Note: we are looking for individuals (patients, carers and members of the public) who are physically located in the global south because this is the perspective we now need most.

We propose to develop a way of operationalising the assessment of equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) in systematic reviews. This will inform both applicability judgements and highlight EDI evidence gaps and uncertainties. The project, called PRO-EDI (https://www.abdn.ac.uk/hsru/what-we-do/research/projects/tools-to-help-reviewers-make-equality-diversity-and-inclusion-assessments-339), includes the lead of the UK's NIHR INCLUDE Ethnicity Framework and EDI lead for the new joint NIHR Aberdeen/Belfast Evidence Synthesis Centre (Shaun Treweek),  PROGRESS-Plus (Vivian Welch and Peter Tugwell) and Cochrane Ireland & Evidence Synthesis Ireland (Declan Devane) teams.

We need wider perspectives to shape our work. Our core team has recently expanded to include researchers and reviewers working in low and middle-income countries.  We would now like to involve patient and public contributors with some knowledge of systematic reviews who have an interest in improving how EDI is handled in reviews. Ideally we would like our public contributors to come from different parts of the world and we are thinking of involving 2 to 4 public contributors. Please note, we are not looking for individuals with backgrounds as health professionals or researchers (these perspectives are already represented in our work).

The role principally involves attending 1-hour online meetings held in English around every 6-8 weeks depending on activity. The project will run for around 1 year.  We will provide payment for public contributors in line with the UK's National Institute for Health and Care Research policy on public contributor reimbursement  (https://www.nihr.ac.uk/documents/payment-guidance-for-researchers-and-professionals/27392) (roughly speaking this is 25 GBP per hour). 

Our ideal applicants are people who bring a public contributor perspective to discussions of how to handle equality, diversity and inclusion within systematic reviews. No special methodological knowledge is required but a general understanding of systematic reviews would be very useful. Applicants would need to be comfortable with reading and speaking English and as we hope to involve 2-4 people, we would like a geographic spread of applicants that also involves people from low and middle-income countries.