The US Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) Evidence-based Practice Center (EPC) program sponsors the development of systematic reviews to inform clinical policy and practice. The EPC program sought to better understand how health systems identify and use this evidence.

Representatives from eleven EPCs, the EPC Scientific Resource Center, and AHRQ developed a semi-structured interview script to query a diverse group of nine Key Informants (KIs) involved in health system quality, safety and process improvement about how they identify and use evidence. Interviews were transcribed and qualitatively summarized into key themes.

All KIs reported that their organizations have either centralized quality, safety, and process improvement functions within their system, or they have partnerships with other organizations to conduct this work. There was variation in how evidence was identified, with larger health systems having medical librarians and central bureaus to gather and disseminate information and smaller systems having local chief medical officers or individual clinicians do this work. KIs generally prefer guidelines, especially those with treatment algorithms, because they are actionable. They like systematic reviews because they efficiently condense study results and reconcile conflicting data. They prefer information from systematic reviews to be presented as short digestible summaries with the full report available on demand. KIs preferred systematic reviews from reputable entities and those without commercial bias. Some of the challenges KIs reported include how to resolve conflicting evidence, the generalizability of evidence to local needs, determining whether the evidence is up-to-date, and the length of time required to generate reviews. The topics of greatest interest included predictive analytics, high-value care, advance care planning, and care coordination. To increase awareness of AHRQ EPC reviews, KIs suggest alerting people at multiple levels in a health-system when new evidence reports are available and making reports easier to find in common search engines.

Systematic reviews are valued by health system leaders. To be most useful they should be easy to locate and available in different formats targeted to the needs of different audiences.

England's Time To Change (TTC) social marketing campaign emphasised social contact between people with and without mental health problems to reduce stigma and discrimination.

We aimed to assess the effectiveness of the mass media component and also that of the mass social contact events.

Online interviews were performed before and after each burst of mass media social marketing to evaluate changes in knowledge, attitudes and behaviour and associations between campaign awareness and outcomes. Participants at social contact events were asked about the occurrence and quality of contact, attitudes, readiness to discuss mental health and intended behaviour towards people with mental health problems.

Prompted campaign awareness was 38-64%. A longitudinal improvement was noted for one intended behaviour item but not for knowledge or attitudes. Campaign awareness was positively associated with greater knowledge (β = 0.80, 95% CI 0.52-1.08) and more favourable attitudes (commonality OR 1.37, 95% CI 1.10-1.70; dangerousness OR 1.41, 95% CI 1.22-1.63) and intended behaviour (β = 0.75, 95% CI 0.53-0.96). Social contact at events demonstrated a positive impact (M=2.68) v. no contact (M = 2.42) on perceived attitude change; t(211)= 3.30, P=0.001. Contact quality predicted more positive attitude change (r=0.33, P<0.01) and greater confidence to challenge stigma (r=0.38, P<0.01).

The favourable short-term consequences of the social marketing campaign suggest that social contact can be used by anti-stigma programmes to reduce stigma.

Education Not Discrimination (END) is the component of the Time to Change programme intended to reduce mental health stigma among professionals and professional trainees.

To investigate the impact of the END anti-stigma programme on medical students immediately and after 6 months with regard to knowledge, attitudes, behaviour and empathy.

A total of 1452 medical students participated in the study (intervention group n = 1066, control group n = 386).

Participants completed questionnaires at baseline, and at immediate and 6-month follow-up. Groups were compared for changes in stigma outcomes.

All measures improved in both groups, particularly among students with less knowledge and more stigmatising attitudes and intended behaviour at baseline. At immediate follow-up the intervention group demonstrated significantly greater improvements in stigma-related knowledge and reductions in stigma-related attitudes and intended behaviour, relative to the control group. At 6 months' follow-up, however, only one attitude item remained significantly better.

Although the intervention produced short-term advantage there was little evidence for its persistent effect, suggesting a need for greater integration of ongoing measures to reduce stigma into the medical curriculum.

There has been no comprehensive investigation of psychological health in Australia's Korean War veteran population, and few researchers are investigating the health of coalition Korean War veterans into old age.

To investigate the association between war service, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and depression in Australia's 7525 surviving male Korean War veterans and a community comparison group.

A survey was conducted using a self-report postal questionnaire which included the PTSD Checklist, the Hospital Anxiety and Depression scale and the Combat Exposure Scale.

Post-traumatic stress disorder (OR 6.63, P <0.001), anxiety (OR 5.74, P <0.001) and depression (OR 5.45, P <0.001) were more prevalent in veterans than in the comparison group. These disorders were strongly associated with heavy combat and low rank.

Effective intervention is necessary to reduce the considerable psychological morbidity experienced by Korean War veterans. Attention to risk factors and early intervention will be necessary to prevent similar long-term psychological morbidity in veterans of more recent conflicts.