Reasons for involving users of health care:

_{"From the very beginning, consumer involvement has been a strong feature of the Skin Group. This is because the impact of skin disease is mainly on the quality of life of the individual and because much of the trial work in skin disease has been dominated by answering questions that are important to the pharmaceutical industry. Consumers help us to redress that imbalance."} 

- Managing Editor for the Skin Group

As one consumer advocate stated: Furthering my education in and experience with The Cochrane Collaboration provides an opportunity to share information with people in my community and beyond.

To get involved, e-mail the contact person for a Cochrane Review Group.  

The most common things consumers do in the Collaboration are:

• Commenting on pre-published systematic reviews of best evidence on a healthcare intervention
• Commenting on protocols – the road map as to how the review is to be done
• Commenting on summaries of reviews in plain English
• Preparing plain language summaries

Consumers are also involved in:

• Raising people’s awareness about evidence-based health care
• Recruiting other consumers to help with the work of Cochrane
• Disseminating information about particular Cochrane reviews
• Co-authoring systematic reviews of best evidence
• Searching journals
• Translation of reviews and plain language summaries

The purpose of consumer input during the review process

The authors of Cochrane reviews may consider a question for a review because of their own interests and experiences as a clinician or a healthcare researcher. These are not always the questions that are of most concern to healthcare consumers and their families and carers. Consumers participate to:

• Ensure that a review question is relevant to people requiring health care and who are offered an intervention by their healthcare providers
• Identify outcomes from healthcare interventions that are important for consumers – which may be different from those identified by service providers  
•  Improve access to reviews by ensuring that the review can be read by a wide audience, and the language is sensitive to consumers
•  Weigh up the benefits of a healthcare intervention against the potential harms – from a healthcare user perspective
•  Prioritise topics for new reviews  

Learn more about consumer participation on our Resources webpage.

To get involved, e-mail the contact person for a Cochrane Review Group to begin participating.  

You may also e-mail CCNet at ccnet-contact@cochrane.de  for more information.