Background: Person-centred health and public health systems are systems in which healthcare providers, managers, and planners involve consumers/service users as partners in planning, delivering, and evaluating services. Such approaches are key to ensuring that health and public health systems interventions meet the needs of consumers and other stakeholders, and promote engagement, empowerment, and equity. Person-centred approaches are also necessary for safe, high-performing, sustainable and resilient health, and public health systems and are key to achieving the health-related Sustainable Development Goals. In recognition of this, Cochrane has agreed to establish a Thematic Group in this area. Goal of the Thematic Group: To collaborate in providing leadership and expertise to support Cochrane’s production of priority syntheses on person-centred health and public health systems, and working to ensure more effective, equitable, and accessible systems for all. Key contributions of the Thematic Group: The Thematic Group brings together the expertise of Cochrane Effective Practice and Organisation of Care (EPOC), Cochrane Consumers and Communication (CCC), and Cochrane Public Health (CPH) to:
• Provide strategic leadership on review priorities within the Thematic Group scope, working with diverse stakeholders.
• Advance methods to support evidence synthesis in complex areas that meet the needs of stakeholders. This may include the use of logic models to articulate intervention pathways and shape syntheses, syntheses of qualitative evidence, and approaches for coproducing syntheses with stakeholders.
• Contribute to knowledge translation and evidence-informed decision making for person-centred care, health, and public health systems, drawing on implementation science and other relevant disciplines.
• Share and strengthen capacity with partners in the Global South.
Conclusions: By integrating evidence on person-centred health systems and public health, this new Thematic Group will contribute to understanding the interconnectedness between health systems, public health, and personal, social, and environmental contexts to promote healthy lives and well-being for all people. Relevance and importance to consumers: Patients, carers, and families are central to the concept of person-centred health and public health systems. This Thematic Group will contribute to advancing this perspective, identifying review priorities from the perspectives of consumers and building an evidence base for decision-making.