Author-led webinars as an education strategy for communicating systematic review evidence to a public-health audience

Session: 

Oral session: Knowledge translation and communicating evidence (3)

Date: 

Sunday 16 September 2018 - 16:40 to 16:50

Location: 

Pentland Auditorium

All authors in correct order:

Dobbins M1, Read K1, Thomas G1, Farran R1
1 The National Collaborating Centre for Methods and Tools, Canada
Presenting author and contact person

Presenting author:

Maureen Dobbins

Contact person:

Kristin Read
Abstract text
Background: Health Evidence™ aims to help the public health workforce search for, interpret, and apply research evidence to practice via a free, searchable repository, www.healthevidence.org. This offers 4900+ quality-appraised systematic reviews evaluating the effectiveness of public health and health promotion interventions. One strategy to communicate and share the findings from these systematic reviews is through author-led interactive webinars.

Objectives:
1) To disseminate high quality evidence to the public health workforce.
2) To provide a forum for public health professionals to improve individual and organizational capacity for evidence-informed public health.

Methods: Eight 60- to 90-minute author-led webinar sessions were conducted between January and December 2017. Each session included a brief overview of evidence-informed decision making, followed by a presentation of the review findings by one of the authors, and concluded with a facilitated discussion period. Web conferencing software was used to monitor registration, attendance, audience engagement and satisfaction. Webinars were open to the public and widely promoted via newsletters and social media, as well as on the Health Evidence website.

Results: Health Evidence hosted eight webinars in 2017 on a variety of public health topic areas. The average webinar attendance across the series was 120 participants per webinar. Webinar recordings were posted to YouTube approximately one week post-webinar and received an average of 49 views in the month following the posted date. Access to the Health Evidence review pages for the systematic reviews highlighted in the webinar increased by 890% on the day of the webinar compared to a one-month period before the webinar was promoted. Overall, 83% of respondents agreed, or strongly agreed, that the information in the webinar was helpful in their work, and almost half of polling question respondents indicated they would consider using the evidence in their program/policy/practice.

Conclusions: Webinars are an innovative and effective mechanism for promoting research evidence in public-health decision making to wide audiences.

Patient or healthcare consumer involvement: Webinar participants can engage with the author-presenter during the webinar in the chat box as well as through a chat-based facilitated question and answer period.

Relevance to patients and consumers: 

The Health Evidence™ author-led webinar series aims to involve and engage end-users of this information in both the planning and participation phases of the series. Users of Health Evidence™ are encouraged to share their ideas for interesting public health topics for webinars and priority topics are identified based on the popularity of the review on the website (measured by # of sessions). Webinar participants are able to engage with the author-presenter during the webinar in the chat box as well as through a chat-based facilitated question and answer period.