Prioritizing and synthesizing evidence to improve the health care of girls and women living with female genital mutilation: An overview of the process

Female genital mutilation (FGM) constitutes a harmful traditional practice that can have a profound impact on the health and well-being of girls and women who undergo the procedure. In recent years, due to international migration, healthcare providers worldwide are increasingly confronted with the need to provide adequate health care to this population. Recognizing this situation the WHO recently developed the first evidence-based guidelines on the management of health complications from FGM. To inform the guideline recommendations, an expert-driven, two-step process was conducted. The first step consisted of developing and ranking a list of priority research questions for the evidence retrieval. The second step involved conducting a series of systematic reviews and qualitative data syntheses. In the present paper, we first provide the methodology used in the development and ranking of the research questions (step 1) and then detail the common methodology for each of the systematic reviews and qualitative evidence syntheses (step 2).