Hello, everyone, and welcome to Science in 5
WHO's conversations in science.
My name is Marta Soszynska and today our guest
will be Dr John Grove, WHO's Director of Quality Assurance and
Norms and Standards.
Welcome, John.
Thank you.
Thanks for having me.
John, the first question I have for you is, what is WHO's guidance and
how do we develop this kind of document
for health interventions?
Well, WHO is really the only global authority that can
develop a set of recommendations
that applies globally.
So what are those things that we think countries,
individuals, providers should be doing to improve people's health?
So the interventions that they provide, but also
the measures that we put in place in public health to ensure
people's health and safety. And so WHO provides this in the form of
what we call guidance or guidelines or recommendations
that the world can use to then further tailor
how they plan to respond to or provide a health intervention
in their locality.
But when WHO makes a recommendation, we pull
together the best evidence available through
various means.
We also pool experts together to help us consult
on that evidence.
We then generate a set of recommendations that goes into
that guidance and we then disseminate it to the world.
So our group within WHO,
within the science division
works across the different technical units to ensure that the way we are
putting the guidance out to the world
is done in a most robust, transparent manner.
So, we spend a lot of time looking at methods --
so the scientific process used to produce that guidance,
what's the data that's available to make that guidance
as strong as it can be --
-- and also we monitor for conflict of interest
to make sure that the experts that we're engaging are really fully
bringing the full breadth of their scientific expertise
to that process.
Thank you, John, for clarifying that.
The second question is about the exact way that WHO makes
sure that this guidance is evidence-based and
that it's safe.
How does WHO do that?
Well, it's very important.
WHO would never issue a guidance or recommendation
that's globally applicable to the world without the strongest
evidence backing it up.
So we spend a lot of time looking way, way upstream to
see what studies are being done on different interventions.
Who's engaging in those studies, the format of
those studies, so that we can then pull all those studies
together to make sense of it.
In some cases, the data is very strong.
In some cases, the data is not as strong or not as available
as we would like.
So we continue to monitor and make sure that that data
is coming to us in a form that we can then use.
So once the data is finalized, we bring the experts
around the table.
So it's WHO's staff, but also experts helping us to
develop those recommendations.
John, with this pandemic, we have seen that the science
is changing all the time, that we learn new things.
So how does WHO manage that in terms of guidance and
developing recommendations?
I think that's a great question.
And the current
pace of science is so fast.
And also technology is helping to increase the speed
of that science.
But also technology is helping us to make sense of the
evidence as it comes through.
So we employ a process that we call evidence synthesis.
We bring all the evidence together into one place to do
a review, to engage with experts, as I said.
But what we're doing now in the new era is much more of what we
call a living approach, where we're curating the
evidence as it's becoming available and we're actually
updating the guidance on a much more frequent basis.
So we've worked with all of the journals in the world to give
access to preprints and studies that are coming
down the pipeline.
We have framed questions around different health interventions
that we need answers to from the data and then we are
constantly assessing the data.
The other important thing that we do in that process is we
engage with the public.
We also engage with patient communities to see the extent
to which they'll actually use these interventions and what
their preferences are as well.
Another thing we pay attention to is access, equity and human
rights-related issues in the provision of different health
interventions to really make sure that what we're providing
and what we're recommending to the world is going to be used
within different jurisdictions.
Thank you for being with us today, John.
Please share this video with your friends and subscribe to
our channel. Until next time then.
Stay healthy, stay safe and stick with science.