new methods and we want to develop these as well. And at the center of this, our most critical global health needs,

Go number 2, is to support people in low-resource settings to produce and use health evidence that meets their needs.

This also has two strands to the production of health evidence. We recognize that research is stronger when the people affected by the evidence are involved in its production, and we want to support people in low-resource settings to produce evidence. We hope that this will lead to increased relevance and in turn increase use of that evidence. But we don't want authorship to be the only mechanism to increase use of evidence. We want to use all mechanisms available to us to support and update.

So key things that we need your help with determining global priorities related to the Sustainable Development Goals and national and regional priorities.
And we want to work with the central executive team and geographic group executive to develop a strategy that reflects the need for evidence to support the maximum number of people.

Also ask you to look at Cochrane's Future of Evidence website and learn about the changes we've made and consider evidence through an equity perspective.

Consider using a theory of change approach. What are the problems we need to solve? And we need to build local capacity and capability to produce and adapt systematic reviews to be relevant to the local context by developing, mentoring, exchanging and in country training programmes.

We're really keen to reach, educate and engage students and those at early stage of their career by developing A systematic way of engaging with local universities and institutions. And of course, we want to inspire more authors to engage, to collaborate and contribute, and especially non-english speaking represented geographies by ensuring fair, equitable and inclusive processes and providing support for local authors.

So in terms of how we'll work globally, we'll promote, best practices and enhance the quality and consistency of systematic reviews by promoting and encouraging the use of Cochrane methodologies by others.

We also want to raise Cochrane's profile and voice globally as an advocate for evidence-informed help by expanding and leveraging our global partnerships. And we want to improve the understanding of evidence and how to best use it by educating policymakers and health system decision-makers about evidence and the need for systematic synthesized approaches. And we want to increase the use of evidence-informed health and well-being worldwide by collaborating with regional and national partners to produce, disseminate, and promote the use of trusted evidence.

Cochrane has changed. We now have thematic groups which will be aligned to the Sustainable Development Goal and Who's areas are being decided through Scientific Strategy, which is being worked on very thoroughly by my colleague Dr Carla Suarez, adviser, editor in chief with a wide range of external partners. Evidence will be produced, maybe by thematic groups, but also by evidence synthesis units, and it will be processed through the Editorial Central Editorial service. For more information, we'll have a look at futurecochrane.org where there's lots of information that will help you know more about how to write a review.

We have a new model for submitting a review. It's designed to ensure Cochrane remains viable, sustainable, and focused on the greatest global health and care challenges. We're broadening opportunities to create Cochrane evidence through the option to propose a title centrally. You no longer have to go through a Cochrane Review group, so do go and find out more on futurecochrane.org. And if you need support, please e-mail support@cochran.org. I hope you have a fantastic day and I look forward to hearing from you in the future. Thank you.