Global Commission on Evidence to Address Societal Challenges: Where are we now and how can we go farther, faster together?

To tackle policy challenges – in both routine times and future global crises, and for both shorter-term and intergenerational policy challenges – we need ‘general contractors’ who can bring in needed forms of existing evidence from the ‘trades,’ rapidly contextualize it for a given decision in an equity-sensitive way, and feed it into advisory and decision-making processes in central agencies, line departments, and parliaments and into learning and improvement processes in health systems. The trades can include data analytics, evaluation, and behavioural science, among others, as well as those bringing in experience and insights from everyday citizens and from other countries. We need these general contractors providing timely, demand-driven evidence support to be: 1) well networked to their peers in other countries; 2) drawing from new AI-driven ‘living evidence syntheses’ that are updated continuously as policy contexts, issues and evidence evolve; and 3) partnering with experienced communicators and community leaders who can help to put evidence at the centre of everyday life and to combat misinformation. John will briefly describe the work being done in 12 countries, with global bodies and with citizen-serving NGOs to implement these and other calls to action from the Global Commission on Evidence to Address Societal Challenges.

Professor John Lavis, founder and director of the McMaster Health Forum and lead report writer for the Evidence Commission, will provide an update on the work that’s happening now and share his views on how we can go farther, faster together.