Methods for Conducting Systematic Reviews of Evidence on Effectiveness and Economic Efficiency of Interventions to Increase Screening for Breast, Cervical, and Colorectal Cancers Roy C. Baron, MD, MPH, Barbara K. Rimer, DrPH, Ralph J. Coates, PhD, Jon Kerner, PhD, Patricia Dolan Mullen, DrPH, Sajal Chattopadhyay, PhD, Peter A. Briss, MD, MPH, and the Task Force on Community Preventive Services Introduction T he Task Force on Community Preventive Ser- vices (Task Force) chose to include prevention of breast, cervical, and colorectal cancer through interventions to increase screening as a topic in the Guide to Community Preventive Services (Community Guide) for several reasons. First, these cancers impose a large health burden on the U.S. population 1,2 ; second, there are effective screening tests that can reduce this burden 3–6 ; and third, large segments of the population still are not screened for colorectal cancers and, despite much progress, many groups have not benefited from the general rates of improvement in breast and cervical cancer screening. 7,8 Through systematic review of the literature, the Task Force sought evidence to determine effectiveness of a variety of interventions which are being applied to increase screening for these cancers. Community Guide methods for conducting systematic reviews and for linking evidence to recommendations have been described elsewhere. 2,9,10 In brief, for each Community Guide topic, an interdisciplinary team (the systematic review development team), representing a range of relevant backgrounds, skills, and experiences, conducts a review by: From the Community Guide Branch, National Center for Health Marketing (Baron, Chattopadhyay, Briss) and Division of Cancer Prevention and Control, National Center for Chronic Disease Pre- vention and Health Promotion (Coates), CDC, Atlanta, Georgia; University of North Carolina School of Public Health (Rimer), Chapel Hill, North Carolina; National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health (Kerner), Bethesda, Maryland; and University of Texas School of Public Health (Mullen), Houston, Texas. Author affiliations are shown at the time the research was con- ducted. The names and affiliations of the Task Force members are listed at the front of this supplement and at www.thecommunityguide.org. Address correspondence to Roy C. Baron, MD, MPH, Community Guide Branch, CDC, 1600 Clifton Road NE, MS E-69, Atlanta GA 30333. E-mail: rbaron@cdc.gov. Address reprint requests to Shawna L. Mercer, MSc, PhD, The Guide to Community Preventive Services, CDC, 1600 Clifton Road NE, MS E-69, Atlanta GA 30333. E-mail: SMercer@cdc.gov. S26 Am J Prev Med 2008;35(1S) ● developing a conceptual framework to organize, group, and select appropriate interventions for health issues under consideration; ● choosing outcomes to define effectiveness (success) of each intervention; ● systematically searching for and retrieving evidence; ● assessing quality of individual studies and summariz- ing strength of evidence; ● summarizing other evidence, including applicability over a range of populations and settings, other positive or negative effects, barriers to implementation, and economic efficiency of effective interventions; ● identifying and summarizing research gaps; and ● presenting findings to the Task Force for recommendation. This report summarizes the general methodologic approach used by the Community Guide and adopted by the systematic review development team for conducting systematic reviews of interventions to promote screen- ing for breast, cervical, and colorectal cancers. Any further modification to adapt these methods to a specific cancer screening intervention review will be described in the methods section of the respective review. Systematic Review Development Team The systematic review development team included three subgroups: ● The coordination team, which drafted the concep- tual framework for reviews; managed the data col- lection and review process; and drafted evidence tables, summaries of evidence, and reports. ● The consultation team, which reviewed and com- mented on materials developed by the coordination team, and set priorities for reviews. ● The abstraction team, which collected and recorded data from studies for possible inclusion in systematic reviews. 0749-3797/08/$–see front matter © 2008 American Journal of Preventive Medicine • Published by Elsevier Inc. doi:10.1016/j.amepre.2008.04.003