Health Evidence Synthesis, Recommendations and Impact

Through the development of trustworthy systematic reviews, guideline development and implementation studies, our group makes national and international impact on health and public health.

Our experienced research team have led and partnered with projects for national and international organisations. Our consultant methodologists and advisors have led and contributed to several guideline development projects with wide-reaching impact, including but not limited to:

Guideline development examples

• The Australian Motor Neurone Disease Guideline, funded by FightMND, aiming to improve care and quality of life for people living with MND.

• Society of Obstetric Medicine of Australia and New Zealand Hypertension in Pregnancy Guidelines (SOMANZ): Aiming to improve outcomes for all women with medical disorders related to pregnancy, particularly pregnant women with hypertension.

• Ongoing work with the World Health Organization on its global malaria guidelines and integrated vector control guideline, including multiple systematic reviews and recommendation development projects, recognised with a WHO long term agreement.

• RACGP recommend the use of combination nicotine replacement therapy: Reviewing new and varied smoking cessation options for use by primary healthcare providers with their patients.

• Guidance for developing guidelines before, during, and after the COVID-19 pandemic: Exploring the landscape of guideline development and topics to consider supporting guideline development in future pandemics.

• NHMRC Guidelines for guidelines handbook: Developing high-quality, practical advice to meet national standards to improve health outcomes.

Methodological research examples

• Conducting proportional meta-analysis, a guide for systematic reviewers: Providing guidance to systematic reviewers and evidence synthesisers on how to conduct a proportional meta-analysis that’s been cited in world-leading systematic reviews on mpox and COVID-19 that have informed the development of clinical practice guidelines.

• Updated methodological guidance for conduct of scoping reviews: Providing guidance to improve the conduct and quality of various evidence synthesis types like scoping reviews.

• Revised JBI Critical Appraisal Tools: Updating critical appraisal tools to be better aligned with constantly evolving methodological advancements, which help improve the quality of research and recommendations developed.

We also have contributed to a wide range of evidence implementation theory and guidance papers across respected journals. Our published articles include topics such as including multisite evidence-based implementation project on medication administration, guidance for evidence implementation, and evidence implementation theory and concepts.

Located within the School of Public Health, College of Health at Adelaide University, our team are passionate about evidence-informed policy and practice.

HESRI leadership

• Prof Zachary Munn - Professor, Director
• Dr Timothy Barker - Senior research fellow
• Dr Danielle Pollock - Senior research fellow
• Dr Cindy Stern - Senior research fellow

HESRI team

• Dr Grace McBride - Research fellow
• Dr Nipun Shrestha - Research fellow
• Dr Bolaji Samson Aregbeshola – Research Officer
• Ms Sabira Hasanoff - Research Officer
• Miss Ines Semendric - Research Officer
• Miss Sitasma Sharma - Research officer
• Dr Sophiya Dulal - Research officer
• Ms Bridget Houghton Mitchell - Administration and communications officer

HESRI HDR students

• Lara Stollery (PhD candidate): Developing evidence-based clinical and public health guidelines for people with lived experience (PLEX) of motor neuron disease (MND) in Australia.
• Abigail Day-Sharman (PhD candidate): The use of evidence quality assessment tools in the development of clinical practice guidelines for rare diseases.
• Brendan Schultz (PhD candidate): Ensuring out-of-hospital clinical practice guidelines (CPGs) used by paramedics and similar personnel are evidence-based.
• Sebastian Facchin-Young (PhD candidate): Impact of research conducted with poor integrity on systematic review findings and clinical practice guideline recommendations.
• Dr Sam White (PhD candidate): Establishing an evidence-based framework to support development of diagnostic criteria particularly for conditions with no obvious tests, biomarkers or reference standards.
• Michelle Thomson (MPhil candidate): Clinical practice guidelines in prehospital pain management for paramedics.

Our affiliates and titleholders

• Dr Micah Peters
• Dr Jodie Avery
• Associate Professor Zohra Lassi
• Dr Alexandra Whittaker
• Dr Raju Kanukula
• Dr Emily Shepherd
• Dr Dannii Dougherty
• Dr Melissa Bond
• Dr Jack Nunn  

Our group makes national and international impact on health and public health by collaborating with national and international organisations. We collaborate with and inform policies and outputs with key NGOs such as the World Health Organisation, national health organisations like FightMND, SOMANZ, RACGP, NHMRC, and complementary organisations like Cochrane, GIN and JBI. 

Student supervision

Our academic staff have significant experience and a successful track record in supervising Masters and PhD students in the field of public health. We welcome outreach from interested candidates interested in exploring research in methodology, evidence-synthesis, evidence-based policy, systematic reviews and more. 

Visiting scholars

Our team invites researchers from around the world to visit our beautiful Adelaide city and work with us at HESRI. 

Education

We can provide educational workshops on evidence synthesis, guidelines, and research methodology to groups and students. 

Interested parties can contact us at hesri@adelaide.edu.au.