Conferences, meetings and virtual events
On 23 and 24 March 2023, the very first RC3 Long Night of Research on Volunteering took place, a 24-hour online event, organized jointly by the Red Cross and Red Crescent Research Consortium (RC3) and the Global Volunteering Alliance of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.
The event was dedicated to showcasing how research improves practice on the burning issue of volunteerism and volunteering development, and many Red Cross and Red Crescent National Societies (employees and volunteers) were present. CEBaP presented on the topic of volunteers as research drivers, and provided some examples of how volunteers are involved in formulating a research question or collecting data at the Belgian Red Cross.
On 26 May 2023, CEBaP gave an internal one-day training course entitled 'Science into practice' to a group of Belgian Red Cross managers, as part of an internal training program at the 'Belgian Red Cross Academy'. During this course, important topics such as dealing critically with information, knowing about different sources of bias, searching and critically appraising systematic reviews, and the importance of evidence-based decision-making were discussed with the target audience.
From 30 May to 1 June 2023, we attended the annual face-to-face meeting of the International Liaison Committee on Resuscitation (ILCOR) in Brisbane, Australia. CEBaP hosted a workshop that was specifically tailored to the needs of the members of the First Aid Task Force, helping to strengthen their evidence review capacities. During the workshop, the members learned more about how to develop, reiterate and run search strings in multiple databases. In the second hands-on part, they learned to apply the Cochrane Risk of Bias 2.0 tool to a first aid-related randomized controlled trial.
From 4 to 6 September 2023, Cochrane UK hosted the first real-life Cochrane Colloquium in five years with the theme 'Forward together for trusted evidence'. CEBaP contributed with two oral presentations and a poster presentation.
Apart from these formal contributions, we had fruitful meetings with other Cochrane members and participated in state-of-the-art methodological workshops.
Not to mention the evening social event in the Hintze Hall of the National History Museum!
From 7 to 9 September 2023, CEBaP attended the European Conference on Donor Health & Management in Vienna, where we presented our scientific work on the impact of plasmapheresis on donor health, including a scoping review and evidence gap map, a randomized controlled trial, and a systematic review.
Twenty October 2023 marked the fourth edition of World Evidence-Based Healthcare (EBHC) Day, a global initiative to raise awareness of the need for better evidence to inform healthcare policy, practice and decision-making. The 2023 campaign was centered on Evidence and Global Health Equity. Health inequities are the unfair, unjust and avoidable differences in health caused by how power, resources, and money are distributed in society.
CEBaP was a proud Evidence Ambassador and published a blog article about the ongoing development of an evidence-based guideline on blood donor recruitment in sub-Saharan Africa on the World EBHC Day website.
In November 2023, CEBaP hosted a workshop on Evidence-Based Practice within Belgian Red Cross. During this workshop, which is a continuation of our e-learning course, Belgian Red Cross employees learned more about Evidence-Based Practice and how it is put into practice in the organization. They even got to design a randomized controlled trial themselves!
