Objective  To analyze epidemiological and descriptive characters of Cochrane systematic reviews with high-grade evidences on public health researches and to provide references for evidence-based decision making in public health practices.

  Methods  We searched Cochrane library database to collect systematic reviews on public health published till April 30, 2018; the included studies were screened and analyzed using EndNote X7, Excel 2013 and Ucinet 6.0 software.

  Results  From the 112 articles preliminary searched, 69 were finally retrieved and included in the study according to the inclusion and exclusion criteria; of which, 33 and 34 were of high and moderate quality. All the 69 articles were published online from 2008 to 2018, with the maximum number of studies published in 2010 (14, 20.3%) and the minimum number of studies published in 2014 (2, 2.9%). The corresponding authors of the studies are mainly from Britain (28, 40.6%), Australia (12, 17.4%) and America (9, 13.0%). All included studies are collaborative research which involved only 5 Chinese scholars who are neither correspondents nor first authors. The major themes for the 69 studies are prevention of injuries (22, 31.9%) and prevention of road traffic injuries topic (18, 26.1%). Among the 69 studies, there were 58 (84.1%) randomized controlled trials, 26 (37.7%) controlled clinical trials, non-randomized and quasi-randomized controlled trials, 32 (46.4%) before and after controlled studies, and 19 (27.5%) interrupted time series analyses. Keywords social network map shows that " intervention”, " prevention”, " program”, " injury”, " education”, " children”, " worker”, " adults” are all in core positions, which are hotspot in the field of public health.

  Conclusion  In Cochrane systemic rewiewson public health, there are few studies have been published by Chinese scholars as first authors or correspondents. Meanwhile, the included studies mainly focus on the prevention of injuries and road traffic injuries.