Dear colleagues,

In response to increased demand for policy guidance on this issue in recent years, and under its mandate to address demand for guidance on areas of public health, the WHO is developing Guidelines on Hand Hygiene in Community Settings. The guidelines will provide evidence-based recommendations to governments on how to improve hand hygiene in community settings, focusing on areas of persistent uncertainty or controversy in what constitutes effective hand hygiene and what government measures can be implemented to rapidly improve it.Critical steps in the guideline development process include the retrieval, synthesis and evaluation of available evidence on questions of interest, to underpin the formulation of recommendations. For these steps, key questions to be asked include:

1. What constitutes effective hand hygiene?
2. What are the minimum requirements for effective hand hygiene practice?
3. What behaviour change approaches are conducive to sustained adoption of effective hand hygiene practice?
4. What government measures can support sustained practice of effective hand hygiene?

Under each of these topics, questions have been identified that relate to areas of controversy or uncertainty in existing global guidance, respond to WHO Member State demand, and are not already covered in existing systematic reviews. Interested institutions are asked in the first instance to submit a short one paragraph expression of interest by e-mail by Monday 22 August.  Full application details can be found here .