Wales COVID-19 Evidence Centre

The Wales COVID-19 Evidence Centre has now transitioned into the Health and Care Research Wales Evidence Centre.

COVID-19 has, and still is, dramatically changing the health and social care needs of people in Wales and the way services are delivered. Those who make decisions about policy and practice in this area need to use research to understand and manage the pandemic and its impact.

There has been a huge volume of COVID-19 research conducted, including those on:

The spread of the disease
Risk factors
Treatments
Vaccinations
The consequences of the pandemic

However, the research evidence is often not readily available to those who need it, including Welsh Government, the NHS, Social Care and the public, and it can be challenging to ensure the research evidence base is up-to-date and relevant to Wales.

This is the driver for establishing the Wales COVID-19 Evidence Centre, which aims to improve the quality and safety of health and social care delivery by ensuring COVID-19 research is timely and applicable to Wales

The Wales COVID-19 Evidence Centre’s work

Research and evidence are essential in managing the COVID-19 pandemic in Wales. The Wales COVID-19 Evidence Centre, focuses on two key types of research:

Reviewing research evidence

The team reviews evidence from research studies which have already taken place, making sure they are up-to-date and relevant to Wales, with the aim of supporting decision makers to manage the pandemic and establish recovery.

Working with organisations across the world, the centre contributes to international efforts, including the COVID-END Evidence Network, to review research and use it to support policy and practice.

Conducting new research

Reviewing research evidence has provided answers to many questions, but they have also highlighted key evidence gaps that could benefit from further investigation. To tackle this, the Wales COVID-19 Evidence Centre delivers new research studies across Wales to help to inform the pandemic recovery.

Working with other organisations and researchers in Wales, the Centre:

Develops research objectives and proposals
Provides funding to other researchers for priority COVID-19 research projects
Works with members of the public to prioritise research
Makes sure the research is available to those who need it to inform policy and practice

Read about the research projects the Wales COVID-19 Evidence Centre has funded to improve pandemic management and support Wales' transition out of the pandemic.

Who the Centre works with

The Centre works with experts in reviewing, summarising, and producing reports of available research evidence, including:

The Centre also works with representatives from Welsh Government and policy groups, social care, Academy of Medical Royal Colleges (Wales), public and patient involvement organisations, Health and Care Research Wales research infrastructure, NHS Wales service delivery groups, NHS Wales University Health Boards/Trusts and Third Sector Support Wales.

To learn more and get involved email the Centre.

Core Values

The Wales COVID-19 Evidence Centre’s values are built around social, economic, and environmental justice; consistent with the generational focus of the Wellbeing of Future Generations Act.

The team also seek to identify where most value can be attained as much as the narrower goal of cost-effectiveness.

The Centre operates in a respectful, inclusive multi-disciplinary approach reaching across health, social and third sectors and with industry partners

Work Programme

With the remit of ‘good questions, answered quickly’, the Centre works with other organisations to prioritise questions that are answerable from the research evidence, and which can help Wales to understand the impact of the pandemic, help ensure the greatest health and wider needs of communities and people in Wales are met, and help Wales recover and rebuild.

Research questions are prioritised according to relevance to the current or future COVID-19 context in Wales, importance of the evidence gap (scale, cost, consequence), potential benefits, potential for translation into practice and urgency.

The Wales COVID-19 Evidence Centre’s Work Programme, describes the processes to date, and will be updated as the work programme continues to develop.

Getting the public involved

The Wales COVID-19 Evidence Centre Public Partnership Group is made up of members of the public and they are involved in all the Centre’s work from start to finish – including question prioritisation, grant funding panels, projects, meetings, interpreting findings, writing lay summaries, attending Welsh Government evidence briefing sessions, and as co-authors publications. To learn more or get involved email the Centre.

The Centre also asks the Public Partnership Group to write summaries of all reports they publish. This ensures the reports can be accessed by everyone. Visit the report library to read more about the reports.

Newsletter

Keep up to date with all the latest Wales COVID-19 Evidence Centre news with our quarterly newsletter. Sign-up now to receive information about the latest news, reports and events from the Wales COVID-19 Evidence Centre straight into your inbox.

You can read all the issues already published below:

Issue one - November 2021

Issue two - March 2022

Issue three - September 2022

Evidence into Practice Symposium