Promote your CPG

Review your CPG before promoting it

Before you start promoting your CPG, we strongly recommend you assess its quality by the AGREE II test.

Already done it? Has your CPG obtained an average score equal to or higher than 4.5 in item 1 of the Overall Assessment section in AGREE? This figure matches the average score awarded by at least two to four reviewers in the aforementioned item of the AGREE II questionnaire. At TRAM-S we feel it is important to count on the opinion of at least four reviewers to make the assessment more reliable. If your CPG hasn’t been assessed by four reviewers or even if it has, it hasn’t obtained the recommended average score, we suggest you reconsider it again until you meet both requirements.

If your CPG meets both recommendations, we invite you to fill in the following questionnaire to discover which communication plan best suits your guide. Alternatively, you can also consult the Basic communication Plan and the Pro communication Plan for the dissemination of CPGs.

About AGREE

AGREE Research Trust is a non-profit organisation that since 2004 has been assisting the distribution, preservation and collaborative improvement of the Appraisal of Guidelines for Research and Evaluation (AGREE) tool, an internationally renowned instrument for assessing the quality of CPGs.

The most updated and methodologically refined version of the said tool —AGREE II— is accessible on line, prior registration on the platform, and is also available in a version for printing.

Glossary of Basic Plan actions

The Basic Plan of actions for assisting the implementation and dissemination of your CPG is summed up in the following diagram. The communication actions are distributed according to performance areas (left column) and according to their target audience (upper row):

1. Style manual and writing guide for health-care professionals
2. Style manual and writing guide for patients
The promotion of your CPG requires the creation of dissemination products to favour its understanding, such as leaflets, clinical guidelines or health recommendations. The creators of these products would like you to provide them with a style manual and writing guide, along with your CPG, to help them adapt its discourse to its target audience. If you also provide them with a schematic glossary with the key results of your CPG according to the recipient audience, so much the better!

3. Creation of friendly abstracts
We suggest you draw up personalised abstracts, adapted to each type of health-care professional, describing the scope and main results of the CPG. The segmented communication of this abstract associated with your CPG will enable each health-care sector to assess the relevance of the results in its daily practice.

4. Creation of a multimedia product explaining CPGs and the importance of their implementation, accompanied by the results of your particular CPG.
A good presentation or explanatory video can be very useful when it comes to promoting the objectives and methodological aspects of the creation of a CPG, one of the barriers identified in the focus groups formed in the framework of TRAM-S. Don’t forget to list the measures or recommendations to be implemented at the end of these multimedia tools.

5. Appointing an ‘ambassador’ or person in charge of implementing the CPG.
The fact that health-care centres promote and implement CPGs in their daily organisation is crucial to try and overcome many of the barriers identified by TRAM-S. Counting on a professional in each centre to centralise and coordinate the dissemination of your CPG may prove decisive. The idea is that the medical speciality of the ‘ambassador’ is relevant to each particular CPG.

6. Institutional launching of the CPG.
Involve your centre in the promotion of your CPG. Just as a publishing house launches a new book or a producer launches a new film, your CPG should be promoted among sectors interested in applying it as well as among the general public. Several well-known and established devices exist for this purpose, such as drawing up and distributing a press release or organising a press conference.

Would you like to apply one or several of these strategies?

Glossary of Pro Plan Actions

The Pro Plan of actions designed to favour the implementation and dissemination of the CPG includes all the Basic Plan proposals, plus those detailed in the following diagram, that classifies them according to the barriers identified by TRAM-S (left column) and the recipient public (upper row):

7. Annual Prize for Excellence in the promotion and implementation of CPG
Setting up an annual competition dedicated to promoting and distinguishing the best strategies for disseminating and implementing CPGs can definitely bring prestige to these aspects among health-care professionals and among the general public. Are you up for it? If so, you will necessarily need to rely on the collaboration of institutions, societies, patients associations and/or prestigious foundations.

8. CPG digital visibility plan
The ability of digital media to reach a segmented public at any time and in any place means that ensuring the digital promotion of a CPG is essential. In this sense, a good strategy will guarantee the visibility of and access to the guide, while helping combat scarcely reliable health information on the net. Access the specific recommendations that TRAM-S suggests on digital communication for CPGs.

9. CPG professional reputation plan and ‘karma’ reviews
In order to carry out this action we need a digital platform that will provide the authors of CPGs with systems of review and feedback, granting them credibility and promoting collaboration on the assessment of the guides. At TRAM-S we suggest the creation of a digital hub for implementing this measure and others. Are you up for the initiative? If so, send an e-mail to trams@uoc.edu.

10. Informative talks
Associated with the existence of a CPG ‘ambassador’ (point 5 of the Basic Plan), this initiative embraces organising informative sessions between patients, relatives and healthy individuals, helping improve the dissemination of CPGs among end users and enhancing awareness of its importance.

Would you like to implement these strategies?

Promote your CPG

Review your CPG before promoting it

Glossary of Basic Plan actions

Glossary of Pro Plan Actions

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