Associate Professor Tari Turner is Director of the National COVID-19 Clinical Evidence Taskforce, leading development of living guidance for COVID-19 prevention and treatment, and an Associate Professor (Research) at Cochrane Australia.

Dr Turner leads research developing and evaluating methods for living evidence syntheses, including living systematic reviews and living guidelines; and translating synthesised evidence into improved healthcare practice and policy.

Tari’s passion is supporting evidence-based decision-making to ensure the best possible outcomes, particularly for women and children in low resource settings. She enjoys designing, finding, synthesising and communicating research, and she loves seeing research actually make a difference.

Tari is Co-Editor in Chief of Health Research Policy and Systems, a BMC journal published in collaboration with the World Health Organization (WHO), and a member of the Scientific and Technical Advisory Group to the WHO Department of Sexual and Reproductive Health and Research.

She is an Honorary Principal Research Fellow at the Burnet Institute and is a member of the Australian Red Cross Lifeblood Ethics Committee. 

Tari’s previous work at Cochrane has included the SEA-URCHIN Project, which investigated whether implementation of research evidence can improve prevention and treatment of neonatal infection in hospitals in South East Asia; and CIPHER, a project that explored how to support and measure use of research by policymakers. Tari previously worked at World Vision Australia where she was Senior Health Advisor.

Tari holds a Doctor of Philosophy from Monash University, a Master of Business from Swinburne University, a Post Graduate Certificate in Biostatistics from the University of Melbourne and a Bachelor of Biomedical Science from Monash University.