Turner et al. BMC Public Health 2010, 10:170 http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2458/10/170 from Cochrane reviews on the effects of health care interventions relevant to the aftermath of a natural dis- aster or other large scale health care emergency. It aims to provide quick access to reliable information about which interventions work, which don’t work, and which might be harmful. In late 2007 The Cochrane Collaboration funded an evaluation of the effectiveness of Evidence Aid, which included an exploration of the ways in which Evidence Aid could contribute to meeting the health information needs of humanitarian organisations. In parallel with the evaluation of Evidence Aid, we reviewed existing guide- lines for child and perinatal health care in crisis situa- tions to determine what areas of clinical practice were addressed by these guidelines, and whether summaries of Cochrane systematic reviews relevant to these clinical areas were provided in Evidence Aid. In this study we had several aims; to identify existing guidelines for perinatal and child health in crisis settings and examine whether these guidelines were explicitly based on research evidence, to determine whether relevant Cochrane systematic reviews were available in the clinical areas addressed by these guidelines and to ascertain whether summa- ries of these reviews were provided in Evidence Aid. Methods Identifying Existing Guidelines Search Strategy We undertook a broad search to identify existing guide- lines for child and perinatal health care in crisis situa- tions. We searched guideline websites, websites of humanitarian organisations and aid networks, and the internet using Google, with search terms including (emergency OR disaster OR crisis) AND (guideline OR evidence OR handbook OR manual). Guideline websites included: US National Guidelines Clearinghouse http://www. guidelines.gov Guidelines International Network http://www.g-i-n. net, The Scottish Intercollegiate Guidelines Network http://www.sign.ac.uk The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence, http://www.nice.org.uk, The New Zealand Guidelines Group http://www. nzgg.org.nz The National Health and Medical Research Coun- cil http://www.nhmrc.gov.au Page 2 of 12 Humanitarian organisations and aid networks websites included: The World Health Organization http://www.who. int United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs http://ochaonline.un.org/ The International Committee of the Red Cross http://www.icrc.org, Medecins Sans Frontieres http://www.msf.org, CARE http://www.care.org SPHERE http://www.sphereproject.org ReliefWeb http://www.reliefweb.int. Selection Criteria To be included guidelines had to be explicitly developed to provide guidance on health care interventions for child and perinatal conditions in crisis situations. Guide- lines which provided policy, training or other guidance, but did not provide recommendations to guide decisions on provision of particular health care interventions were excluded as were guidelines that were not specifically developed to be implemented in crisis or emergency set- tings. We only included guidelines published in English. Selection criteria were applied independently by four reviewers, and disagreements resolved through discussion. Quality Appraisal As recommended by the AGREE Collaboration, included guidelines were appraised by four reviewers using the AGREE criteria, which are the standard for appraising the quality of evidence-based guidelines [3]. Guidelines were first assessed to determine whether they were based on systematic searches, and whether guideline recommendations were clearly linked to research evi- dence (AGREE criteria 8 & 12). Guidelines that did not meet these basic criteria of evidence-based guidelines were not further appraised. Guidelines that met these initial criteria were then fully appraised using the AGREE instrument. Data Extraction Two reviewers created a list of the clinical areas (dis- ease/condition, symptom or intervention) addressed by each included guideline that were relevant to perinatal or child health. Identifying Relevant Cochrane Reviews Search Strategy For each clinical area extracted from the guidelines, we searched The Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews http://www.thecochranelibrary.com Issue 2, 2008; using simple text word and MeSH searches of the title,