Background: As the calls for evidence-informed decision and policy making increase, there is an emphasis on the evidence not only being relevant but timely too. And therefore there is a growing interest in rapid-response services which use rapid syntheses of evidence like rapid-response briefs to support decision and policy making. However, there is very minimal experience with this rapid evidence syntheses and scholars have noted that there are no agreed methods or guidance for these kinds of products.

Objectives: Scholars at the Uganda country node of the Regional East African Community Health Policy Initiative (REACH-PI (U)) under the UsEvidence project have developed and piloted methods and tools to prepare rapid-response briefs. The aim of this presentation is to introduce and share tools and resources that a rapid-response service can make use of to support policy making.

Methods: We developed resources and tools through several steps: a) A literature review of available and relevant methods for evidence synthesis; b) brainstorming to contextualise methods from the literature to rapid-response briefs; c) development of a draft resource manual; d) pilot testing these tools and resources in Uganda; and, e) reviewing and updating the draft resource manual to the current version.

Results: The resources and tools have been shared with a few other groups and have been found to be helpful and easy to use. They are undergoing a continuous validation process as they are used by a wider audience.

Conclusions: In a field with very little experience and guidance, we present a set of tools and resources to be used in a rapid-response service to support policy and decision making. Scholars have found these tools to be helpful and easy to use.