Background: A public health PhD student at a central university in Delhi requested help with her systematic literature review in February 2025, examining community health worker programme effectiveness on maternal health outcomes in LMICs across 847 studies from PubMed, Scopus, and Cochrane Library.
The challenge: The supervisor required PRISMA-2020 compliance, a data extraction matrix, MMAT quality appraisal, and narrative synthesis, with a six-week deadline and no prior systematic review experience.
What we did: Dr. Krishnamurthy designed PICO-based inclusion criteria. Two-stage screening reduced 847 studies to 140 included. MMAT quality appraisal achieved Cohen kappa of 0.81 for inter-rater reliability. A 12,000-word thematic narrative synthesis was produced with PRISMA flow diagram.
Outcome: Submitted on schedule, approved with one minor revision incorporated within 48 hours.
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