JULY – AUGUST 2024
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On the eve of World Evidence-Based Health Day (EBHC), it is necessary to highlight the importance of a comprehensive approach to address the polycrisis and transform knowledge into action.
El World Evidence-Based Health Day (EBHC), which is being held for the fifth time on October 20, seeks to raise awareness about the need for better evidence to Underpin policies, practices and decision-making to improving health outcomes globallyThe initiative is driven by the Cochrane Collaboration, a non-governmental academic organization dedicated to synthesizing available evidence using a systematic methodology and with the highest quality standards.

This year's campaign is titled Health and beyond: from evidence to action and highlights the urgent need to address the social, economic and ecological limits of our planet, which include the concept of polycrisis and require a comprehensive approach.
The Cochrane Collaboration was born almost simultaneously with and mutually reinforced by the evidence-based medicine (EBM) movement, a transformative step to break away from “eminence-based medicine” by offering a democratising approach. However, good EBM practice does not only take the best evidence as its only input, but also takes into account factors such as patients’ experience, preferences and values, cost-effectiveness and the socioeconomic context.
On the other hand, evidence has always been necessary (in 1997 the MBE was named after its most recognizable beginning and the notable boost that it received from the McMaster University as “an old French wine with a new Canadian label”), but it has to arrive in a timely manner. One of the most important awareness-raising actions is Communicate successful experiences of transforming evidence into action. Since the COVID-19 pandemic, IECS colleagues and I have led, in collaboration with multiple institutions worldwide, the development of a living systematic review that updates and presents in a visualizer all the evidence that is accumulating on the efficacy and safety of SARS-CoV-2 vaccines in pregnancy, which has been very useful for decision-makers around the world. This approach is also being useful to monitor in real time the impact of other vaccines against other emerging diseases such as Chikungunya and P fever, and more recently for MPOX or monkeypox, thus enabling timely decision-making. In summary, The best evidence alone is not enough if knowledge does not arrive in time.
It is positive that, over time, decision makers are increasingly receptive to evidence. And over time the formation of groups dedicated to synthesizing it in the world and throughout the country also grows. Along with the Italian Hospital of Buenos Aires and Rosario Center for Perinatal Studies (CREP), The IECS Cochrane Centre is one of the three that make up the Argentine Cochrane Centre and, in turn, we have half a dozen affiliated centres. The latest to join is one based in the National University of Rio Negro (UNRN), led by Dr. Fernando Tortosa, the first Patagonian and perhaps the southernmost on the planet. This entire network is equally involved in strongly promoting health decision-making based on timely and quality evidence.
By: Dr. Agustín Ciapponi, Director of the Argentine Cochrane Center of the IECS, PhD in Public Health and principal investigator at CONICET.