Assessing equity in clinical practice guidelines

Recognition of the need for systematically developed clinical practice guidelines (CPGs) has increased dramatically over the past 20 years. CPGs have focused primarily on the effectiveness of interventions, explicitly or implicitly addressing the following question: Will adherence to a recommendation do more good than harm? At times they have also focused on the cost-effectiveness of interventions: Are the net benefits worth the costs? They rarely have focused on equity: Are the recommendations fair? The Knowledge Plus Project of the International Clinical Epidemiology Network attempts to improve the process of CPG development by formulating strategies to consider not just technical issues (effectiveness, and efficiency) but sociopolitical dimensions as well (equity and local appropriateness). This article discusses a proposed lens for users to evaluate how well CPGs address issues of equity.