Improving the reporting on health equity in observational research (STROBE-Equity): extension checklist and elaboration.

Data on health equity to inform societally relevant evidence based decisions and policy making are lacking in the research literature. Observational studies have the potential to provide data on health equity. Yet, guidance on how to report health equity data and considerations in observational research is inadequate.

Improving the Reporting on Health Equity in Observational Research (STROBE-Equity): Extension Checklist and Elaboration.

Importance: Observational studies can provide valuable insights to inform decisions on health equity. Existing guidelines for reporting such studies, such as the Strengthening the Reporting of Observational Studies in Epidemiology (STROBE) statement, currently lack specific considerations for reporting on health equity. Health equity is defined as the absence of avoidable and unfair differences that may exist across individuals and populations due to structural and systematic inequities in living and working conditions, opportunities, and resources.

Gaps in the Ottawa Statement on the Ethical Design and Conduct of Cluster Randomized Trials: a citation analysis reveals a need for updated ethics guidelines.

Background: Although commonly used to evaluate health interventions, cluster randomized trials raise difficult ethical issues. Recognizing this, the Ottawa Statement on the Ethical Design and Conduct of Cluster Randomized Trials, published in 2012, provides 15 recommendations to address ethical issues across seven domains. But due to several developments in the design and implementation of cluster randomized trials, there are new issues requiring guidance.

"Interest-holders": A new term to replace "stakeholders" in the context of health research and policy.

Background: Given the colonial connotations of the term "stakeholder", its continued use may be perceived as disrespectful to Indigenous Peoples. While several groups have introduced alternative terms, each has its own limitations. The objective of this article is to introduce "interest-holders" as an alternative term to "stakeholders" and describe the discussions underpinning the adoption of the new term by the MuSE Consortium.

Developing consensus on the most important equity-relevant items to include in pain research: a modified e-Delphi study.

There is increasing recognition of the need for routine measurement and reporting of data that can reveal social factors that contribute to health inequities for people with pain. Prioritising what data to collect and understanding how to collect it can be challenging, and no clear guidance exists. We conducted a 3-round Delphi study to develop consensus on the most important items to include in a minimum dataset of equity-relevant variables.

Enhancing health equity considerations in guidelines: health equity extension of the GIN-McMaster Guideline Development Checklist.

Background: Practice guidelines may reduce health inequities by addressing preventable and unjust differences in health. However, health equity considerations are often inadequately integrated into the guideline planning and development process. This article describes a pragmatic approach to enhancing health equity considerations within guidelines by introducing an extension to the GIN-McMaster Guideline Development Checklist (GDC).

Seven principles for integrating health equity considerations in the practice guideline enterprise.

Background And Objectives: Health equity aims to provide all individuals with equal and fair opportunities to achieve optimal health. Practice guidelines can play a pivotal role in advancing health equity; yet, few organizations use tools to systematically integrate health equity considerations. Thus, it is important to establish a foundation for practical tools to support the systematic integration of health equity considerations.

Patient engagement for the development of equity-focused health technology assessment (HTA) recommendations: a case study of two Canadian HTA organizations.

Background: Health technology assessment (HTA) is a form of policy analysis that informs decisions about funding and scaling up health technologies to improve health outcomes. An equity-focused HTA recommendation explicitly addresses the impact of health technologies on individuals disadvantaged in society because of specific health needs or social conditions. However, more evidence is needed on the relationships between patient engagement processes and the development of equity-focused HTA recommendations.

Summary of findings tables for measurement property reviews: The evolution and application of OMERACT's summary of measurement properties (SOMP) Table.

Background: Literature reviews of measurement properties of an outcome measurement instrument are fast becoming the evidence base for making decisions about the suitability of the instrument for a given application. In our case at OMERACT it is the fitness of an instrument for inclusion in a Core Outcome Set. Transparency in the processes and decision making at each step are important to allow consumers of the literature review to have a clear understanding of the decision-making process.

Implementing the PEIR Framework and PEIRS-22 to facilitate improved and sustainable patient engagement in OMERACT.

Background: OMERACT (Outcome Measures in Rheumatology) is an international initiative focused on improving outcome measurement in rheumatology research, fostering collaboration among PRPs, clinicians, and researchers to develop Core Outcome Sets. The 22-item Patient Engagement In Research Scale (PEIRS-22) is a tool designed to measure the level of meaningful patient engagement and guide efforts towards improvement.

Aim: 1) To describe the current profile of patient engagement at OMERACT using the scores generated by the PEIRS-22 and 2) to assess the validity of the PEIRS-22 within the OMERACT group of PRPs.

The GIN-McMaster Guideline Development Checklist extension for engagement.

Objectives: Better engagement of diverse groups of interest-holders in the development of health guidelines has been proposed to improve their usefulness, implementability, and acceptability. Guidelines shape clinical or public health practice decision-making. Trustworthy guidelines are systematically developed documents that include actionable statements based on evidence and a formal, structured and transparent decision process.

Cochrane reviews' authorship has become more gender-diverse but remains geographically concentrated: a meta-research study.

Objectives: The aim of this study was to examine the distribution of country, region, language, and gender diversity in the authorship of Cochrane reviews and compare it to non-Cochrane systematic reviews.

Study Design And Setting: We retrieved all published articles from the Cochrane Library (until November 6, 2023) using a web crawling technique that extracted prespecified data fields, including publication date, review category, and author affiliations. For comparison, non-Cochrane systematic reviews were identified through PubMed using E-utility calls.

Improvement in Skin Fibrosis and Lung Function with Autologous Hematopoietic Stem Cell Transplantation in Systemic Sclerosis.

Systemic sclerosis (SSc) is a severe, progressive disease with limited treatment options. Autologous hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (AHSCT) has been shown to be an effective treatment for rapidly progressive SSc. The objective of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of AHSCT for SSc compared to real-world clinical care.

Alendronate for the primary and secondary prevention of osteoporotic fractures in postmenopausal women.

Rationale: Osteoporosis is an abnormal reduction in bone mass and bone deterioration, leading to increased fracture risk. Alendronate belongs to the bisphosphonate class of drugs, which inhibit bone resorption by interfering with the activity of osteoclasts (bone cells that break down bone tissue). This is an update of a Cochrane review first published in 2008.

Patient preferences for drug therapy in inflammatory arthritis: protocol for a living systematic review and evidence map to inform clinical practice guidelines.

Introduction: The pharmacological management of inflammatory arthritis often requires choices that involve trade-offs between benefits, risks and other attributes such as administration route, frequency and cost. This living systematic review aims to inform international clinical guidelines on inflammatory arthritis by creating an evidence map of patient preference studies concerning the trade-offs in pharmacological management of inflammatory arthritis.

Methods And Analysis: We will include published and peer-reviewed full-text studies in any language that quantitatively assess preferences of patients for the pharmacological management of inflammatory arthritis (rheumatoid arthritis, spondyloarthritis and juvenile idiopathic arthritis).

Guidance for engagement in health guideline development: A scoping review.

Background: Health guideline developers engage with interested people and groups to ensure that guidelines and their recommendations are relevant and useful to those who will be affected by them. These 'interest-holders' include patients, payers/purchasers of health services, payers of health research, peer review editors, product makers, programme managers, policymakers, providers, principal investigators, and the public. The Guidelines International Network (GIN) and McMaster University Guideline Development Checklist describes 146 steps of the guideline process organized into 18 topics.

Proactive therapeutic drug monitoring of biologic drugs in adult patients with inflammatory bowel disease, inflammatory arthritis, or psoriasis: a clinical practice guideline.

Clinical Question: In adult patients with inflammatory bowel disease, inflammatory arthritis (rheumatoid arthritis, spondyloarthritis, psoriatic arthritis), or psoriasis taking biologic drugs, does proactive therapeutic drug monitoring (TDM) improve outcomes as compared with standard care?

Context And Current Practice: Standard care for immune mediated inflammatory diseases includes prescribing biologic drugs at pre-determined doses. Dosing may be adjusted reactively, for example with increased disease activity. In proactive TDM, serum drug levels and anti-drug antibodies are measured irrespective of disease activity, and the drug dosing is adjusted to achieve target serum drug levels, usually within pre-specified therapeutic ranges.

Protocol: Assessing the impact of interest-holder engagement on guideline development: A systematic review.

This is the protocol for a Campbell systematic review. The objectives are as follows. The objective of this review is to identify and synthesize empirical research on the impacts of interest-holder engagement on the guideline development process and content.

Effectiveness and safety of intra-articular interventions for knee and hip osteoarthritis based on large randomized trials: A systematic review and network meta-analysis.

Objective: To quantify the effectiveness and safety of intra-articular interventions for knee and hip osteoarthritis (OA) through a systematic review and Bayesian random-effects network meta-analysis.

Design: We searched CENTRAL and regulatory agency websites (inception-2023) for large, English-language, randomized controlled trials (RCTs) (≥100 patients/group) examining any intra-articular intervention.

Primary Outcome: pain intensity.

"It means almost forgetting that you've got a disease": An OMERACT study to define independence in the context of rheumatoid arthritis remission from the patient perspective.

Aims: Our previous work identified pain, fatigue, and independence as missing from the ACR/EULAR rheumatoid arthritis (RA) remission criteria from the patient perspective. Validated measures exist for pain and fatigue, but not for independence. As a first step towards developing such a measure, this study aimed to understand 'Independence' in the context of RA remission from the patient perspective.