Developing the Guide to Community Preventive Services - Overview and rationale

When the Guide to Community Preventive Services Systematic Reviews and Evid ence-Based Recommendations (the Guide) is published in 2001, it will repres ent a significant national effort in encouraging evidence-based public heal th practice in defined populations (e.g., communities or members of specifi c managed care plans). The Guide will make recommendations regarding public health interventions to reduce illness, disability, premature death, and e nvironmental hazards that impair community health and quality of life. The Guide is being developed under the guidance of the Task Force on Community Preventive Services (the Task Force)-a 15-member, nonfederal, independent p anel of experts. Subject matter experts, methodologists, and scientific staff are supporting the Task Force in using explicit rules to conduct systematic literature re views of evidence of effectiveness, economic efficiency, and feasibility on which to base recommendations for community action. Contributors to the Gu ide are building on the experience of others to confront methodologic chall enges unique to the assessment of complex multicomponent intervention studi es with nonexperimental or nonrandomized designs and diverse measures of ou tcome and effectiveness. Persons who plan, fund, and implement population-based services and policie s to improve health at the stare and local levels are invited to scrutinize the work in progress and Co communicate with contributors. When the Guide is complete, readers are encouraged to consider critically the value and re levance of its contents, the implementation of interventions the Task Force recommends, the abandonment of interventions the Task Force does not recom mend, and die need for rigorous evaluation of the benefits and harms of pro mising interventions of unknown effectiveness. Medical Subject Headings (MeSH): community health services, decision making , evidence-based medicine, population-based interventions, practice guideli nes, preventive health services, public health practice, task force. (C) 20 00 American Journal of Preventive Medicene.