| Winter 2001/02 | Kristine M. Alpi, Editor |
Columns
From the Editor
- * Report from the 129th American Public Health Association Annual Meeting, Atlanta, GA: Lessons Learned
- * Health Information Outreach to Local and Global Communities--Library projects join together at APHA
- * APHA Passes Interim Policy Against the War
- * 2002 APHA 130th Annual Meeting and Exposition Call for Abstracts
Contributed Articles
New Resources
Welcome to the new Winter issue of the PH/HA News! Now that we are on a three times a year publication schedule, the deadlines are: February 15th (Spring) and June 15th (Summer) and October 15th (Fall/Winter). In theory, adding an issue will allow more timely publication of resources announcements and cut down on the size of issues (the last was 25 pages). But this one is a month late and has 37 pages. The delay is also due is a small part to the amount of fun I've been having with our new bulldog puppy.
The time has come to share the fun of editing the newsletter. Kathy Kerdolff has joined us as Assistant Editor. For this issue, she edited the regular columns, but her duties will expand in the future. Read about Kathy below. Stephanie Normann is helping select sites for the New Resources section. We can always find tasks for additional volunteers. All submissions for the newsletter should still be sent to me for the time being. Happy Holidays from New York City!
Kris Alpi (kalpi@att.net)
Kathryn E. Kerdolff (Kathy) MLIS, AHIP is a reference librarian at Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center (LSUHSC) in New Orleans. She received her Masters in Library and Information Science from Louisiana State University in 1989. Kathy has been a member of MLA since 1994, and a member of the Public Health/Health Administration Section since 1999. Kathy was accepted into the Academy of Health Information Professionals in 1996 and was recently renewed at the distinguished level. Kathy revived and redesigned the quarterly newsletter of the Health Science Library Association of Louisiana, HSLAL Happenings in 1990, and remained editor until 1993.
She has presented at several MLA meetings as well as other national and regional conferences. Her most recent presentation was her electronic poster titled "State Morbidity Reports: An Odyssey Through Gray Literature Access by the Establishment of a Web Searchable Database," in Orlando at the Annual meeting of the Medical Library Association in May 2001. Kathy received the MLA Career Development Grant in 2000 and was the 2001 recipient of the ISI/Frank Bradway Rogers Information Advancement award for her work on two Public Health Databases: Louisiana Morbidity Report Database and the State Morbidity Report Database. Both provide Web access to primary state health publications that are considered difficult to locate and access.
Contact Information:
The American Public Health Association conference was particularly good this year. Public health, bioterrorism, and infectious diseases seem a bit more important since September 11th. We made some great advances in the creation of a special interest group for public health informatics, heard some great talks about the successes of some of our colleagues, and caught up with each other. For me this meeting is a chance to get some work done while learning more about the activities and research of the the people my library serves. I encourage all of you to try to make it to an APHA meeting if you can. [Editor's note: See Report from the 129th American Public Health Association Annual Meeting for more information on librarian activities at APHA.]
The Client Relations Committee of PH/HA is being formalized. The Client Relations Committee charge is to pursue formal and informal ways to increase contact between PH/HA members and their client groups and to encourage librarian involvement in public health related professional organizations. The goal is that librarians identify with and thoroughly understand public health goals and how librarians and information specialists can support them. Concrete charges include, but are not limited to: 1) Establish or ratify criteria for the awarding of stipends for attendance at meetings of specific client organizations supported by the Grace and Harold Sewell Memorial Fund, Inc., or any other private organization appropriate for support of its librarian assistance programs; 2) Explore with other pertinent organizations the creation of a public health informatics group within APHA. 3) Enlist support of public health organizations for specific PH/HA activities such as the core journals list.
The MLA annual meeting in Dallas is shaping up to be a good conference. The section will be sponsoring or co-sponsoring sessions on AIDS in Africa (including information on the recent changes in electronic journal pricing for Africa), a follow-up session on the 2001 American Medical Informatics Association's Spring Congress on public health informatics, a digital devices roundtable discussion, and one on involvement in other professions' professional associations. [Editor's Note: A CE course on "Introduction to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)/Electronic Information Resources" will be offered.]
The team working on the maternal-child health component won an Honorable Mention SCC/MLA Research Committee Award for their poster "Model Methodology: Librarians' Toolbox for Core Journal Selection." Congratulations to Carolyn K. Bridgewater, Pauline O. Fulda, Kathryn E. Kerdolff, and Hanna K. Kwasik, Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center Library, New Orleans, LA.; Julie H. Schiavo, Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center Dental Library, New Orleans, LA! Read their abstract online at http://www.sccmla.org/research_awards2001.htm#Model.
Bryant Karras has agreed to make his PHIG website available for documents we want to share with others on the list. Bryant's e-mail is: bkarras@u.washington.edu. The PHIG website is located at: http://phig.washington.edu/.
Public Health Outreach Forum: report
Joan S. Zenan, Neil Rambo, Catherine M. Burroughs, Kristine M. Alpi, Marjorie A. Cahn, and Jocelyn Rankin.
Bull Med Lib Assoc. 2001 October; 89(4): 400-403. PDF Full Text.
Public Health Outreach Forum: lessons learned
Neil Rambo, Joan S. Zenan, Kristine M. Alpi, Catherine M. Burroughs, Marjorie A. Cahn, and Jocelyn Rankin
Bull Med Lib Assoc. 2001 October; 89(4): 403-406. PDF Full Text.
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 21-25, 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 PHPs 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:
One of the many stimulating sessions at the recent APHA conference in Atlanta was a panel presentation entitled Health Information Outreach to Local and Global Communities: Bridging Disparities in Internet Content and Access. The session was sponsored by the Technology Center and co-sponsored by the Public Health Education and Health Promotion sections. It consisted of presentations by four health sciences libraries that are members of the National Network of Libraries of Medicine. Three of the projects are the recipients of funding from the National Library of Medicine.
Karyn Pomerantz introduced the project, Partners for Consumer Health Information. The project, which involves partnerships with several community health clinics in Washington, D.C, had as its objective to provide information technology resources and training to the 10 non-profit community based clinics in Washington DC. Staff from two of the clinics participated on the panel. Ana Aponte and Monica Villalta, from Mary's Center for Maternal and Child Care, and Charles Williams and Ed Robinson from Family Medical Counseling Services, shared their perspectives on how the project has enhanced their services to their clients and patients. The Family Medical and Counseling Services (FMCS) has been able to designate specific workstations to accessing health information for their patients. Training in locating health information resources on the Web has allowed staff to offer a wider range of up-to-date information to HIV/AIDS patients. Mary's Center for Maternal & Child Care operates a number of programs targeting the maternal and childcare needs of low-income women and their children. It addresses the overwhelming demand for bilingual, culturally sensitive health services in the District of Columbia. Monica Villalta said participating in the panel gave them the opportunity to learn about other projects and share what Mary's Center does. Ms. Villalta said they recognize that technology is a powerful resource which allows organizations like Mary's Center to obtain resources which enhance the services they can provide, but also allows others to see how they address culturally appropriate use of technology since this remains a challenge for many organizations. [Handout available online]
Another project with a local approach was the Houston AIDS Information Link (HAIL) project. Stephanie Normann spoke about the many types of organizations involved in this project, which has as its objective to provide HIV/AIDS information to economically disadvantaged populations. Participants in HAIL represent fifteen culturally diverse organizations, public and health sciences libraries, and various service and educational agencies and not-for-profit organizations. [Handout available online]
Neil Rambo shared a regional approach to assisting Native American communities in a five-state region in the Pacific Northwest. Tribal Connections: Linking Native American Communities to Health Information assisted several Native American communities in developing stable connections to the Internet in order to provide access to health information and build distance learning capacity. The project, based at the NN/LM Pacific Northwest Regional Medical Library at the University of Washington, provided equipment, connection costs, training, and consulting and support services.
Kris Alpi offered a more global perspective in describing the efforts to make the New York Online Access to Health (NOAH) web site relevant to Spanish-speakers information needs for both local and international users. NOAH (http://www.noah-health.org) continues to advocate for cultural appropriateness of translations, quality control issues in foreign language coding, appropriate literacy levels and use of images. [Handout available online]
A common thread in these projects was the importance of listening and involving the community leaders and organizations in assessing their needs and in addressing how to meet those needs. These projects are examples of activities that are attempting to address the disparities of health information access for minority and underserved populations. [Visit http://apha.confex.com/apha/129am/techprogram/session_6368.htm for more information on these projects.]
Panel Participants:
- Karyn Pomerantz, Director of Distance Education, George Washington University School of Public Health and Health Services
- Ana Aponte, Mary's Center for Maternal and ChildCare
- Monica Villalta, Director of Programs, Mary's Center for Maternal and ChildCare
- Charles Williams, Adherence Treatment Specialist, Family Medical Counseling Services
- Ed Robinson, Adherence Treatment Specialist, Family Medical Counseling Services
- Kristine Alpi, Information Services Librarian, Weill Medical College of Cornell University
- Neil Rambo, Associate Director, Pacific Northwest Region University of Washington
- Stephanie Normann, Administrator of Information Resources, University of Texas Health Science Center Houston School of Public Health
Many other librarians gave presentations and participated in APHA Annual Meeting activities -- see the additional list at the end of the stipend article.
The American Public Health Association (APHA) held its annual meeting from October 21-25 under the theme of "One World – Global Health." Chief among many discussions in the scientific sessions and plenaries was the war in Afghanistan and the public health response to emergency situations in the U.S.
This was also a major topic for APHA's policy bodies. Each year, the Governing Council, APHA's representative legislative body, and its sections, caucuses, Special Interest Groups, and affiliates consider approximately 40 resolutions on environmental health, social concerns, medical care, and public health programs that serve as a basis for APHA's national and local advocacy work. This year, the Governing Council passed resolutions calling for increased funding for the public health infrastructure to deal with emerging and routine outbreaks of disease, for social justice, and an end to the war in Afghanistan. These resolutions will be published in a later issue of the American Journal of Public Health and posted on the APHA web page at http://www.apha.org under policy and legislative affairs.
This is a reminder that the American Public Health Association's CALL FOR ABSTRACTS for the 2002 Annual Meeting to be held in Philadelphia, PA on November 9-13, will open on December 20, 2001.
We invite you to submit your abstract and assist APHA in continuing to provide the highest quality public health educational programming. Abstracts are welcome in any area of public health, including those that incorporate the Meeting theme of "Putting the Public Back into Public Health." Abstracts will only be accepted through the APHA website, http://www.apha.org/meetings.
The deadlines for submission of abstracts is between February 4 and February 8 depending on which Section, Special Interest Group (SPIG), or Caucus you wish to submit. A list of deadlines will be available on the APHA website after December 20 and all submissions will end at MIDNIGHT on the due date as listed on the Call for Abstracts. Submitters will be notified on or about May 31, 2002 whether their abstract was selected.
The public's health and biomedical research depend on current and reliable information on bioterrorism, weapons of mass destruction, and biological agents and defenses. The Library for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) provides the CDC Information Center staff epidemiologists, microbiologists, pathologists, health educators, scientists, and the public health community with this critical information. CDC Information Center staff selected and compiled current reliable bioterrorism resources. Here are a few of the areas addressed:
In response to the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, the American Public Health Association (APHA) issued a Call to Action for Public Health Leadership http://www.apha.org/united/action.htm. The Call to Action focuses on Public Health Leaders' obligation to address current and future challenges facing our nation. Public Health leaders must work together, discuss, and share ideas of action that are in the best interest of the nation's health. The news tells us that managing the aftermath and cleanup of the September 11th disaster is a staggering responsibility faced by federal, state, and local agencies. This column discusses Geographic Information Systems (GIS) that are used to aid emergency personnel during and after disasters.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), founded in 1979, http://www.fema.gov/about/ is an independent federal agency. FEMA responds to national disasters and reports on events that involve loss of life and property, and other types of hazards. It is one of the federal agencies assisting with the September 11th disaster. FEMA's Mapping and Analysis Center (MAC) http://www.gismaps.fema.gov/ uses GIS support to create maps of areas declared disasters by the President. MAC accesses maps that detail the restricted areas, staging centers, and power outages in New York City, maps of the Pentagon and Pennsylvania crash sites, and maps of the cleanup efforts. Archived maps (1998 – current) of declared disasters are included at the MAC site http://www.gismaps.fema.gov/archives.htm. A map of the flood damage caused by Tropical Storm Allison in Texas (Summer 2001) http://www.gismaps.fema.gov/2001graphics/dr1379/dr1379dec.jpg is an example of the available maps from the MAC site. None of the maps are interactive. Most maps are JPEG images from a variety of sources. The maps created using GIS aid emergency teams in locating the disaster sites.
Send additional ideas, comments, and suggestions for future columns to William-j@tamu.edu.
Every professional meeting I attend, no matter what the theme, I walk away with one repeated message: collaborate, collaborate, collaborate! So, I dedicate this space to collaboration. Collaboration with users and researchers, collaboration with publishers, and collaboration with colleagues are ways to share what we know, set goals, build systems and develop collections. Collaboration is a necessary “good” for building a national collection of grey literature (GL) in public health, health policy, and beyond.
The New York Academy of Medicine (NYAM) has actively been collecting and cataloging grey literature for the last several years--this collection is available in the NYAM online catalog (http://innopac.nyam.org/). New GL acquisitions are advertised in the Grey Literature Report, an online current awareness and collection development newsletter. The GL records are uploaded into OCLC for copy cataloging, but libraries interested in copying the records must be subscribers to OCLC. We primarily collect in subject areas of interest to NYAM researchers, New York metropolitan area, we limit ourselves in format to publications that have at least some level of formality, and time is always an issue. Grey literature is as vast as public health is broad. Despite the advertising, NYAM's GL collection continues to be used primarily by NYAM staff researchers and New York metropolitan area library patrons. Collaboration time!
The NYAM Library signed a “Memorandum of Understanding” with the National Library of Medicine (NLM) for a collaborative pilot project sharing a subset of our grey literature MARC records to be loaded into their Voyager system. The GL records will be searchable using NLM's catalog, LOCATORplus and the NLM Gateway. Libraries that lack OCLC will be able to copy catalog records from LOCATORplus. Researchers using NLM resources will find access to grey literature a little easier. It's a start. Perhaps more organizations will add their holdings to NLM's catalog. Or maybe that's not the way to go at all. Maybe something completely new: a virtual union catalog, or a new distribution model? We need to engage users and publishers - in defining needs, in developing these systems, in looking at vocabulary and metadata standards, in access, delivery and distribution, and in promotion.
No one library should go it alone. Collaborate! Many of you are out there with great projects and ideas, and we'd like to hear from you. Ideas for future Grey Literature columns are welcome. If you would like to guest edit a column, please contact Marie Ascher at mascher@nyam.org.
Public health workers are educated and trained in a number of diverse disciplines in a variety of educational institutions. The 30 accredited schools of public health along with the 75 accredited Master of Public Health programs supply the bulk of professional public health graduates. The objective of this study is to assess the past and current state of education and training theory for public health professionals and contrast it to future practice needs envisioned by the IOM Committee on Assuring the Health of the Public in the 21st Century.
In response to its charge, the committee will deliberate how public health education has evolved over time; the progress made in responding to recommendations in the 1988 IOM report, The Future of Public Health. vitality of research agendas of schools of public health in relationship to future needs; and the role national institutions and resources play in supporting well-trained public health professionals. The committee's findings will be used to develop a framework intended to strengthen and improve public health education, training, and research in schools of public health over the next five to ten years to meet the needs of future public health professionals to improve population-level health.
No public health librarians are on the committee, but the informatics community is represented by Rita Kukafka, MA, DrPH, a member of the faculty of Columbia University, jointly appointed with the Department of Medical Informatics and Department of Sociomedical Sciences, School of Public Health. Here is information from her bio: "The focus of her dual appointment is to develop a program of research and training in Public Health Informatics. She holds a Doctorate degree from the School of Public Health at Columbia University, and two masters degrees; one in health education, and the second in Medical Informatics from Columbia University, where she also completed a postdoctoral fellowship in Medical Informatics. Her research focuses on representing patient perceptions and beliefs for purposes of creating patient-tailored information, computer mediated communications designed to influence changes in health behaviors and provider practices, and how theory from the behavioral sciences can be applied to advance our understanding and to improve our capacity to implement information technology systems into health care organizations.
This environmental health resource page was compiled by the Public Health Foundation, in partnership with Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, the National Center for Environmental Health, the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, and the Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion. The site provides easy access to information useful in the development of environmental health objectives and for other environmental health planning projects.
It focuses on the six major topic areas within the Healthy People 2010 Environmental Health Focus Area: Outdoor Air Quality, Water Quality, Toxics and Wastes, Healthy Homes and Healthy Communities, Infrastructure and Surveillance, and Global Environmental Health. Each area has links to the National Healthy People 2010 objectives, the National Library of Medicine's searchable databases, and other topic specific online resources.
The site also provides links to state environmental health objectives and general planning resources. PHF hopes you will find these electronic resources to be useful. We plan to continually add to the site's offerings and welcome your feedback and suggestions on its contents.
The purpose of this project is to assist the public health workforce by making information, models, and evidence-based strategies related to the Healthy People 2010 objectives easier to find. The National Library of Medicine and the Public Health Foundation staff have worked together to develop pre-formulated search strategies for selected Healthy People 2010 focus areas.
These one-click strategies search PubMed, a database of the National Library of Medicine that provides access to over 11 million citations from MEDLINE and additional life science journals. By clicking on the focus areas listed below, you can automatically run a PubMed search for a particular HP2010 objective. Links to some full text articles and related resources are also provided.
This site is a pilot project funded by the National Library of Medicine, with assistance from the Public Health Foundation and the National Network of Libraries of Medicine. Eventually the Partners hope to expand the range of searches to cover all Healthy People 2010 focus areas. Your feedback is this regard is important and will be greatly appreciated. Please look for the Healthy People 2010 Information Access Project on the Partners in Information Access for Public Health Professionals (PIAPHP) website. http://nnlm.gov/partners/.
Wondering how to keep on top of the latest developments in academic public health and public health work? Here are some suggestions from your highly connected colleagues.
At the start of the twenty-first century, the public's thirst for medical information seems insatiable! How can libraries effectively join forces with diverse groups and partners to advance the shared goal of quality health information for all? The National Library of Medicine (NLM) with the Medical Library Association's Consumer and Patient Health Information, International Cooperation, and Public Health/Health Administration Sections and Outreach SIG co-sponsored a symposium at the MLA 2001 Annual Meeting focusing on this important question. The agenda and slides from the MLA symposium held on May 30, 2001 are available at http://www.nlm.nih.gov/nichsr/mlasymp01/agenda.html.
In the last issue of the PH/HA News we looked at how you can use handheld devices to begin increasing your productivity. In this second part we continue the search for productivity- increasing software tools. I will describe software that will help you track passwords, how to find and use encyclopedic and factual information, read books, and download news and websites from the Internet. We will also take a quick look at applications that might have been designed specifically for librarians, and those that have been created for medical and public health professionals.
This full day of continuing education on December 5, 2001 was sponsored by the New Jersey Hospital Association and the Middle Atlantic Region of the National Network of Libraries of Medicine. Topics and speakers were:
Clinical Perspectives on Biochemical Terrorism by James Pruden, MD, FACEPHandouts from the meeting should be available on the New Jersey Hospital Association website soon, or contact the meeting organizer, Michelle Volesko, at mvolesko@njha.com.
Bioterrorism Information Resources by Onnalee Henneberry, MLS [See her article in this issue]
NLM Resources on Bioterrorism, Chemical and Biological Weapons by Stacey Arnesen, MS
Terrorism and Chemical Agents: Resources for Medical Librarians by Barbara Schultz, MSLS
Algorithm for Information Preparedness: Checklist for Medical Librarians by Michelle Volesko
The October 2001 edition of the training manuals are now available for downloading from the NLM website at http://www.nlm.nih.gov/pubs/web_based.html. The workbooks were updated to reflect changes to PubMed, the NLM Gateway and ClinicalTrials.gov since March 2001 and are available for downloading in Portable Document Format (PDF) and Microsoft® (MS) Word formats. The manuals are broken down into sections so you can choose the areas of interest to you. Lecture guides used in training on Toxicology and Environmental Health Web Resources (i.e., TOXNET and ChemIDplus) are also available. These workbooks are not copyrighted. Feel free to use any part of the workbooks -- you may customize parts for training programs, demos, or workshops you conduct.
The Academy for Health Services Research and Health Policy has prepared a web page entitled How do I search HSRProj? at http://www.academyhealth.org/hsrproj/factsheet.htm. Health Services Research Projects in Progress (HSRProj) is a database providing access to ongoing grants and contracts in health services research. This web page introduces searching HSRProj via the NLM Gateway. HSRProj is a joint effort of the Academy for Health Services Research and Health Policy and the Cecil G. Sheps Center for Health Services Research, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and is funded by the National Library of Medicine.
This new "Web extra" from the National Academies covers the uninsured and underinsured in the United States. Currently about 40 million Americans are not covered by health insurance, more than the combined populations of Connecticut, Texas, and Florida, according to the site, and 80 percent of these are employed or are members of working families. The heart of the site is the new publication from the National Academy Press, Coverage Matters: Insurance and Health Care. The report, the first in a series by the Institute of Medicine, argues that public policy is more crucial than the state of the economy in decreasing the number of uninsured and underinsured citizens. In addition to a press release and a link to Coverage Matters, the site features a number of articles, including "A Portrait of the Uninsured," "Where to Find Help," and "The Myths and Realities." Hyperlinks throughout the articles lead to more information off-site. [From the Scout Report]
A new public policy collaboration modelled after the Cochrane Collaboration. See BMJ 323:294, August 11, 2001 for more information.
The Atlas of Cancer Mortality in the United States, 1950-94 was published by the National Cancer Institute (NCI) in December 1999. An associated website was released to the public at the same time. An enhanced version of the website was released in April 2001. In addition to links to related U.S. and international websites, the site offers data download capabilities, information for first-time users, and links to related publications. The Online Atlas, Interactive Charts and Graphs, and Customizable Maps constitute the main links of this site. The Online Atlas enables the user to view/download maps, text, tables, figures, and data in multiple formats. The text of the Atlas can be printed in its entirety or by section. Interactive Charts and Graphs generates 5-year rates over time at the national, state, and state economic area (SEA) levels, rates and confidence intervals for 40 cancers at the state, SEA, or county level, and rates or confidence intervals for cancers by state. All charts and graphs are accessible through text files to the visually-impaired and blind users. Customizable Maps allows the user to create individual or multiple maps based on specific parameters selected by the user, including geography (state, SEA, county), age (all > ages + 4 age groups), race/sex, time period (12 choices), cancer (40), rate intervals for color shading, and map color. The user can also view the map and data for an individual county, state, or SEA. Zooming and panning options are also available. Multiple maps with individual or common scales can be generated. These maps can then be animated in a slide show.
The CDC's National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) last week posted two documents on Fatal Injuries to Civilian Workers in the United States, 1980-1995, one on the national profile and the other focused on the national and state profiles. The reports cover sixteen years of data (1980-1995) from the National Traumatic Occupational Fatalities (NTOF) surveillance system. NIOSH reports that from 1980 to 1995, more than 93,000 U.S. workers were fatally injured on the job, an average of sixteen people a day. The leading cause of occupational injury fatality was motor vehicle crashes, though the leading cause for women and black workers was homicide. Both reports include a number of tables, appendices, and references. [From the Scout Report]
The Census Bureau collects data on fertility of noninstitutionalized American women biannually in the Current Population Survey (CPS), and they have released the report for 2000 this week. This year's findings are particularly significant because they record a drop in labor force participation by mothers with infant children (especially white mothers over 30), the first significant decline since the Census began measuring participation (1976). From this page, users can access the eleven-page report(PDF), a press release which gives highlights of the data, and detailed tables (e.g., Distribution of Women by Average Number of Children Ever Born, by Race, Age,and Marital Status). Data from the 1994, 1995, and 1998 CPS are also available at the site, as are historical time series tables, methodological tables, and links to related data on the Census site. [From the Scout Report]
The Foodborne Diseases Active Surveillance Network (FoodNet) is the principal foodborne disease component of CDC's Emerging Infections Program (EIP). FoodNet is a collaborative project of the CDC, nine EIP sites (California, Colorado, Connecticut, Georgia, New York, Maryland, Minnesota, Oregon and Tennessee), the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The project consists of active surveillance for foodborne diseases and related epidemiologic studies designed to help public health officials better understand the epidemiology of foodborne diseases in the United States.
The genome of Yersinia pestis, the bacterium that causes the plague or "Black Death," has been sequenced by a team of scientists at the UK-based Sanger Centre with funding from the Wellcome Trust. Completion of the Yersinia pestis sequencing will hopefully allow researchers to develop more drugs to combat the disease that is still prevalent in some parts of the world and can cause death after just 1-2 days incubation. The plague, which has struck with epidemic proportions several times in history, is believed to have wiped out one-third of the European population during the fourteenth century, and today up to 3,000 cases are reported annually to the World Health Organization (WHO). From the genome, the biologists have been able to identify many of the genes that underlie the bacterium's complex life cycle and its ability to infect different species such as rats, fleas, and people.
News overviews of the sequencing are available from the New York Times and the New Scientist websites. The papers published this week in Nature are accessible for free through Nature's Genome Gateway. To access the actual DNA sequence (formatted for Artemis, a free sequence viewer), gene list, complete gene map in color (PDF), and more, head to the Sanger Centre's page on Yersinia pestis. The Virtual Museum of Bacteria has a nice page with links (some old) to an image of the bacterium, papers, lectures, and other resources dealing with the plague and Y. pestis. The Centers for Disease Control & Prevention website contains a summary article written by George M. Weinstock of the University of Texas at Houston Medical School on the status of research in the genomics of bacterial pathogens, and it includes useful links. For more on the "Black Death" itself, check out the information provided by the WHO, including PDF copies of rare, historical texts on the plague. To delve into history further, you can read Daniel Defoe's account of the Great Plague of London (1664-65) online at Mastertexts.com. [From the Scout Report]
This new Website from the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is geared toward illuminating the connection between domestic and international health issues. The site reviews HHS's work in these areas and offers useful pointers to data resources, international travel information, reports and publications, and more. [From the Scout Report]
"This report recommends a comprehensive reassessment of federal health policies, programs, and processes, including federal-state roles and relationships, and some immediate actions to promote and protect the nation's health and to provide leadership in world health. The report concentrates on the challenges facing the secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) as the head of the lead health agency in the federal government.
The federal government is responsible for five main functions related to health policy: financing; public health protection; collecting and disseminating information about U.S. health and health care delivery systems; capacity building for population health; and direct management of services. Unlike the current categorical, or highly specialized, approach leading to policies and programs addressing the needs of a specific population, illness, or organizational constituency, a new, comprehensive approach to policy for the 21st century should promote coordinated efforts across programs in order to achieve three goals:
The report, "Toward Higher Levels of Analysis: Progress and Promise in Research on Social and Cultural Dimensions of Health," is based on recommendations made by participants in an OBSSR-sponsored conference held on June 27-28, 2000. The report reflects the belief that the continuing development and advancement of social sciences research are critical to the "future success of studies integrating all levels of analysis, from the molecular to the community or nation."
"Toward Higher Levels of Analysis" is downloadable as a 39-page Adobe Acrobat (pdf) file from the OBSSR.
Listen to the presentations from the first day of the Institute of Medicine's Annual Meeting, Oct 15 - 16, 2001. Slides for some of the presentations are also linked.
The informed consent approach is proposed to promote discussion about how best to enable potential participants to make informed decisions about population-based research involving genetics and to suggest issues for consideration by research sponsors, institutional review boards, and investigators. Readers will find information about informed consent, a supplemental brochure, a suggested template, and commentary. Read other Public Health Perspective Series information.
International Programme on Chemical Safety's (IPCS's) INCHEM "consolidates a wide variety of information produced by a number of international bodies whose goal is to assist in the sound management of chemicals [and] provides a means of rapid access to information on chemicals commonly used throughout the world, which may also occur as contaminants in the environment and food." From this metasite, users can access documents on chemical safety from a host of organizations worldwide. Examples of information that can be found include exposure limits by country, pesticide data sheets, health and safety guides, and physical-chemical data. Most of the subindices are listed alphabetically by chemical name. This is an excellent resource for science librarians, toxicology researchers, or anyone working in the chemical industry. [From the Scout Report]
In response to questions about possible dangers of contaminants in the air resulting from the massive explosions, fires, and collapse of the New York City World Trade Center and a section of the Pentagon in Washington, DC, the Specialized Information Services Division* of the National Library of Medicine has compiled a special resource web page on "Lingering Airbourne Hazards." The web page provides links to recent news articles and authoritative sources for information about contaminants in the air.
*The Specialized Information Services (SIS) Division of the National Library of Medicine (NLM) is responsible for information resources and services in toxicology, environmental health, chemistry, HIV/AIDS, and specialized topics in minority health. Website: http://sis.nlm.nih.gov.
NCEMCH recently updated the Childhood Nutrition and Adolescent Pregnancy Prevention knowledge paths on its website. The updated knowledge paths contain new resources and feature a new format. Developed for the Maternal-Child Health (MCH) community, these and other knowledge paths on key MCH topics highlight current, high-quality resources and tools. Components include links to websites, electronic publications, databases, and discussion groups, as well as citations for journal articles and other print resources.
Toxicogenomics is a new scientific field that elucidates how the entire genome is involved in biological responses of organisms exposed to environmental toxicants/stressors. Toxicogenomics combines information from studies of genomic-scale mRNA profiling (by microarray analysis), cell-wide or tissue-wide protein profiling (proteomics), genetic susceptibility, and computational models to understand the roles of gene-environment interactions in disease. The National Center for Toxicogenomics (NCT) is a coordinated, multi-disciplinary research program of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), National Institutes of Health (NIH).
The National Library of Medicine has established a new National Outreach Mapping Center as an aid to ensuring the effective distribution of outreach services by the NLM and the National Network of Libraries of Medicine. The new Center, at Indiana University, is being developed by IU's Ruth Lilly Medical Library and the Polis Center (a multidisciplinary urban analysis organization). The equitable geographic distribution of services and resources is one goal. Another is to be able to "see" which demographic groups are being served, including seniors, people with AIDS, rural citizens and their providers, inner city populations, minority populations, and other underserved groups.
This recently released, two-volume publication from the US EPA includes workshop reports and information on the effects of nonindigenous species (e.g., the zebra mussel, chinese mitten crab, the leafy spurge) on ecosystems and human health. The first volume (127 pages), Region/ORD Nonindigenous Species Reports, contains excerpts from the Mid-Atlantic and Great Lakes Regional Nonindigenous Invasive Species Workshops, and the Wetland/Riparian Nonindigenous Invasive Species Workshop, among others, covering issues such as regulating ballast water, chemical control of invasives, and coordinating federal, state, and local agencies. The second volume (64 pages), A Landscape in Transition: Effects of Invasive Species on Ecosystems, Human Health and EPA Goals, covers such topics as municipal- industrial water supply, stream runoff, and recreation and tourism in the context of nonindigenous, invasive species. The second volume also presents statements on direct health risks to humans from water-borne invasive species as well as health risks from pesticides used against exotic plants. Other sections discuss Hawaiian biodiversity, preserving native flora and fauna on public lands, and ecosystem stability. [From the Scout Report]
As scholarship places increasing emphasis on quantitative analysis, the need for numeric data grows across academic disciplines. Students and faculty require better access to sources of numeric data ranging from simple descriptive statistics to large sets of raw data. Academic departments, campus computing centers, and libraries have all provided support to varying degrees for researchers using numeric data. While the demand grows, specialized data services are quickly becoming a major operation.
On many campuses, the library has become a central access point for numeric data users by coordinating collections of data resources and services to researchers. While many academic libraries collect and provide services for numeric data resources, little has been written about how such resources are selected or which specific services are provided. As more academic libraries join the data game, they look to their peer institutions for models of service, collection development, access policies, budgets, and staffing patterns.
The investigators, Michael Cook, John Hernandez, and Shawn Nicholson, have designed this survey to find answers to several specific questions about numeric data in academic libraries. What relationships exist between libraries and other academic units that have responsibility for numeric data? What are the principle sources for numeric data? How much are libraries spending to acquire numeric data resources? How much staff time are libraries devoting to numeric data? How do libraries evaluate their own performance regarding numeric data? The survey data and selected documents from responding institutions provide answers to these and other questions. [Text from ARL Announcement] $35 ARL member, $45 nonmember. Web: http://www.arl.org/pubscat/order/index.html
The PAN Pesticide Database contains detailed information for active ingredients in more than 5,400 pesticides. Search by product or chemical. Regulatory status, ecotoxicity, chemical identification, transformation products, and type of use are given. Information sources include U.S and European organizations concerned with health and toxicity. A list of ingredients in each product includes the percentage of each chemical and toxicity, if known. Definitions and help are available, and the descriptions are easy to follow and understand.
The National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) has released eleven estimates of selected health measures for the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS), prior to the final data editing and weighting, to speed access to the latest information. This release includes four new measures (lack of health insurance coverage, pneumococcal vaccination, obesity, and participation in leisure time physical activities) and seven updated measures (among them, current smoking, HIV testing, and alcohol consumption). Data for each of the eleven measures can be downloaded separately as PDF files or together in one 61-page file. Graphs show NHIS results from 1997 to the first quarter of 2001, as well as 2000 estimates by gender, age group, and race/ethnicity. [From the Scout Report]
The National Academies Press (NAP) offers the full text of several publications related to bioterrorism, laboratory safety, and cryptography, among other topics, for browsing online. Although not all of the titles are new, NAP has collected them on one page for easy access in light of current events. The 26 titles include Chemical and Biological Terrorism: Research and Development to Improve Civilian Medical Response (1999), Firepower in the Lab: Automation in the Fight Against Infectious Diseases and Bioterrorism (2001), Improving Civilian Medical Response to Chemical or Biological Terrorist Incidents: Interim Report on Current Capabilities (1998). Users can perform keyword searches within each publication.
The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) released their annual report Indicators of School Crime and Safety. The text, which draws from a variety of sources including the National Crime Victimization Survey and School Crime Supplement, the Youth Risk Behavior Survey, and the School and Staffing Survey, presents data on violent deaths at schools, other types of violence and crime, nonfatal student and teacher victimization, drug use, and more. Also focused on school safety, the second site above provides a host of information from the National Criminal Justice Reference Service (NCJRS). The front page of the School Safety site acts as a portal to statistical information, legislation, relevant publications, funding opportunities, other related websites, and more. [From the Scout Report]
This resource aims to help states and communities address the national workforce development objectives for the health professions and public health agencies. This practical guide is filled with strategies, examples, and resources to increase under-represented minorities in the health professions (objective 1-8) and assure a competent public health workforce (objectives 23-8 and 23-10). Particularly handy for health improvement planning groups are brief summaries of workforce issues, strategies, and planning options. Read, search, or download it online in Acrobat Reader, or use the text-only version. Available in print free from the HRSA Information Center at 1-888-ASK-HRSA or www.ask.hrsa.gov. Developed by the Public Health Foundation under a cooperative agreement with The National Center for Workforce Information and Analysis (Bureau of Health Professions), Health Resources and Services Administration, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
The World Health Organization (WHO) released this year's World Health Report (WHR), which is, for the first time, concentrated on mental health. WHO reports that nearly a third of the disabilities in the world are neuropsychiatric disorders, and WHR 2001 focuses on the status of mental health care and knowledge internationally. The report "aims to raise public and professional awareness of the real burden of mental disorders and their costs in human, social and economic terms. At the same time it intends to help dismantle many of those barriers -- particularly of stigma, discrimination and inadequate services -- which prevent many millions of people worldwide from receiving the treatment they need and deserve." WHO provides ten government recommendations and three "paths of action" depending upon countries' economic situations. The report is available online or in PDF format in French and English. Users should note that we had trouble accessing the report using Netscape 4.75 on the Mac but no trouble with Internet Explorer 5. [From the Scout Report]
Copyright Internet Scout Project, 1994-2001. http://scout.cs.wisc.edu/ Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of the Scout Report provided the copyright notice and this paragraph is preserved on all copies. The InterNIC provides information about the Internet to the US research and education community under a cooperative agreement with the National Science Foundation: NCR-9218742. The Government has certain rights in this material.
Return to the PH/HA Newsletter Main Page
