The United States Cochrane Center at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg
School of Public Health
launched this year a free online course called
"Understanding Evidence-Based Health Care: A
Foundation for Action." While the course is open to anyone
who wishes to enroll, it was expressly
designed for consumer advocates in all areas of health
care.
The center at Johns Hopkins is one of 12 worldwide
participating in the Cochrane Collaboration,
which promotes resources that examine the benefits and
risks of health care to help people make
well-informed decisions about their health.
Kay Dickersin, a professor in the Bloomberg School's
Department of Epidemiology, is director of
the United States Cochrane Center, which is "spearheading
the use of evidence-based health care for
health decisionÐmaking."
"Evidence-based health care integrates the best
available research evidence with clinical
expertise and patient values. We are working to engage
patients and consumers as full partners in this
new model for health care," Dickersin said. "We want
consumer advocates to successfully navigate the
world of medical information and be able to critically
assess results from research studies. With the
knowledge they gain from our course, they will positively
influence responsible public health care
policy and help the people they serve to make
evidence-based health care choices."
The online course was developed by Dickersin and Musa
Mayer, a breast cancer survivor, author
and advocate, who is the lecturer. It consists of six
modules that illustrate key concepts in evidence-
based health care through real-world examples. In all, the
modules — an introduction to evidence-based
health care; the importance of research questions; research
design, bias and levels of evidence;
searching for health care information; understanding health
care statistics; and critical appraisal of
research articles — include five to six hours of
lectures and case studies, divided into 10- to-15-minute
segments.
"Every day, an overwhelming amount of health care
information appears in the media," Mayer
said. "Much is oversimplification or outright marketing.
Consumer advocates may be forced to rely on
media reports if they don't know how to find or recognize
high-quality research evidence. We want
advocates to have the tools they need to understand how
scientific research is conducted and how
real advances in medicine are actually made. Whether
advocates are helping people to make difficult
health care decisions, sitting at tables where scientific
and research decisions are made or trying to
influence public policy, learning these skills will empower
all of our work."
The course is available through the Bloomberg School's
public health work force training
management system, known as TRAMS. Additional information
is available at www.cochrane.us.
The course was funded in part by a grant from the
Agency for Health Care Research and
Quality.