PT - JOURNAL ARTICLE AU - Nicole Shaver AU - Alexandria Bennett AU - Andrew Beck AU - Becky Skidmore AU - Gregory Traversy AU - Melissa Brouwers AU - Julian Little AU - David Moher AU - Ainsley Moore AU - Navindra Persaud TI - Health equity considerations in guideline development: a rapid scoping review AID - 10.9778/cmajo.20220130 DP - 2023 Mar 01 TA - CMAJ Open PG - E357--E371 VI - 11 IP - 2 4099 - http://www.cmajopen.ca/content/11/2/E357.short 4100 - http://www.cmajopen.ca/content/11/2/E357.full SO - CMAJ2023 Mar 01; 11 AB - Background: Systematic guidance for considering health equity in guidelines is lacking. This scoping review aims to synthesize current best practices for integrating health equity into guideline development and the benefits or drawbacks of these practices.Methods: We searched Ovid MEDLINE ALL and Embase Classic+Embase on the Ovid platform, CINAHL on EBSCO, and Web of Science (Core Collection) from 2010 to 2022. We searched grey literature from 2015 to 2022, using the Canadian Agency for Drugs and Technologies in Health Grey Matters checklist and searches of potentially relevant websites. Articles were screened independently by 1 reviewer. Proposed best practices, advantages and disadvantages, and tools were extracted independently by 1 reviewer and qualitatively synthesized based on the relevant steps of a comprehensive checklist covering the stages of guideline development.Results: We included 26 articles that proposed best practices for incorporating health equity within the guideline development process. These practices were organized under different stages of the development process, including guideline planning, evidence review, guideline development and dissemination. Included studies provided best practices from guideline producers, articles discussing health equity in current guidelines, articles addressing strategies to increase equity in the guideline implementation process, and literature reviews of promising health equity practices.Interpretation: Our scoping review identified best practices to incorporate health equity considerations at each phase of guideline development. Identified practices may be used to inform equity-promoting strategies with the guideline development process; however, guideline producers should carefully consider the advantages and disadvantages of best practices when integrating health equity.