Global Health Otherwise shared a post on LinkedIn:
“Getting clinical Guidelines to the People Who Need Them
Clinical practice guidelines (CPGs) are detailed documents that tell healthcare workers the best way to treat patients.
Governments and health organizations spend enormous resources creating them, yet many doctors never read or use them. This gap between creation and use is a serious problem for patient care worldwide.
Kumbargere Nagraj and colleagues (2026) offer a critical synthesis of why this gap exists. Searching over 31,000 studies and analyzing 40 qualitative studies across multiple countries, they systematically examined what helps or blocks guidelines from reaching the people who need them.
The authors found that weak institutional support, language barriers, and low awareness stop guidelines from reaching users.
Conversely, strong leadership, multichannel delivery, and user-centered design significantly improve uptake. Healthcare workers consistently preferred simple, visually clear materials integrated into their existing digital workflows.
Patients and carers demanded culturally adapted, co-produced tools. The authors also flag artificial intelligence as an emerging but still unproven dissemination channel requiring further study.
Guidelines fail not because of poor content, but because dissemination strategies ignore real-world barriers like language, training gaps, weak promotion, and poor digital accessibility.”
Title: Understanding what works in disseminating clinical practice guidelines: A qualitative evidence synthesis
Authors: Sumanth Kumbargere Nagraja, Tandekile Lubelwana Hafver, Valerie Reinthaler, Stijn Van de Velde, Carlos Zaro, YanJiao Shen, Susan Banda, Talitha Mpando, Gertrude Kunje, Suzgika Lakudzala, Ameer Hohlfeld, Emmanuel Effa, Denny Mabetha, Thomas Agoritsas, Per Olav Vandvik, Nicolas Delvaux
Read the full article on Journal of Clinical Epidemiology.
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