MODULE 4: Consensus Activities Much of the work at the Academy revolves around 2 types of activities convening and consensus activities. As a reminder, convening activities do not provide formal recommendations but focus more on the academy s ability to bring groups together and to prioritize needs in a particular area like Food Security. In contrast, consensus activities are studies that bring together a multidisciplinary group of experts who respond to a question or set of questions in the form of a Charge or Statement of Task (SOT). Although these activities differ in these ways, many of the processes used to conduct the activities and produce a report are quite similar. You will hear the academy process termed as transparent and rigorous. By the end of this module you should understand why these terms are used in this context. The Executive Secretary, the Academy Council and/or the Program Officer have likely developed a proposal that includes a SOT and was funded by some organization(s). You will use the proposal and the SOT to form the basis of the consensus study. Read the following section that breaks the academy process down into 3 phases then, answer the questions without looking back at the outline. Consensus Studies Phase 1: Pre-meeting 1. From your research you should come up with a multi-disciplinary list of experts. The expertise should be varied and depending on the topic might include public health, medicine, economics, social science, etc. You should also have it balanced with respect to age, ethnic group, and gender. These names can be added to the committee slate (see Appendix A). The slate should be reviewed with the Academy Council or the Study Liaison to the Council before invitations are sent out. After the committee member accepts, send him/her a packet including information on the academies, the SOT and the bias and conflict of interest forms. 2. Post committee members names and bios on the website along with the SOT 3. Determine the length, location and size of the meeting that will largely be based on the amount of funding acquired for the activity 4. Write the agenda with input from the planning committee (the agenda should tell a story and often begins with a broad overview of the topic then leads into specific issues and finishes with a way forward. If this is done well, it can become the outline of the report or the structure of the position paper). 5. Issues to Consider piece likely taken from the proposal Phase 2: Meeting 6. Closed session 1 unlike the workshop meeting which is open to the public, only part of the consensus study is open to the public. Typically, the meeting begins with a closed session for just the committee members to discuss any bias or conflicts of interest they may have then the chair outlines the what they can expect and what he hopes to get out of their open, information gathering sessions and their subsequent closed session deliberations. 7. Open session Take detailed notes (or ask a fellow program officer or research officer to assist and/or have the meeting transcribed) 1
8. Closed session This is where the committee deliberates and comes up with recommendations for the report. Phase 3: Post-meeting 9. Begin immediately writing the supporting text for the recommendations. Contact the committee members frequently letting them know the status of the report and sending them drafts of the report for their comments. 10. Once the supporting text is complete, have it copyedited for grammar and style 11. After editing the report, the committee gets a copy of the report and each person is asked to sign-off of the report indicating they support the recommendations and text. 12. Only after everyone signs-off can the review process begin. a. Create a reviewer slate that mirrors the committee slate and contains basically the same expertise that you have on the committee b. You will also need to locate someone to act as the Monitor of the review process. It will be this person s job to determine which reviewer comments staff must respond to and which are not critical to address. a. Invite reviewers and the monitor. Use the letters of invitation that have been developed for previous activities as templates. You may also want to contact the people informally before sending letters of invitation so they understand their roles. b. Once a reviewer accepts, send them the report along with the previously written list of questions s/he should respond to. c. The monitor gets a copy of each reviewer s comments and dictates to staff which comments must be responded to. d. Staff drafts a Response to Review that is sent to the monitor. If the monitor is satisfied that all his/her concerns have been addressed, then s/he will advise the staff that they can now proceed with production of the report. This is called sign-off. 13. Report Production a. Select a cover for the report b. Send the report to the printers and be sure to carefully review it for formatting and other issues before accepting the final version to be printed 14. Release and dissemination of the final report a. Before the report is officially released, brief the sponsor of what the recommendations so they understand the content before the report is released to the public. This way they have time to draft a public response if it is needed. Other groups who may be briefed or may receive an embargoed report prior to the release include the media and organizations that are not sponsors of the report but are singled out by the committee (typically in a recommendation). 2
QUESTIONS 1. You are organizing a consensus study. The meeting is only one day (very short) so you need to maximize your time with the committee. What can you send to the committee so they are all understanding the issues before they arrive for the meeting? 2. Where might you go to find text that can be used to draft the Issues to Consider piece? 3. Put the following agenda sessions in a logical order: a. National Health care policies in SSA b. Next Steps c. Workshop Objectives d. Improving the present, looking to the future: Developing evidence-based health care policies e. Global Burden of Disease f. Burden of Neurological, Mental and substance use disorders in SSA 4. You are very busy during the meeting trying to collect ppt presentations from the speakers who have not yet submitted to them. As a result, you are unable to take notes during the meeting. How can you capture notes from the meeting? Two options are to: (1) Request a staff member be asked to take notes for you; and (2) have the meeting transcribed. You can often turn a transcription into text for the report. 5. You have a well-funded study and therefore have the ability to organize a somewhat large launch/release of the report. Who might you invite to the release? Meeting participants email; government officials personal invite; sponsors personal invite; media try to pitch it to the media in terms that they understand 6. You are in charge of putting together a committee to address Cost-effective quality health care for HIV/AIDS patients in your country. What disciplines might you want on your committee? Remember it should be multi-disciplinary and it should cover all aspects of the topic. These are the titles that will populate the committee slate in Appendix A. 7. This is the first time you are drafting the response to review. Your review committee submitted all their comments and the monitor has told you which comments you need to address. You are unsure about the format you should use to draft the response to review that you will send back to the monitor. What should you do? 8. The committee you have been assigned to work with just finished their deliberations. Make up a timeline for when you expect to go to review and when you expect the report to go to the publisher. Be sure to include when you will be contacting the committee. 9. Why is it good to post the names of potential consensus committee members and the SOT on the Academy website? 3
ANSWERS: UNDERSTANDING THE ACADEMY PROCESS 1. When should you start working on the meeting agenda and begin inviting speakers? The moment you know you are having a meeting you should begin to draft a preliminary agenda and the earlier you can start inviting speakers the better your chances are of getting the right person for the talk. Many experts agendas fill a year in advance so waiting until 1 or 2 months before the meeting to begin inviting speakers is often way too late. Typically, invitations go out 6 to 8 months prior to the event. 2. You are organizing a consensus study. The meeting is only one day (very short) so you need to maximize your time with the committee. What can you send to the committee so they all understand the issues before they arrive for the meeting? Send them an Issues to Consider piece that is less than one page. This will give them a head start in understanding the direction you hope the discussions at the meeting will go. You will also want to include the SOT. 3. Where might you go to find text that can be used to draft the Issues to Consider piece? The Issues to Consider piece can often be drafted from text in proposal. 4. Put the following agenda sessions in a logical order: a. Workshop Objectives b. Global Burden of Disease c. Burden of Neurological, Mental and substance use disorders in SSA d. National Health care policies in SSA e. Improving the present, looking to the future: Developing evidence-based health care policies f. Next Steps 5. When does the bias and conflict of interest discussion take place? In the closed session prior to the start of the open, information gathering session 6. You are very busy during the meeting trying to collect ppt presentations from the speakers who have not yet submitted them. As a result, you are unable to take notes during the meeting. How can you capture notes from the meeting? Two options are to: (1) Request a staff member be asked to take notes for you; and/or (2) have the meeting transcribed. You can often turn a transcription into text for the report and you this is better insurance that the spoken words are written down exactly as they were stated. 7. You have a well-funded study and therefore have the ability to organize a somewhat large launch/release of the report. Who might you invite to the release? You could invite: The meeting participants by sending an email to the list you sent the Save-the-date to Relevant government officials could receive personal invitation; Sponsors of the meeting should be notified personally The media could be included although it might be advantageous to pitch the report to them in terms they understand. On reports where there is great interest from the media, it 4
is good to give them a personal press briefing at the launch by asking the chair and possibly one or two committee members to tell them what the report is about and to answer their questions. You should provide them with a written press brief that specifies what the report is about and the key recommendations in clear language. 8. You are in charge of putting together a committee to address Cost-effective quality health care for HIV/AIDS patients in your country. What disciplines might you want on your committee? Remember it should be multi-disciplinary and it should cover all aspects of the topic. These are the titles that will populate the committee slate in Appendix A. Suggestions might include: Medical doctor, economist, HIV specialist, social sciences, ocmmunity health worker, registered nurse 9. This is the first time you are drafting the response to review. Your review committee submitted all their comments and the monitor has told you which comments you need to address. You are unsure about the format you should use to draft the response to review that you will send back to the monitor. What should you do? You can do 2 things. One is to ask assistance from someone who has already gone through the process and the other is to go to the computer network and find examples of previous response to reviews. 10. The committee you have been assigned to work with just finished their deliberations. Make up a timeline for when you expect to go to review and when you expect the report to go to the publisher. Be sure to include when you will be contacting the committee. Time zero: Have committee s recommendations 0-4 weeks Develop supporting text for the recommendations and email the committee the first draft of the report 4-6 weeks Get responses from the committee and incorporate them into the text go back and forth with committee members until the text is to their satisfaction 6-8 weeks Send committee final text and request sign-off Develop review slate and select monitor; get Council approval; invite reviewers and monitor to participate in the review of the report 8-10 weeks Get committee sign-off Send the report to the reviewers 10-12 weeks Receive reviewer comments 12-13 weeks Receive monitor s letter indicating which comments must be responded to 13-14 weeks Write the response to review (with assistance from the appropriate committee members) and submit it to the monitor 14-15 weeks Monitor reviews the response to review and either requests more information or provides sign-off so you can go to the publisher 4 weeks: 11. Why is it good to post the names of potential consensus committee members and the SOT on the Academy website? This shows transparency of the process because the public can see who has been selected to serve on the committee and what they are expected to do. If they so choose, they can comment on the 5
selection of the committee for example if they feel the committee is biased for or against a particular view point. 6
APPENDIX A (back to text) COMMITTEE SLATE PRIMARY ALTERNATE A. Chair Chair B. Uganda policy and legal expert in medicinal therapies Uganda policy and legal expert in medicinal therapies C. Alternative medicinal therapies researcher Alternative medicinal therapies researcher D. Social Scientist Social Scientist E. Pharmacist Pharmacist F. Public Health Economist Public Health Economist 7