“We need to keep refining our approach…I’m very optimistic” - an interview with Tari Turner from Cochrane Australia
Tari Turner is a Professor at Cochrane Australia’s School of Public Health & Preventive Medicine at Monash University and is also Director of the Australian Living Evidence Consortium and the National Clinical Evidence Taskforce. Tari’s work currently focuses on living evidence synthesis methods, living guidelines and evidence use. She has been a part of Cochrane Australia since 2007, publishing her first review in 2013. Here, she explains her background at Cochrane, her excitement about the future, and her unusual alarm clock…
Hi Tari, can you explain a little about your area of expertise and your background?
“I’ve been a part of Cochrane Australia since 2007. (I live in the Dandenong Ranges outside of Melbourne, Australia where I am woken up by raucous kookaburras most mornings.) I published my first reviews in 2013 and I’ve been involved as an author and centre team member. I also helped develop what has become Cochrane Engage, and worked with the team that introduced the methods for living systematic reviews. I’ve also worked a bit on how we support the use of Cochrane reviews, particularly in low and middle-income countries, and with policy-makers. I’m currently on the Editorial Board for the Cochrane Library and Cochrane Evidence Synthesis and Methods, and I like hanging out with some of the Methods Groups from time to time.”
Why do you think it is important that Cochrane is now making changes and looking to the future?
“I hope that the changes being made will mean that authors have a more consistent, efficient experience of submitting and publishing Cochrane reviews; and that we will end up with more reviews that better meet the needs of the people who use them. It feels like there’s a lot of change happening at once, which can be quite unsettling, but I do think that the changes are moving us in the right direction and will help us meet our goal to ‘produce trusted and timely synthesized evidence addressing the most important questions for health and care decision making’ – with my emphasis on the timely and important bits!”
“I hope that the changes will mean that authors have a more consistent, efficient experience of submitting and publishing Cochrane reviews, that better meet the needs of the people who use them”
As an author, what do you expect from planned changes?
“My expectation as an author is that my experience will be consistent regardless of the clinical area of the review; with simplified, transparent, efficient and equitable processes for handling all manuscripts.”
As Cochrane looks back on its first 30 years, what are your hopes for the future?
“Oh, that’s a good question! It’s my firmly held belief that all healthcare decisions should be informed by reliable, up-to-date summaries of the best available evidence and I feel very privileged to work as part of a global collaboration that is squarely aimed at achieving that. I hope that Cochrane continues to focus on supporting evidence-informed decision-making and learning how to do it better, while - of course - we need to keep improving and refining our approach. I’m very optimistic that with the combination of excellent skills, unwavering commitment, and genuine loveliness that is present in the people who make up Cochrane, we will be successful. Also, given you are asking, I’d like a future Cochrane Colloquium to be held in a tropical setting, please.”
“We need to keep improving and refining our approach…I’m very optimistic”
What you most like to hear about from the Cochrane Community?
“I’d love to hear from people who have ideas for improvements in our work, particularly in living evidence synthesis methods, and I can almost always make time for a chat, particularly if someone shouts me a coffee!”