Elaine Russo Martin

Improving Information Access for Public Health Professionals

Fundamental to our protection against biological weapons and the detection of disease outbreaks is the need to strengthen our surveillance systems. Improved electronic communications between local, state, and federal public health agencies provide a way for health officials to share information on unusual disease outbreaks and provide important health alert information. This article describes a model of a partnership between a regional medical library of the National Library of Medicine, a school of public health, and federally qualified community health centers. This project upgraded technology and provided public health professional training on Internet information and resources for local public health agencies.

Building the Next Generation of Leaders: The NLM/AAHSL Leadership Fellows Program

ABSTRACT With half of its directors planning to retire as part of the demographic transformation of the profession, the Association of Academic Health Sciences Libraries (AAHSL) undertook a leadership development program to encourage and prepare its future library directors. This article describes the associations multipart program in which each component can stand alone or as a sequence in preparation for a director position. It examines in detail one of the components, a successful mentoring program developed with support from the National Library of Medicine (NLM), the NLM/AAHSL Leadership Fellows Program. The authors describe the methodology and findings of a comprehensive qualitative evaluation study of the Leadership Fellows Program.

The CATCH Project: Central Mass Access to Child Health Information

Parents of disabled children have substantial health and social care needs and therefore, a great need for information. Access to health information for parents and health professionals has been revolutionized by the Internet [1]; however, as Blackburn and Read note, “The provision of crucial information to parents of disabled children, at the time when they need it and in a form that they can use, is an intractable problem” [2]. Relevant health information can be difficult to find and is variable in quality [3]. How can medical librarians work with community groups, public health workers, and health providers to assist parents of chronically ill children find and obtain information? The Central Mass Access to Child Health Information (CATCH) project attempted to address this problem. CATCH targeted eleven public health agencies in central Massachusetts that serve chronically ill and/or developmentally disabled children and their families. Participants varied from early intervention centers to disease-specific agencies (Table 1). CATCH provided these community-based, public health agency staff members with training to locate and effectively use quality Internet health information. CATCH developed a model for outreach and collaboration as well as established new community partnerships for the Lamar Soutter Library (LSL) of the University of Massachusetts Medical School. Table 1 Targeted agencies TARGET POPULATION AND SIGNIFICANT ISSUES Massachusetts is home to approximately 221,840 parent-reported children with special health care needs, nearly 15% of children in the state (national average 12.8%) [4]. Previous projects have explored this populations need for health information [5, 6]. The Finding Information Resources and Services through Technology (FIRST) project, funded by the Massachusetts Department of Public Health and located in the UMass Memorial Childrens Medical Center (CMC), served the information needs of families with chronically ill children from 1995 to 1999. Parents participating in the FIRST project stated that they need information about their childrens health conditions beyond what physicians provide. When the FIRST project ended due to state budget cuts, CATCH filled the gap. CATCH targeted public health agencies in central Massachusetts (Figure 1) that serve children with chronic physical, developmental, behavioral, or emotional disorders and their families. To establish relationships with relevant organizations, project investigators identified community-based agencies in the New England Information on Disabilities Exchange (INDEX) database that serve children in central Massachusetts and invited these agencies to participate in the project [7]. Eleven agencies responded positively. Table 1 lists these agencies and their corresponding target populations (650 staff serving 25,000 children).