Dr. Win Sewell, a former professor of library and information science at the University of Maryland, and a consultant in many areas of informatics, has for the past two years provided a stipend to a number of public health/health sciences librarians who would like to attend APHA and gain a better understanding of their professional organization. The goal of the stipend is to stimulate interest in the professional association of their discipline. Win herself has a DSc in Pharmacy and has realized the essential connection between the health information professional and the colleagues in the discipline that they are serving.
This year, Dr. Sewell, through funding from the Grace and Harold Sewell Memorial Fund, offered ten librarians the opportunity to attend the American Public Health Association (APHA) annual meeting that took place in Atlanta, GA from October 21 through October 25, 2001. Ultimately, seven received the $500 stipend and attended the meeting.
The attendees were asked to find a public health practitioner (PHP) or academic to shadow during the course of the meeting and to glean what they could from the interaction of practitioner and the scientific sessions they and the stipend recipient attended. These public health practitioners also acted as mentors and facilitators to the librarians who participated in this activity. Stipend recipients were expected to commit their time and some personal resources to attend the meeting. They were charged with:
In addition to shadowing a public health worker at plenary and scientific sessions, participants were encouraged to attend social events. Assisting with Section programs and business or social meetings offered other opportunities to participate in APHA. In the future, stipend recipients will be encouraged to submit a presentation to one or more of the scientific sessions.
Applying for the stipend was a relatively simple process. By August 1, 2001, recipients were asked to submit a brief statement of their experience in the public health area, describe what they expected to do at APHA in order to accomplish the goals of content learning and of understanding public health workers. The recipients were also required to attend an organizational meeting Sunday afternoon prior to the official conference opening to meet other stipend recipients, discuss goals and coordinate tactical plans with each other. Additionally, they were required to submit by November 1st a brief, one- or two-page report evaluating their APHA Annual Meeting experience.
All the stipend recipients were successful in locating a mentor by the time of the annual meeting. Stipendees learned the hard way that there are no guarantees when the environment is as volatile as it is today. Three of the seven recipients were set up to work with public health practitioners but ended up with new mentors by the time of the conference. Two recipients worked with Larsson to recruit mentors using Larsson's public health electronic discussion lists. Larsson sent out a message to five of the lists she manages asking for volunteers when one of the mentors could not make the meeting at the last minute and several of the public health practitioners on the list responded.
Why did the mentors choose to participate in this unusual relationship? The answer is simple. The mentors saw this as an opportunity to get increased access to a librarian. Working with a library professional who desires to improve his/her public health knowledge will ultimately improve PHP access to information.
The Sunday meeting was organized by Laura Larsson, Stephanie Normann, Win Sewell, and Karyn Pomerantz. Although she was not able to attend the meeting, Win's influence was definitely felt. The meeting which included stipend recipients, interested librarians and public health colleagues, began with participants introducing themselves and learning about their colleagues' reasons for attending the meeting. Those librarians who had attended previous APHA annual meetings chose to outline how they interacted with their public health colleagues and offered to act as secondary mentors. They also gave general background about the meeting from their perspectives as “old hands.”
Karyn Pomerantz, Distance Education Coordinator of the School of Public Health-Health Services at George Washington University and a former Governing Council member of APHA and a current Governing Council member of her local affiliate, discussed the organization and policies of APHA. Laura Larsson, NLM Fellow in Informatics at Oregon Health Sciences University and manager of the APHA Technology Theater, raised the issue of a Public Health Informatics SPIG and led the subsequent discussion. Angela Ruffin, Head of NLM's National Network of Libraries of Medicine (NN/LM) and moderator of a panel on outreach programs for underserved communities, indicated her interest in this SPIG. Neil Rambo, Associate Director of the Pacific Northwest Region NN/LM, was also an interested participant and contributed several good suggestions during the discussions.
One of the public health informatics colleagues who attended the meeting was Jeff Luck, MBA, PhD, Health Services, UCLA School of Public Health. Jeff, Chair of the American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA) Prevention & Public Health SIG, is interested in having a greater presence of public health informatics in professional organizations -- especially AMIA and APHA. Other participants included Rita Kukafka, Mailman School of Public Health and Department of Medical Informatics, Columbia University; Bryant Karras, University of Washington; and several people from CDC including Scott Brown, Bill Yasnoff, Karen Dahlen, and Barbara Massoudi (also of TRW, Inc., a high tech consulting firm).
Stephanie Normann and Matt Wilcox reported on the core public health journals project. Unrelated time demands forced a hiatus earlier in the year, but they are now in the process of pulling together final lists as well as an executive review board to prepare the various lists for the general public. This project has pulled together nearly 50 individuals in an effort to create a list of core journals for collections that cater to public health researchers and professionals.
The highlight of the meeting, undoubtedly, was the discussion of a possible APHA public health informatics SPIG (SPecial Interest Group). This discussion came about as a result of the AMIA Spring Congress where a number of individuals who participated in the “Information/Training” breakouts also expressed an interest in having a more focused informatics group in APHA. An Informatics SPIG or Section would let the group have programming that would bring interested people from the many sections of APHA to PH Informatics. Despite varying career paths and disciplines, everyone was excited about the SPIG.
Several activities came out of the meeting. Laura Larsson agreed to set up a new electronic discussion list called PH-INFO and to write up an initial list of objectives for the group based on discussion at the meeting. Meeting participants agreed to use PH-INFO to discuss a mission statement and to revise the list of objectives. Karyn Pomeranz, Rita Kukafka and Kris Alpi offered to guide participants on the political path toward setting up the public health informatics SPIG within APHA. The nucleus of the APHA Informatics group is interested in informing others about this initiative. See the instructions on joining the list in this issue and tell others at your institution about it.
Feli Propes, Metro Health Department of Nashville and Davidson County (MHD), said that she had an exciting and memorable experience during her two and a half days at the meeting. The rich program and the gigantic Expo were overwhelming. It was not an easy task to map out a schedule to accommodate as many interesting sessions as possible due to the multiple locations and time conflicts. (The format of the APHA annual meeting is similar to ALA's.) Feli finally surrendered this difficult decision to her mentor. Her mentor's experience ensured good selections without mishaps caused by beginner's ambition.
Feli was thrilled to see and hear the national prominent public health leaders and supporters (Mrs. Rosalynn Carter and Senator Hillary Clinton) in person or via video. Their passion for public health is contagious, and their thoughts on public health issues are inspiring. She could easily understand how public health workers would be energized after such a gathering. Feli has a better understanding of public health practitioners' commitment and her annual meeting experience has sharpened her sensitivity to practitioners' needs and concerns. This is important because not only is Feli one of very few MLS librarians in a metropolitan or state public health department but within the past two years, she has moved from what could be defined as a passive role in the Finance and Administration - Support Services to an active role as member of the team in the Bureau of Community Access and Health Promotion.
Most of the sessions in which Feli participated were well attended. In fact, large crowds caused some sessions to start late. As a result, she had to miss some of the “questions and answers” which she felt were likely to be the most interesting part of the sessions. Also, because of the rush between sessions, there was not enough time to get acquainted with public health workers in each session. Feli had intended to spend as much time as possible in the publishers' section of the Exhibit Hall. However, as she strolled through the other sections, she was distracted by finding items and information beneficial to the public health colleagues who had not come to the meeting. Her luggage had tripled in weight!
Feli concludes her brief report with, “[w]hat a wonderful idea that Dr. Sewell had to promote this “Know Your Customer” experience. I wish all special librarians would have similar opportunities to learn more about their clients' professional networks”.
Nancy Schaefer had the experience of shadowing a public health nurse at APHA. Schaefer's participation in the meeting taught her the importance of health education in public health nursing (PHN). Other important components of the PHN role include policy development and enforcement, advocacy, community organizing, coalition building, collaboration, counseling, case management, referral and follow-up, screening, outreach, disease and health event investigation, and surveillance. Since the MPH program at her institution will be adding a PHN focus next year, this lesson came at the perfect time. Nancy also learned about the difficulty of starting, evaluating and budgeting public health programs.
Even after almost 20 nearly consecutive years of APHA annual meetings, Nancy's mentor still bubbled with enthusiasm for the myriad learning opportunities at these meetings and was so busy that she barely had time to visit the exhibits. Nancy, as collection developer, could not resist the lure of new resources to discuss and examine. She attended several scientific sessions on distance education programs for PHPs too busy to travel to traditional on-campus continuing education courses, as well as sessions on foodborne illnesses, bioterrorism, potential effects of climate change on health, the interplay of welfare and substance abuse, and the public health implications of individual exemptions from vaccination. When she wasn't attending scientific sessions or poster sessions or poking into publishers and CDC booths, she developed a new relationship with the faculty and several students from her institution's MPH (Master's of Public Health) program by helping staff its booth. While in the exhibits area, she spent additional time learning about other public health educational programs.
Kathleen McCloskey indicated that electricity was truly in the air at this APHA. Anthrax was being discussed and bioterrorism sessions were full to overflowing. The events of September 11th colored all the remarks made by speakers. Those of us there hung on the words of Tommy Thompson and David Satcher in the opening session. Dr. Brundtland, WHO Director General, brought us her perspective of recent events. She stated that while deprivation of food, clothing, clean water, and other public health advantages have molded the terrorists, we cannot deny that evil people who do evil acts exist.
Kathleen's mentor, Joyce Gaufin, from the Utah Department of Health, really took her under her wing and became not only a mentor, but also a friend. Meeting with other librarians early on in the meeting set an enthusiastic tone for the whole week. Being in on the formation of the PH Informatics SPIG only heightened the experience. She felt there will definitely be a number of opportunities to become more involved as this group evolves. At social events Kathleen was able to meet and interact with officers and members of the Health Alert System (HAS) and Utah Department of Health (DOH). She learned that the Kansas Public Health Association is quite active and there are regional divisions that may be a way to approach providing information services. While there do not seem to be many cooperative projects between states everyone she talked to was interested in the idea of having electronic access to state documents. Kathleen had the opportunity to meet with CDC librarians in a pre-conference meeting to discuss a project the Midcontinental NN/LM is doing with the Utah DOH to catalog electronic versions of Utah DOH publications. As a result of this meeting she will no doubt be working with them to link and make state health publications available across the country. She will also be working together with the CDC Librarians to look at the ways in which MeSH and other vocabularies do and don't reflect public health concepts.
Suzy Holt felt that attending the conference was an exceptionally rich and informative experience. She found attendees to be caring and open professionals who were pleased to visit with a librarian interested in and working in their field. Attending the public health section business meeting enabled her to network with other librarians serving public health professionals. She learned that NLM is being urged to provide more public health headings in MeSH and to index more journals in the field. She met and visited later with other librarians surveying and serving PH practitioners.
She attended the opening session to learn about major issues, leaders and culture of the public health field. Suzy was impressed with the ethnic diversity evident in the leadership, by the progressive tone of talks, and by the sense of urgency and importance of public health at this time. Suzy monitored Montana public health professional activities in the meeting and engaged in conversations about issues and resource needs with Montanans from a variety of public health settings. Research findings reported by Montana public health officials alerted her to the important issues of environmental exposures to lead and asbestos in vermiculate production. Developing Internet capacity in rural communities to support public health partnerships through the CDC Health Alert Network was an important session topic. This generated a discussion with the Montana presenter about how the networking of local public health agencies with the network of public libraries might improve access to information resources for rural public health practitioners.
Ms. Holt attended several scientific sessions to learn about public health goals and how the library can support them. Most fruitful in implications for her library activities was a session on bioterrorism preparedness. This session discussed results of an information/training needs assessment survey by NACCHO of 20,000 state and local public health professionals. Emphasis was given to knowing available information resources and not relying on the Internet to be available when information was needed. Epidemiology capacity assessment was an important topical area. In this session measures in six areas of epidemiology capacity in state and local public health agencies were discussed. Suzy also heard about core competencies in genomics for public health professionals. A session on integrating occupational health and environmental health with emphasis on preventing pollution and exposures was also informative.
Visiting the exhibitors enabled Suzy to become aware of a number of public health related non-profit organizations that publish substantive materials for practitioners. An unexpected benefit of attending the meeting was the opportunity to advocate for the role of libraries and to suggest in conversation a variety of ways in which librarians can support the goals of PHPs organizationally as well as individually.
Angie Chapple-Sokol felt her experience at the conference was extraordinary in more than one way. It was an fascinating time to be in Atlanta, home to the CDC at a time when the threat of bioterrorism was, and remains, very real. And it was extraordinary to see the huge diversity of what is called the public health infrastructure.
She had several objectives to accomplish while attending this conference. The first was to satisfy her strong curiosity about epidemiology in general and epidemiologic methods in particular -- especially geographic information systems (GIS). Not only is this is a strong personal interest but it is one she would like to put to use in her work as a medical librarian. Another of Angie's goals was to expose herself to the interests of the public health community so that she might better understand the information needs of the public health department in her state. She wanted to explore methods and materials for teaching public health in a general medical school curriculum. To accomplish this goal Angie attended sessions offered by the Academic Public Health Caucus and by the Public Health Education and Health Promotion Section. Two sessions provided insight into some of the challenges faced by public health academicians both in enticing public health students to engage in community health projects and in getting 'credit' (tenure, promotions, etc.) for spending their time working in the community rather than writing articles for publication. Lively discussion during these sessions enabled her to appreciate some of the policy issues that are of concern to this caucus group.
It was through discussion with conference attendees, talking with exhibitors, collecting grey literature, and careful reading of posters that she learned the most about public health issues and, more specifically, the information needs of the public health workforce. These connections have sharpened her collection development skills in public health literature. She believes sharing her experiences with her fellow librarians will be instructive. In addition, the wealth of information she gained will make her a more responsive and informed medical librarian. Angie came away from this APHA meeting with a much greater understanding of and appreciation for the public health workforce, not just in the United States, but also internationally.
Anne Turner has become increasingly interested in information needs of PHPs over the last two years. Although she has a medical degree and an MLIS, she lacks formal training in Public Health. By attending the APHA meeting, she hoped to gain a better understanding of the interests and concerns of PHPs. She was therefore very pleased to have had a chance to attend this year's meeting.
Through interaction with her mentor, John Waltz, Anne gained insights into the work life of many public health employees. In addition, she gained a better understanding of the breadth of the public health domain, including the variety of organizations involved with public health. While Justin Waltz “manned” the CDC booth for the Public Health Prevention (PHPP) specialist program, he and Anne visited and discussed the program. This program is a three-year federal fellowship offered to MPH-level public health professionals. Fellows are assigned to a state or local health department to gain training in how to implement and evaluate public health interventions. The goal of the program is to train leaders to head state public health departments. Anne was able to speak with several CDC fellows who stopped by the booth and to have lunch with one of the PHPP fellows, Rachel Woods, who works for the Public Health Department in central Oregon. Rachel expressed interest in taking part in an information needs assessment and provided Anne with suggestions of specific groups within the public health workforce to target.
Throughout the conference Anne spoke with several CDC and state public health employees. She learned that people like to talk about the work they do and the everyday information problems they encounter. Anne believes the contacts she made with PHPs will be important for her information needs research.
According to Matt Wilcox, far and away the highlight of the trip was the 4pm meeting on Sunday. He enjoyed being there at what was sure to be the birth of a public health informatics special interest group. He believes this will provide a logical home for librarians at APHA as well as allow for the pulling together of interesting programming related to public health information/data and the computer systems in which they live.
Like Angie, Matt also wanted to seek out GIS-related sessions. He felt they were hard to find and the logistics of getting to these sessions were particularly difficult. While GIS is an index entry, the sessions were scattered about the conference. Even more frustrating was the trek to the most distant hotel and the fact that its one GIS-related paper mentioned GIS only in passing, making the session hardly worth the trip. He felt the difficulty of finding valuable sessions underscores the need for the SPIG to help focus these informatics topics. However, a poster session devoted to GIS topics supplied Matt with some ideas for a GIS project that he is involved in at the moment.
AIDS information was another of Matt's areas of interest. He was able to track down some interesting sessions on the subject. The most fun for him was Karyn Pomerantz's session on health information outreach. Some of the projects discussed in that scientific presentation were about AIDS information, including Stephanie Normann's paper on HIV information networks in Houston. Ed Robinson and Charles Williams shared their experience teaching the Internet to HIV+ clients in their clinic as part of the Partners project organized by Karyn.
Matt definitely used his time productively. From the notes he took during sessions he developed several project ideas that he could take back to do in his own community. One of Matt's goals was to cement the idea that he, as the librarian from the School of Public Health, should be at this conference. He believes he will have little trouble in the future getting funding for trips to APHA. The advances with the public health informatics SPIG, the amount of librarian participation, and the convenient location of APHA next year ensures that he will be able to be there to help shepherd others. The best news is that Matt feels that APHA is getting to be “fun.” Matt says it reminds him of the ALA midwinter conferences he used to go to. Furthermore, it meshes well with MLA in that about six months after MLA he gets to see many of the people he works with in the association. And he encourages any librarian whose responsibilities include working with public health clientele to attend APHA-if not annually at least on occasion.
Giving stipends to librarians to attend the APHA professional meeting has provided numerous benefits for the recipients, for the members of the public health profession, and for the Association.
Those who received the stipend and the librarians who facilitated the Sunday meeting learned a number of things that they'd like to share:
Stipend recipients indicated that interacting with user group colleagues is “fun,” “memorable,” “electric,” “rich,” “informative,” “extraordinary,” “satisfying” and “important.” So when the call comes out for you to apply for this stipend next year, consider the benefits and be sure to apply. Add your voice to public health.
The following are also acknowledged for their tremendous support and encouragement: Stephannie Norman, Kris Alpi and Karyn Pomerantz. We all owe a debt of gratitude to Win Sewell whose idea this was and whose support is critical to expanding our understanding public health.