A WHO guideline is any document developed by the World Health Organization containing recommendations for clinical practice or public health policy. A recommendation tells the intended end-user of the guideline what he or she can or should do in specific situations to achieve the best health outcomes possible, individually or collectively. It offers a choice among different interventions or measures having an anticipated positive impact on health and implications for the use of resources.
This handbook provides step-by-step guidance on how to plan, develop and publish a World Health Organization (WHO) guideline. It covers the methods, processes and procedures for producing a document that meets WHO standards. It does not provide detailed technical guidance on many of the steps: this can be obtained from the references in the handbook and through references to the published scientific literature listed on WHO’s Guideline Review Committee (GRC) intranet site (available to WHO staff). Additional chapters of this handbook containing detailed guidance on selected topics are available online at https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/9789241548960.
