Protocol for the Development of Guidance for Stakeholder Engagement in Health and Healthcare Guideline Development and Implementation

Jennifer Petkovic 1, Alison Riddle 2, Elie A Akl 3, Joanne Khabsa 4, Lyubov Lytvyn 5, Pearl Atwere 6, Pauline Campbell 7, Kalipso Chalkidou 8, Stephanie M Chang 9, Sally Crowe 10, Leonila Dans 11, Fadi El Jardali 12, Davina Ghersi 13, Ian D Graham 14 15, Sean Grant 16, Regina Greer-Smith 17, Jeanne-Marie Guise 18, Glen Hazlewood 19, Janet Jull 20, S Vittal Katikireddi 21, Etienne V Langlois 22, Anne Lyddiatt 23, Lara Maxwell 24, Richard Morley 25, Reem A Mustafa 26, Francesco Nonino 27, Jordi Pardo Pardo 28, Alex Pollock 29, Kevin Pottie 30 31, John Riva 32, Holger Schünemann 33, Rosiane Simeon 2, Maureen Smith 34, Airton T Stein 35, Anneliese Synnot 36 37, Janice Tufte 38, Howard White 39 40, Vivian Welch 2 41, Thomas W Concannon 42 43, Peter Tugwell 44 45 46

Affiliations

PMID: 32007104
PMCID: PMC6995157
DOI: 10.1186/s13643-020-1272-5

Free PMC article

Abstract

Background: Stakeholder engagement has become widely accepted as a necessary component of guideline development and implementation. While frameworks for developing guidelines express the need for those potentially affected by guideline recommendations to be involved in their development, there is a lack of consensus on how this should be done in practice. Further, there is a lack of guidance on how to equitably and meaningfully engage multiple stakeholders. We aim to develop guidance for the meaningful and equitable engagement of multiple stakeholders in guideline development and implementation.

Methods: This will be a multi-stage project. The first stage is to conduct a series of four systematic reviews. These will (1) describe existing guidance and methods for stakeholder engagement in guideline development and implementation, (2) characterize barriers and facilitators to stakeholder engagement in guideline development and implementation, (3) explore the impact of stakeholder engagement on guideline development and implementation, and (4) identify issues related to conflicts of interest when engaging multiple stakeholders in guideline development and implementation.

Discussion: We will collaborate with our multiple and diverse stakeholders to develop guidance for multi-stakeholder engagement in guideline development and implementation. We will use the results of the systematic reviews to develop a candidate list of draft guidance recommendations and will seek broad feedback on the draft guidance via an online survey of guideline developers and external stakeholders. An invited group of representatives from all stakeholder groups will discuss the results of the survey at a consensus meeting which will inform the development of the final guidance papers. Our overall goal is to improve the development of guidelines through meaningful and equitable multi-stakeholder engagement, and subsequently to improve health outcomes and reduce inequities in health.

Keywords: Coproduction; Equity; Guidance; Guidelines; Integrated knowledge translation; Stakeholder engagement; Systematic reviews.