Background: A lot of efforts have been made to translate Cochrane abstracts and plain language summaries (PLSs) in order to get the high-quality evidence available to a wider audience. However, failure of getting people with less or no expertise to understand the research itself is another barrier apart from language. We started to hold dissemination competitions in 2021. Objective: The aim of this work is to explore possibilities of making evidence more understandable and accessible to wider populations.
Methods: We collaborated with translation and dissemination member teams within and outside China Cochrane Network to hold evidence-based medicine dissemination competitions in 2021 and 2022 (Figure 1), calling for submission to the public by any type of works presenting Cochrane review evidence. We invited tutors from each affiliate and member team to judge the submissions from aspects of understanding of methodology, information reliability, proper comment, popularized expression of science, as well as degree of interest and creativity. The submissions were posted via WeChat, the main social media in China, and the numbers of views, likes, and shares were also calculated as part of the final scores.
Results: We received 73 and 61 individual or team submissions involving 119 and 237 competitors, respectively, in 2021 and 2022. The submissions were from affiliates, volunteers, university students, clinicians, and researchers. The submissions presented Cochrane review evidence (Table 1) covering a variety of review groups (Table 2) in the form of poster, cartoon, comics, video, mind map, hand-painting, song, lyrics, and poetry (Figure 2). Our WeChat account received 137,251 and 151,210 looks in 2021 and 2022, whereas 139,834 accumulated from 2017-2020, which showed a high possibility that the competition presenting Cochrane evidence in a more innovative way attracted more attention.
Conclusions: The idea of holding competitions via social media encourages the efforts of understanding Cochrane evidence and ambition of expressing it with creativity. Considering the effects of attracting public interest, improving evidence accessibility as well as supporting evidence understanding, we will continue this competition in the future.