Successful trials require input from a wide range of people, beyond those who designed and are running the research. Patients and their practitioners are key and, in some cases, the parents or the carers of the patient might also be vital to helping the trial to change lives. Heather Bagley from Manchester, whose son has autism tells us their story.

As the population ages, the number of people with chronic conditions is ever increasing. Angela Coulter from the Nuffield Department of Population Health at the University of Oxford in the UK, and colleagues are looking at ways to help such patients have more say in their own health care. She describes the findings from their March 2015 Cochrane Review in this Evidence Pod.

Alongside Cochrane Reviews that try to identify effective interventions are some that try to find ways to ensure that effective interventions are implemented. At the end of March 2015, Jennifer Petkovic from the Bruyère Research Institute at the University of Ottawa in Canada, and colleagues, published one such new Cochrane Review. It looks at how to increase the use of insecticide-treated bednets for the prevention of malaria. Jordi Pardo Pardo from Cochrane Canada spoke to her about the review.

In some areas of health care, we use a treatment for one condition to try to help people with something else. One example is the use of anti-malaria treatments for children with anaemia and the evidence for this was examined in a new Cochrane Review in January 2015. Anke Rohwer from the Centre for Evidence-based Health Care at Stellenbosch University in South Africa describes the rationale and the findings in this Evidence Pod.

Obesity is widely recognised as a substantial issue for public health and Cochrane Reviews investigate a variety of interventions. In August 2014, Jill Colquitt from Effective Evidence in the UK, formally from Southampton Health Technology Assessments Centre, and colleagues updated their review of surgery, and she describes their findings in this podcast.

Whether hormone therapy is, on balance, beneficial or harmful for post-menopausal women has been debated and investigated for some time. In the March 2015 update to the Cochrane Review of the effects on cardiovascular disease, Henry Boardman from the University of Oxford in the UK, and colleagues bring together the findings from 19 randomised trials. He tells us what they found in this Evidence Pod.

Many children suffer from the ear infection, acute otitis media, and a March 2015 Cochrane Review looks at the evidence on whether the influenza vaccine might prevent it. The lead author, Norhayati Mohd Noor from Universiti Sains Malaysia, Kelantan, Malaysia describes their findings.

As well as looking at the potential benefits of treatments for particular illnesses, Cochrane Reviews also examine ways to reduce the problems that might be caused by those treatments. One such new review in February 2015 brings together the evidence on whether chewing gum helps the digestive system recover following surgery, and lead author Vaneesha Short from the NIHR Biomedical Research Unit in Nutrition, Diet and Lifestyle in Bristol in the UK tells us more.

In the November 2014 issue of the Cochrane Library, Bronagh Blackwood from Queen's University Belfast and colleagues updated their Cochrane Review of one of the ways to manage the care of patients in intensive care units. Mike Clarke, our Podcast Editor, spoke with Bronagh about her review.

Most people would probably benefit from increasing the amount of physical activity that they do and one way to achieve this might be reducing the amount of time we spend sitting down at work. A new Cochrane Review from January 2015 looks at interventions that might help with this and lead author, Nipun Shrestha from the University of Eastern Finland in Kuopio, tells us more.