Background:
Cochrane Russia coordinates a Russian Translation Project with a team of 200+ volunteers from Russia, Armenia, Germany, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Ukraine, UK, the USA, and Uzbekistan. In 2017 we started to collaborate with the Higher School of Foreign Languages and Translation at the Institute of International Relations (IIR), Kazan Federal University. Cochrane Russia became a prestigious language practice base for linguistics students, contributing to the Russian Translation Project as volunteer consumers.
Objectives:
To assess the impact of Cochrane Russia's translation, dissemination, and advocacy work and its reach-out to consumers.
Methods:
We analysed the impact in numbers of produced/disseminated items, subscribers to social media and forums, respondents to an online survey; and looked into consumers’ contribution to the volunteer Russian translation project, comparing responses of consumers and health professionals.
Results:
By March 2018 the total number of published Russian PLS translations exceeded 1800, with 75 podcasts and 179 blogshots referring to them, as well as100 translations of Cochrane Communications' weekly digests, 46 translations of press releases and Cochrane news. By 2018 we reached 6500+ subscribers on social media (Facebook, Twitter, Vkontakte, Instagram) including E-Lek. In 2017 to 2018 nearly 100 linguistics students contributed to the Russian Translation Project, including providing user feedback. Among 247 responders, consumers constituted 42%. Russian translations were completely clear to fewer consumers (n = 58; 56%), than to health professionals (n = 96; 66%), with no difference in combined numbers of responders (completely and mostly clear): n = 97; 94% of consumers and n = 139; 96% of health professionals. More consumers rated quality as excellent (36% versus 23%), equal numbers - as satisfactory. Both consumers (97%) and health professionals (99%) noted that Russian translations complied well with their original English texts. Consumers were less optimistic about the potential of Cochrane PLS to change their attitude to drugs or diagnostics (21% versus 1% answered 'no').
Conclusions:
Consumers uptake of translations encourages further dissemination and efforts in advocacy that are better tailored to consumers' understanding and needs.
Patient or healthcare consumer involvement:
We involve healthcare consumers in the Russian Translation Project (translators, quality assessors) and Cochrane Russia team.