Cochrane Review Group on HIV/AIDS [summary]

The Cochrane Collaborative Review Group on HIV Infection and AIDS (Cochrane HIV/AIDS Group) is one of 52 Collaborative Review Groups of the Cochrane Collaboration. The Cochrane HIV/AIDS Group, with editorial bases at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), and the South African Medical Research Council (MRC), Cape Town, South Africa, brings together individuals from around the world who share an interest in preparing, disseminating, and updating systematic reviews of rigorous HIV/AIDS prevention, treatment, palliative care and pain management research as well as enhancing the science of evidence-based health care. As of this writing in February 2009, we have 53 completed systematic reviews and 50 reviews in progress in all areas of HIV prevention, treatment, palliative care, and health care services. About 30 of the reviews in progress are at advanced stages of completion. We work very closely with our satellite editorial base at the South Africa Cochrane Centre, and have developed a mentoring program with them to assist new authors in sub-Saharan Africa. This helps African researchers to learn the process of conducting a systematic review, and helps us to be sure that the reviews we are conducting are relevant to the areas of the world most impacted by the AIDS pandemic. We have also helped to re-establish the Cochrane Sexually Transmitted Diseases Group in Porto Alegre, Brazil, with Dr. Mauro Ramos of the Centro por Estudos de AIDS/DST do Rio Grande do Sul (CEARGS). We work with policy makers at the national and international levels to disseminate the results of our reviews, and have produced documents used by the Council on Foreign Relations, the Institute of Medicine, South Africa’s Treatment Action Coalition, South Africa’s MRC (at a national level), the US State Department, the World Health Organization, and various other national and international non-governmental organizations