World EBHC Day 2024 highlights global collaboration and action beyond health

World EBHC Day aims to raise awareness about the critical role of evidence in shaping healthcare policy, practice, and decision-making to improve health outcomes worldwide. World EBHC Day was founded by JBI in 2020, as a response to the challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic and the lockdowns. 

World EBHC Day 2024 is delivered in collaboration with organisation partners JBI, Cochrane, Campbell Collaboration, CEBHC, Oxford Population Health - AHRU - at the University of Oxford, and Institute of Development Studies (IDS), who are joined on the Steering Committee by individual members Laura Boeira (Instituto Veredas) and Hari Sankar (The George Institute for Global Health).

This year's campaign, "Health and Beyond: From Evidence to Action," addresses the need for greater intersectoral collaboration in the face of the complex global crises affecting health and other sectors. These simultaneous and interconnected crises, or ‘polycrisis’, threaten the achievement of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and the well-being of people worldwide.

The World EBHC Day 2024 campaign builds on the momentum of the recent Global Evidence Summit, an event delivered in partnership with Cochrane,  JBI,  GIN and the Campbell Collaboration. Both the World EBHC Day 2024 campaign and the Global Evidence Summit provide a multidisciplinary and cross-cultural platform to foster collaboration to address critical issues across different sectors, including health, social justice, the environment and climate change, and how to best produce, summarise and disseminate evidence to inform policy and practice for improving lives.

World EBHC Day 2024 also highlights the ongoing collaboration between JBI, Cochrane, and the Campbell Collaboration, who together announced the ‘Building a global evidence synthesis community’ initiative at the Global Evidence Summit. Prof Zoe Jordan, Executive Director of JBI, outlines the initiative as one of the ‘connected conversations’ produced for World EBHC Day 2024.

Researchers, policymakers, clinicians, and other stakeholders have also shared strategies for building resilient evidence support systems in a rapidly changing world through ‘connected conversations’.

Through connected conversations, sharing experiences in blogs and vlogs, and exchanging knowledge at events, World EBHC Day 2024 aims to foster a collaborative approach to addressing complex global challenges beyond health, and using evidence to improve health outcomes for everyone.

“World Evidence-Based Healthcare Day 2024 underscores the urgent need for collective wisdom and collective action to co-create solutions to face the complex challenges of our time. Through cross-disciplinary thinking and innovation, multisectoral collaboration and collaborative funding models, we have the opportunity to build a healthier, more resilient world for future generations.” - Bianca Pilla, Chair of the World EBHC Day Steering Committee

We encourage everyone in the global evidence community to participate in World EBHC Day and engage in meaningful discussions with diverse stakeholders from various sectors and regions. 20 October marks not just a day of celebration, but we hope the catalyst for collaboration, innovation, and action across sectors to address global challenges to create lasting impact on health and beyond.

Visit World EBHC Day to learn more about the 2024 campaign, to read blogs and view vlogs and connected conversations, and to go to the photo gallery to see how people around the world are celebrating World EBHC Day.