Sectoral evidence-synthesis infrastructure hubs

The sectoral hubs will be at the vanguard of designing and implementing a methods transformation – one that will move us to policy-scale AI-enabled living evidence syntheses, as well as to policy-ready actionable insights (e.g., best buys). METIUS may take an early lead on aspects of this work from the perspective of the sectoral hubs given they have funding allocated for methods development. The first two regional hubs may also take an early lead on the context and equity aspects of this work. We hope they will work in close partnership with groups such as the 19 Cochrane (or Cochrane and Campbell) methods groups, the Global SDG Synthesis Coalition, and the Smart Buys Alliance that have expressed significant interest in contributing to this methods transformation. A methods transformation is a possible candidate for year-2 foundational investment.

A presentation by Shiv Bakrania at the Cape Town Consensus meeting (and then updated for a METIUM meeting a few months later) laid out some of our early thinking that could inform this methods transformation, including:

• the different names being used by those sharing the same aspirations (e.g., big questions, meta living evidence syntheses, policy-scale living evidence syntheses)
• differences from other product types (e.g., evidence-synthesis databases or registries, evidence maps or evidence gap maps, evidence-synthesis overviews, and toolkits)
• levels at which ‘policy scale’ can apply (e.g., policy area, goal, options, delivery mechanisms)
• three illustrations about what this could look like (with the slides covering the first and third of them):
  • COVID-NMA with a unified living network meta-analysis of COVID-19 vaccine and treatment effectiveness
  • Teaching and Learning Toolkit with a common approach to presenting interventions by impact, cost and evidence strength
  • Global SDG Synthesis Coalition with a modular approach to presenting actionable insights by thematic ‘buckets’ and using mixed methods.
• preliminary ideas for how to operationalize them.

A complementary illustration that we would now add would be ‘best buys’ lists, such as the one developed by the Global Education Evidence Advisory Panel on best buys to improve learning.

We would also note the advice provided to us by some multilateral development bank leaders: help us address cross-sectoral problems, polycrisis and system change. They suggested that we:

• keep aspiring to a focus on problems (e.g., water quality) and on system-level solutions to these problems (e.g., urban development), as the framing of ‘food systems’ in the call for new sectoral hubs
• keep aspiring to an approach of de-siloing (e.g., what can be done across all sectors to improve under-5 mortality) and watch that a sectoral focus doesn’t make this too difficult.