UNCOVER, established by the University of Edinburgh’s Usher Institute in 2020 as a response to the COVID-19 pandemic, is a network of population health researchers and information specialists who respond to requests from policymakers for rapid evidence reviews.

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The network specialises in delivering robust evidence syntheses with a focus on responding to complex public health threats and using an interdisciplinary approach. Up until now, topics related to the pandemic have held priority, with the network producing COVID-19 evidence reviews related to schools, transmission, race, comorbidities and more. We have built up a community of staff, postgraduate students and alumni with evidence synthesis skills who can support researchers in conducting systematic reviews.

A key aspect of our work on COVID-19 is that we have worked across disciplines, bringing together teams of epidemiologists, information specialists, public health people, microbiologists, physicists, engineers and built environment experts to answer complex, multi-dimensional problems which seek to integrate expertise and approaches to evidence synthesis from different disciplines, in a timely manner that meets the needs and timetables of policymakers. As COVID-19 (hopefully) fades, our plan is to take the same interdisciplinary approach, pivoting to focus on climate change and health.