London had poor sanitation; no real sewage management systemSnow suspected water contaminationCreated maps indicating where infected people lived & how outbreak was spreadingInterviewed infected people & their families; found out many of them drank water from the pumpRemoved pump handle; outbreak dramatically slowedSnow’s story was the subject of a 2007 creative non-fiction book called Ghost Map.Pump Handle is also a popular public health group blog – subtitle is “water cooler for the public health crowd”
Healthy People 2010 (also 2000, 1990, 1980) is a strategic planning initiative from HHS. Provides a set of public health goals and objectives for the decade. HP 2020 is currently under development and is scheduled to be released in the fall of this year.
3 core functions: Assurance, Assessment, and Policy Development10 essential services: AssuranceEnforce LawsLink to and Provide CareAssure Competent WorkforceEvaluateAssessment-Monitor Health-Diagnose and InvestigatePolicy Development-Inform, Educate, Empower-Mobilize Community Partnerships-Develop Policies
Scientist analyzing samples in a lab – maybe verifying H1N1? Outside of the lab – could be looking at community health status indicator data, i.e. obesity rates or access to primary care services (more about CHSI later)Can of peanut butter – you remember the pb recall last year – epidemiologists tracked down the source of the salmonella outbreak. FDA and local public health share food safety responsibilities.Smoke stacks – Public health has a role in monitoring air and water qualityGraph – Reported cases of flu – monitoring the progress of the pandemic
Picket sign saying “Health Care Reform Cannot Wait!” – public health has an interest in extending access to health care to as much of the population as possible, so it has a role in advising health care reform strategiesSchool lunch – deciding on nutrition requirementsHurricane Dean from the air – public health has a coordination function in mobilizing community partners, first responders, and the government agencies charged with emergency preparedness and disaster response (natural or man-made disasters)President Obama signing a bill – policy development happens at the federal level, but also at the global level, the state, county, or community level, the campus level as w/ H1N1
Man receiving a flu shot – public health makes policies (sometimes unpopular) about priority groups for receiving flu shotsShrimp truck – state and county standards for food safety and hygieneOregon Health GoLocal – links Oregonians to local health resources from within MedlinePlusBaby on a scale – WIC program to make sure babies from low-income families get proper nutrition
Randomized controlled trials have become a gold standard in clinical medicine; considered the most valid source of evidence for evidence-based medicine.In public health – not feasible (populations are difficult to control, time is a factor), not ethical (withhold information?) or not all that useful/generalizable (study participants in RCTs are homogenous groups because the goal is to reduce confounding variables)Instead: observational studies, case-control studies, cohort studies, qualitative research, best practices reports, grey literature (next slide)
The best evidence is the best available evidence.Often free to access, but difficult to find and manage.
Sometimes what seems like sensible policy at the population level comes into conflict with what makes sense to individuals, or to physicians interact with patients one at a time.
Resourcesare linked from the upcoming slides.Nolive searches planned; make a note if you would like to see something after the presentation.
Public health is extremely interdisciplinary. Topics border or education, psychology, urban planning, engineering, business, ecology… To really be an expert searcher in public health, you need to go way beyond Medline and become familiar with as many database as are available to you.
In the middle – public health news, time-sensitive informationMain topic pages – loooong lists of links. These pages are organized by material type.
Looong lists. This is a fraction of what’s available under health data tools and statistics.Students in epidemiology classes may need raw data sets to manipuate. This is a good place to look.
Main topic pages – loooong lists of links. These pages are organized by material type.Over the last year or so, the Partners have begun adding Public Health topic pages. Currently there are 8.
HIV AIDS page gives topic specific information broken out by “main topics”
Healthy People 2010 topicsearches – very popular
A detailed, librarian-developed search strategy for every objective
If you can understand this, you may be a librarian May be seeking volunteers to develop searches for HP2020.
National Information Center on Health Services Research and Health Care Technology (NICHSR) is producing 4 live webinar sessions about health indicators. #2 took place 2 weeks ago – specifically talked about this resource.Link above goes to session descriptions; slides and video available soon – MLA credit available for viewing
Age and race demographicsBirth and Death stats including leading causes of deathRisk factors of particular concern, such as number of smokersAccess to care – how many physicians, nurses, dentists, etc. are there to serve that county’s populationEnvironmental health concerns – rates of foodborne and waterborne illness; air quality data
Newer features – mapping and peer county comparisonsMap of unemployment rates in Idaho with Kootenai county highlightedTable comparing Kootenai county indicators with national levels and w/ peer county levelsThroughout CHSI, the magnifying glass means “you might want to investigate these issues” whereas the apple means your county compares favorably to peer counties and/or to national averages.
Environmental Health is a big part of public healthResources from NLM’s Specialized Information Services division – great stuff in hereA good page to bookmark
Produce maps of toxic release sites – get factory names, a list of reportable toxic substances they emit, and how muchCan also overlay census-type data – so not uncommon to see that areas with a high concentration of factors have low income residentsCan also overlay mortality data, so you can visualize which areas have highest mortality from cancer or Alzheimer’s disease
Radiation Event Medical ManagementWireless Information System for Emergency Responders
New center for researching ways to get health information to people when there’s a disasterPage of info resources for people working in HaitiEmergency Access Initiative - free full-text articles from over 200 biomedical journals and over 65 reference books for libraries and hospitals affected by the earthquake in Haiti. The collection is also intended for healthcare personnel responding to the disaster.
Contact your local health dept – make sure they are aware of your services Go to a meeting – help staff an NLM exhibit, attend sessionsFor the past several years, the Sewell Memorial Fund has offered stipend awards for ~10 librarians to attend national APHALots of energy and excitementConference is in November; application deadline usually early summerExhibit space, esp. in a public or heavily trafficked area, and need a way to fill? Scan the news for hot topics in local public health, create an exhibit around that topicHelp that’s needed might have nothing to do with your library collection. Maybe the ph workers in your community could use training on social media, or how to be better information managers themselves.