The GIN-McMaster Guideline Development Checklist extension for engagementDepartment of Health Research Methods, Evidence, and Impact (HEI), McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.
Bruyère Health Research Institute, Ottawa, Canada; School of Epidemiology and Public Health, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Canada.
Canadian Council on Animal Care, Ottawa, Canada.
UCB BioPharma, Slough, UK.
Department of Research in Biomedicine and Health, Center for Evidence-Based Medicine, University of Split School of Medicine, Split, Croatia.
Health Evidence Synthesis, Recommendations and Impact (HESRI), School of Public Health, University of Adelaide, Adelaide, South Australia.
Hôpital Montfort, Ottawa, Canada.
Department of Internal Medicine, American University of Beirut, Beirut, Lebanon.
Weill Cornell Medicine–Qatar, Doha, Qatar.
Community pharmacist, Former Healthcare Quality and Patient Safety Director at INEAS., INEAS (National Authority for Assessment and Accreditation in Healthcare), Tunis, Tunisia.
Vice-President Research–Learning Health Systems, CIHR, Ottawa, Canada; Adjunct Professor, School of Epidemiology and Public Health, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.
Becaris Publishing Limited, Chesham, UK.
Ministry of Health, Cross River State, Calabar, Nigeria.
Healthcare Research Associates, LLC/The S.T.A.R. Initiative, California, USA.
Chiesi Group, Manchester, UK.
Division of Internal Medicine, Sidney Kimmel Medical College, Thomas Jefferson University, Philadelphia, USA.
Research Chair in Family Medicine, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Canada.
Department of Biomedical Sciences for Health, University of Milan, Milan, Italy.
Cochrane, 11-13 Cavendish Square, London, UK, W1G 0AN.
Office of AIDS and TB Research, South African Medical Research Council, Cape Town, South Africa.
Centre for Homelessness Impact, London, UK.
Annals of Internal Medicine, Philadelphia, PA, USA.
Department of Clinical Epidemiology, Department of Pediatrics, University of the Philippines-Manila, Manila, Philippines.
Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts, USA.
Cochrane Consumer, PCORI Ambassador, Hassanah Consulting, Seattle, Washington USA.
Clinical Epidemiology and Research Center (CERC), Department of Biomedical Sciences, Humanitas & Humanitas Research Hospital, Milano, Italy.
Bruyère Health Research Institute, Ottawa, Canada; University of Ottawa, Department of Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, Ottawa, Canada; Ottawa Hospital Research Institute, Clinical Epidemiology Program, Ottawa, Canada; University of Ottawa, School of Epidemiology and Public Health, Faculty of Medicine, Ottawa, Canada; WHO Collaborating Centre for Knowledge Translation and Health Technology Assessment in Health Equity, Bruyère Research Institute, Ottawa, Canada.
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2025 (English)In: Journal of Clinical Epidemiology, ISSN 0895-4356, E-ISSN 1878-5921, Vol. 181, article id 111727Article in journal (Refereed) Published
Abstract [en]
Objectives: Better engagement of diverse groups of interest-holders in the development of health guidelines has been proposed to improve their usefulness, implementability, and acceptability. Guidelines shape clinical or public health practice decision-making. Trustworthy guidelines are systematically developed documents that include actionable statements based on evidence and a formal, structured and transparent decision process. This paper describes the Guidelines International Network (GIN)-McMaster Guideline Development Checklist (GDC) Extension for Engagement to assist developers with engaging multiple interest-holders throughout all topics of guideline development. Study Design and Setting: To produce this checklist extension, we conducted a 3-phase mixed methods study. First, we identified 10 groups of interest-holders to be engaged in health guideline development: patients, the public, providers, program managers, principal investigators, payers/purchasers of health services, payers/funders of health research, policymakers, peer-reviewed journal editors, and product makers identified in previous work and recruited coleads to represent these groups (n = 26 total). Results: We conducted a series of reviews to identify existing methods and barriers/facilitators for engagement, approaches to managing conflicts of interest, and describe the impacts of engagement on the guideline development process. The results of these reviews informed the development of an online survey for which we received 195 responses. We clarified these results through 43 key informant interviews with interest-holders. The final GDC extension checklist was determined based on consensus methods with our coleads. Conclusion: This paper presents the GIN-McMaster GDC Extension for Engagement. This checklist provides interest-holder–informed recommendations for providing advice/feedback or participating in decision-making in guideline development. Plain Language Summary: Health-care guidelines are formal recommendations for diagnosing and managing medical conditions or public health concerns. The steps involved in developing guidelines include from planning the process, defining the focus of the guideline and the questions it should answer, and summarizing the evidence. The Guidelines International Network-McMaster Guideline Development checklist includes 146 steps of guideline development grouped into 18 topics. Our work extends this checklist to provide guidance on how to engage with people from different groups of ‘interest-holders’ throughout guideline development. These interest-holders include (1) patients, (2) members of the public, (3) health-care providers, (4) people who manage and operate health programs, (5) researchers, (6) people who pay for or purchase health services, (7) policymakers, (8) people who pay for health research, (9) people who publish research and guidelines, and (10) people who develop and sell health-care devices or products. We engaged with people from each of the groups to develop this guidance. Twenty-six people coled our interest-holder groups. We conducted a series or systematic reviews on (a) how to engage people in guidelines, (b) identifying the barriers and facilitators to engagement, (c) assessing the impacts of engagement, and (d) describing how to manage conflicts of interest related to engagement. These reviews were used to create a first draft of guidance. Then we conducted an online survey and gathered the opinions from 195 people from each of our interest-holder groups. We interviewed 43 interest-holders for additional information to revise the guidance and then finalized the guidance with our interest-holder coleads. This checklist provides guidance for engaging interest-holder groups throughout guideline development.
Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Elsevier , 2025. Vol. 181, article id 111727
Keywords [en]
Checklist, GIN-McMaster checklist, GRADE, Guideline development, Health decision-making, Patient and public involvement (PPI), Research partnership, Stakeholder engagement
National Category
Health Care Service and Management, Health Policy and Services and Health Economy
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:mau:diva-79755DOI: 10.1016/j.jclinepi.2025.111727ISI: 001454771800001PubMedID: 39971165Scopus ID: 2-s2.0-105000262372OAI: oai:DiVA.org:mau-79755DiVA, id: diva2:2001602
2025-09-262025-09-262025-09-26Bibliographically approved