Introduction Since its first publication, the Cochrane Review of Patient Decision Aids team has been committed to collaborating with knowledge users (e.g. patients/health consumers, caregivers) as research team members. Little is known about knowledge users’ involvement in the conduct of systematic reviews. During its most recent update, we evaluated team members’ degree of meaningful engagement.

Methods We surveyed team members pre and post review. In the pre-survey, team members indicated their preferred level of involvement for each review step. In the post-survey, they reported on their degree of satisfaction with their actual level of involvement and provided open-ended responses about their partnering experiences in this co-produced review. Using the Patient Engagement In Research Scale (PEIRS-22), we measured the degree of meaningful engagement/involvement throughout review procedures. We analyzed quantitative data descriptively and qualitative data using content analysis, with triangulation.

Results Twenty of 21(95%) team members completed the pre-survey; 17 of 20(85.0%) completed the post. Preferred levels of involvement in the review steps varied from search grey literature n=3(15%) to provide feedback on manuscript n=20(100%). Sixteen (94.1%) participants were totally or very satisfied with the extent to which they were involved throughout. All agreed the review was co-produced. PEIRS- 22 scores revealed high (n=15,88.2%) levels of meaningful engagement. Participants qualitatively reported there was authentic engagement, diverse perspectives were incorporated, which, in their view resulted in better/more relevant outputs. Challenges included time, resources, and logistics of collaborating with a large international team.

Discussion It is possible to meaningfully engage knowledge users in reviews. The PEIRS-22 was useful, yet, given it was originally developed to measure patient/family partners’ engagement, it required minor edits to be used with all team members.

Conclusion Using a co-production approach, team members reported high levels of meaningful engagement. These results support ways in which systematic reviews can be successfully co-produced.