One goal of Campbell’s strategy for 2015-18 was to do more to promote the use of reviews to inform policy and practice. This is not something we were tracking before. We have now compiled a list of ‘policy influence stories’, which has identified influence from 19 Campbell evidence synthesis reviews. These 19 are sorted into various categories.
Policy and practice have been directly informed in various ways. Three reviews are cited in international guidelines. For example, the Campbell review cited in the recently revised WHO deworming guidelines shows evidence limiting the claims of the benefits of the intervention and emphasizing the importance of alternative interventions in water and sanitation to sustain improvements in child health. Two reviews have supported rolling out a policy (hotspot policing in Trinidad and Tobago) or changing a policy (the Canadian Red Cross is targeting its deworming programme). In addition, we identified four cases of policy informed by Campbell reviews, such the Anti-Bullying Programmes in Schools informing the Welsh National Suicide Prevention Strategy.
Six Campbell reviews are cited in international policy documents: FAO cites the Campbell review of Farmer Field Schools in several documents, and FAO cites the land reform review. CAF cited several Campbell reviews in its influential report ‘For a safer Latin America: a new perspective for preventing and controlling crime’.
In other cases Campbell reviews have informed policy discussion within government. The US Department of Justice has cited the Scared Straight review as evidence against giving support to these types of programs, based on a popular TV programme. And Campbell reviews have also been part of a broader public debate, being covered in the press (e.g. mindfulness in the UK Sunday Times, conditional cash transfers in the Economist, and pulling levers crime prevention in the New York Times). And the review of closed circuit TV was cited in the UK parliament.
Nineteen policy influence stories plus eight reviews cited in national media is a lot more coverage than papers in an academic journal would normally get. The Campbell journal is not intended to be just an academic journal. It is primarily a resource to inform policy and practice. So in this respect a report card of ‘must try harder’ seems warranted. What can be done?
Here are some suggestions. We welcome others.
First, the number of reviews being published is growing. Only a small share of these are Campbell reviews. This is a shame for them, a shame for the public good, and of course a shame for Campbell. So Campbell – meaning the international network of researchers who work to support Campbell – should try to ensure more of the reviews being made are produced to Campbell standards and published in the Campbell journal.
Second, Campbell reviews have been mainly supply-driven (that is decided by researchers identifying questions of interest to them) rather than demand-driven (that is a funder commissioning a review because they want a particular question answered). Even funded reviews have most commonly been commissioned to provide general support to evidence synthesis – the series of reviews produced by VIVE, the Danish Center for Social Science Research, with support from the Ministry of Social Solidarity and the Interior are an example of this. There are some exceptions, such as the handwashing review, which was supported by the Belgian Red Cross. But we need do more to get reviews commissioned with a clear intention to inform decisionmaking.
Doing that means producing reviews which shift beyond the general first generation question of if an intervention works or not. Reviews to inform policy or practice are generally more focused than this. For example, WHO revised the guidelines for the use of anti-retrovirals including the threshold blood count at which they should be used. A review was commissioned specifically to inform the recommendation on the threshold. Campbell has not been publishing reviews of that detailed, focused nature, but should be doing so. There are many such questions in the sectors in which we work which could inform policy and practice and so result in a better world.