Dr Bilotta, who is currently on secondment with the Chief Scientific Adviser at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, recently published an article on the topic in Environmental Science and Policy: On the use of systematic reviews to inform environmental policies.
The article, co-authored by Defra’s Chief Scientific Adviser Professor Ian Boyd, and Dr Alice Milner from University College London, said 'the environmental research that is used to inform policies varies in its methodological quality, degree of bias, and relevance to policy. Using this heterogeneous and sometimes polarised research to inform environmental policies can be a challenging task, which at present is often first approached through the use of narrative literature reviews'.
Narrative literature reviews, the authors highlight, are 'vulnerable to author bias, which can occur when the review authors intentionally or unintentionally select or emphasise research according to their own opinions, prejudices or commercial interests. Furthermore, narrative literature reviews rarely consider, in a reproducible and meaningful manner, the quality and reliability of the primary studies that are cited. These features of narrative literature reviews could lead to ill-informed environmental policies’.
Dr Bilotta said: "In evidence-based policy-making in the healthcare field systematic review processes are used in order to tackle these issues, helping to present a comprehensive, policy-neutral, transparent and reproducible synthesis of the evidence which can lead to better informed policies."
In their article, the authors claim ‘these systematic review processes are exemplified by the activities of The Cochrane Collaboration; an international network of more than 31,000 researchers and practitioners from over 120 countries and who work to help healthcare practitioners, policy-makers, patients, their advocates and carers, make well-informed decisions about healthcare by preparing, updating, and promoting the accessibility of systematic reviews on the effectiveness of healthcare interventions. The Cochrane Collaboration have published over 5,000 systematic reviews so far, all of which are freely-available online in the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, which is part of The Cochrane Library’.
Dr Bilotta said that "our article questions the common belief outside of healthcare that systematic reviews intrinsically adopt a biomedical model that is of relevance only to medicine – for example, only capable of using randomised controlled trials (RCTs) and only capable of answering certain types of questions.
“We demonstrate that this belief is unjustified, highlighting that the practices of the Cochrane Collaboration have spurred the development of another international initiative; The Campbell Collaboration who prepare, maintain, and disseminate systematic reviews on the effectiveness of social and behavioural interventions in education, social welfare, and crime and justice.
“More recently, these practices have spurred the founding of the Collaboration for Environmental Evidence; an open community of scientists and managers who, from their initial centres in Australia, South Africa, Sweden and the UK, have started to prepare systematic reviews on environmental topics.”
The authors state that ‘despite the recent establishment of the Collaboration for Environmental Evidence, at present many environmental researchers, practitioners and policy-makers are typically less familiar with exactly what a systematic review involves, and often have major misconceptions about their history and purpose’.
Dr Bilotta said: "The aim of our article was to summarise the process of conducting a systematic review, using the Cochrane Collaboration's exemplary methodology as an example (Cochrane Handbook), to explain the rationale behind each stage of the process, and to examine the prospects and challenges of using systematic reviews to inform environmental policies. It is hoped that this article will contribute to increased awareness of systematic reviews amongst the environmental community, ultimately leading to greater use of systematic reviews to inform environmental policies in the future."