Support Summaries

Start date: 2014-12-21

• Does home-based HIV Voluntary Counselling and Testing (VCT) improve the uptake of HIV testing?
• Does interactive communication between primary care physicians and specialists improve patient outcomes?
• What are the benefits and harms of direct to consumer advertising?
• Do conditional cash transfers improve the uptake of health interventions in low- and middle-income countries?
• What are the effects of early postnatal discharge from hospital on healthy mothers and term infants?
• Do lay or community health workers in primary healthcare improve maternal, child health and tuberculosis outcomes?
• What are the effects of printed educational materials on professional practice and healthcare outcomes?
• Does Internet based learning in the health professions improve learning outcomes?
• Do community health workers improve the care of people with hypertension?
• Are tailored strategies effective for changing healthcare professional practice?
• Can in-service health professional training improve the resuscitation of seriously ill newborns and children in low-income countries?
• What is the impact of increasing salaries on improving the performance of health professionals in the public sector?
• Do paper-based safety checklists improve patient safety in acute hospital settings?
• Do emergency obstetric referral interventions reduce maternal and neonatal mortalities in low- and middle-income countries?
• Does use of local opinion leaders improve professional practice and patient outcomes?.
• Do continuing education meetings and workshops for healthcare professionals improve professional practice and healthcare outcomes?
• Does public disclosure of performance data improve quality of healthcare?
• Does practice facilitation in primary care settings improve adoption of evidence-based guidelines?
• What are the effects of interventions to improve adherence to medication?
• Does additional social support during at-risk pregnancy improve perinatal outcomes?
• How do pharmaceutical policies that restrict reimbursement for selected medications effect health outcomes, drug use and expenditures, and healthcare utilization?
• Do reminder systems improve the effectiveness of tuberculosis diagnosis and management?
• Does giving women their own case notes to carry in pregnancy improve maternal care?
• What are the effects of interventions to improve childhood vaccination coverage?
• How do strategies to change organizational culture affect healthcare performance?
• Which outreach strategies increase health insurance coverage for vulnerable populations?
• What are the impacts of discharge planning from hospital?
• Are interventions to increase hand hygiene among healthcare workers effective?
• Is peer education an effective method for HIV prevention in low- and middle-income countries?
• Do educational outreach visits improve health professional practice and patient outcomes?
• Do additional services provided by pharmacists reduce healthcare costs or the demand for healthcare?
• Do changes in the pre-licensure education of health workers impact on the supply of health workers?
• What are the impacts of consumer involvement in developing healthcare policy, research and patient information material?

SUPPORT stands for Supporting Policy-relevant Reviews and Trials.

SUPPORT was a project funded from 2006 to 2010 by the European Commission´s 6th Framework Programme and by the Global Health Research Initiative of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.

The SUPPORT summaries' format was developed in the context of this project (an article describing the process can be found here). 

The Cochrane EPOC satellite in Norway is currently coordinating an effort to produce SUPPORT Summaries of all LMIC-relevant EPOC reviews and make them freely available online. More about this initiative here.

 The summaries are published in this website, which is maintained by Epistemonikos foundation, one of the partners of the project.