Elsevier

Journal of Clinical Epidemiology

Volume 70, February 2016, Pages 68-89
Journal of Clinical Epidemiology

Original Article
Extending the PRISMA statement to equity-focused systematic reviews (PRISMA-E 2012): explanation and elaboration

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclinepi.2015.09.001Get rights and content
Under a Creative Commons license
open access

Abstract

Background

The promotion of health equity, the absence of avoidable and unfair differences in health outcomes, is a global imperative. Systematic reviews are an important source of evidence for health decision makers but have been found to lack assessments of the intervention effects on health equity. The Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis (PRISMA) is a 27-item checklist intended to improve transparency and reporting of systematic reviews. We developed an equity extension for PRISMA (PRISMA-E 2012) to help systematic reviewers identify, extract, and synthesize evidence on equity in systematic reviews.

Methods and Findings

In this explanation and elaboration article, we provide the rationale for each extension item. These items are additions or modifications to the existing PRISMA statement items, to incorporate a focus on equity. An example of good reporting is provided for each item as well as the original PRISMA item.

Conclusions

This explanation and elaboration document is intended to accompany the PRISMA-E 2012 statement and the PRISMA statement to improve understanding of the reporting guideline for users. The PRISMA-E 2012 reporting guideline is intended to improve transparency and completeness of reporting of equity-focused systematic reviews. Improved reporting can lead to better judgment of applicability by policy makers which may result in more appropriate policies and programs and may contribute to reductions in health inequities.

Keywords

Systematic reviews
Health equity
Reporting guidelines
Research methodology

Cited by (0)

Funding: The development of the PRISMA-E 2012 reporting guideline was funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (grant number KPE 114370) and the Rockefeller Foundation. D.M. is funded by a University Research Chair. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the article.

Competing Interests: All authors have completed the ICMJE uniform disclosure form at www.icmje.org/coi_disclosure.pdf (available by request to the corresponding author). The authors report no competing interests.

In memoriam: We are greatly saddened by the loss of our esteemed friend and colleague, Elizabeth Waters, whose contributions were invaluable to this work.