| Winter/Spring 2001 | Kristine M. Alpi, Editor |
ColumnsFrom the Editor
Contributed Articles
New Resources
Happy New Year! Welcome to a very full issue of the PH/HA News. The newsletter's organization has been slightly restructured with an expanded table of contents to cover the additional material. This issue is a mix of recapping past events such as APHA and a departure in the field of Grey Literature, and introducing new things such as the Geographical Information Systems column and the PH/HA Core Public Health Journals Project.
This winter has been a busy one for many PH/HA members. The popular Public Health Informatics Electronic Journal Club will be winding up in February. Thanks to all those who have participated thus far. The website also has a new addition -- Hot Topics Resource Lists [Ed note: link updated 10/8/04] on Public Health Informatics and Electronic Laboratory-Based Reporting. We would love to have other "Hot Topics." PH/HA can link to content on your pages or put the content directly on the PH/HA site. Let me know if you are interested.
Enjoy the articles written by your colleagues on health disparity resources, the upcoming Public Health Forum at the National Library of Medicine, and a roundup of the latest public health resources.
Kris Alpi
Editor
PH/HA officers and members have also been working on developing a strong public health/health administration presence at the upcoming annual MLA meeting in Orlando, Florida. This presence is reflected in the variety of section programming and continuing education opportunities. The upcoming section sponsored programs are:
I. “Core Competencies for Librarians in Informatics- Intensive Environments”
Medical Informatics (lead sponsor), Public Health/Health Administration (co-sponsor), Leadership and Management, Medical Library Education
Sunday, May 27th from 4-5:30 p.m.II. "To Boldly Go Where No Information Has Gone Before"-Delivering Health And Information To Rural Communities Using Telemedicine"
International Cooperation (lead sponsor), Public Health/Health Administration (co-sponsor)
Sunday, May 27th from 4-5:30 p.m.III. “Travel Medicine: What You Need to Know to be Trained for International Travel"
Public Health/Health Administration (lead sponsor), Lesbian/Gay/Bisexual Transgendered SIG, Federal Libraries, International Cooperation, Consumer & Patient Health Information, Pharmacy & Drug Information, Rehabilitation Hospital SIG
Wednesday, May 30th from 9-10:30 a.m.
In addition to these three programs, there are two continuing education opportunities being developed. Current PH/HA members and officers are involved with both projects.
First, there will be a continuing education course on “The Public Health Knowledge Base” on Friday, May 25th from 8 a.m.–5 p.m. The class will help library and information science professionals to better serve the information needs of public health faculty, students, and practitioners. It provides an introduction to the discipline as well as identification of core resources in the profession; strategies for searching and accessing information; and concepts and methods for effectively using public health data. The second educational opportunity is a symposium on “Library Partnerships - Powerful Connections” on Wednesday, May 30th from 1-5:30 p.m. This symposium is being co-sponsored by MLA's Consumer and Patient Health Information, International Cooperation, and Public Health/Health Administration Sections and Outreach SIG with the National Library of Medicine. The afternoon will be divided into three sessions. First, a panel of librarians will describe four successful projects and the techniques used to establish and manage their different types of partnership projects. Next, the participants will be guided through small group activities to further explore their own partnership issues and strategies for resolving partnership problems. Finally, the symposium will end with a session on funding sources.
Aside from the programs and continuing education opportunities, don't forget to attend the PH/HA Business Meeting scheduled for Tuesday, May 29th from 12:30-2:00 p.m. It is a great opportunity to meet other section members and to get more involved in section activities. The idea for a number of these projects started at last year's meeting. If you would like to be very active in the section, the nominations and election of section officers will be occurring within the next month. Please look for future announcements on the PH/HA listserv and website.
I would like to thank everyone for their hard work and support for this year's activities. Please feel free to contact me or any of the other section officers if you have questions or concerns regarding PH/HA. I look forward to the upcoming year with PH/HA!
Best regards,
Helen Look
Section Chair
The project:
To identify a list of core public health journals that should be in all libraries serving public health organizations in any or all of the specialty areas covered. The list should assist libraries and faculty in selecting journals for purchase and in evaluating their own collections.
This is a marvelous opportunity to make a contribution which can assist Public Health educators and practitioners as well as librarians working in the field. Participants will be individually acknowledged on the draft and final products which are presented to the Association of Schools of Public Health (ASPH), the Medical Library Association(MLA), and the American Public Health Association (APHA). A publication in a journal about this project, including a view of the data, is a good possibility. This project has the support of the PH/HA.
The end product will be a database organized under the subject areas utilized by the ASPH in the accreditation reviews: (See http://www.asph.org/aa_section.cfm/3/53 for subject descriptions)
How to volunteer: By 2/1/01, send your name, contact information and expression of interest to both matthew.wilcox@yale.edu and
ccampbel@library.berkeley.edu. Please note: What subject(s) interest you; and What role you would like to play for the subject: primary developer, partner, or reviewer.
Complete information on the project is at http://www.phha.mlanet.org/corejournal.html
One of the many benefits of this quilt piece is that it is giving us a chance to take another look at the section's logo (or lack thereof). We would like to announce a logo contest to produce a new logo that we can use for the quilt piece, for our mailings, for the website, and (possibly) for badge stickers for those of us who want to show their PH/HA solidarity while attending the MLA annual meeting.
Logo entries can be submitted electronically (preferred) or on paper. Please send entries by February 28, 2001. Matt Wilcox will post the logos to a website to give PH/HA'ers a chance to vote on their new logo. Woohoo!
Send the entries to Matt Wilcox (matthew.wilcox@yale.edu) or to Matt Wilcox, Epidemiology and Public Health Library, Yale University, 60 College Street, PO Box 208034, New Haven, CT 06520-8034.
[Editor's Note: the full text of this article is available]
A dozen or more public health/medical librarians were among the more than 13,500 attendees at the 128th Annual Meeting of the American Public Health Association November 11-16, 2000 at Boston's Hynes Convention Center.
APHA has indicated that abstracts from this and future conferences will be available on their website. To view or search for abstracts by keyword, phrase or name, as well as to view the entire scientific program, visit: http://apha.confex.com/apha/128am/techprogram/. This will be a valuable resource for people looking for author and title information for this conference.
Librarians are encouraged to present scientific papers at APHA. The deadline for submitting an abstract is Friday, February 2, 2001. To submit a scientific paper, go to: http://apha.confex.com/apha/129am/call.htm. If you wish to teach a half or full-day CEI at this year's annual meeting, the deadline is January 31, 2001. The CEI information can be requested from APHA with information available at this URL:
http://www.apha.org/education/ [Ed.
note: Updated link 3/17/04]. Or, you can contact Laura Larsson
Go on to the full text of Librarians and Public Health: A Natural Synergy.
It is a pleasure to begin as editor of the geographic information systems (GIS) column. In the summer of 2000, I co-taught a public health informatics class, and one of our students was involved in a major project to produce maps of water lead levels for the state of Texas. She designed one of her course projects on ArcView software, and it really highlighted in my mind how librarians and public health professionals can partner in mapping health data against geographic features. Do you have suggestions for future columns? E-mail them to Will Olmstadt, GIS Column Editor, at wolmstad@medlib.tamu.edu.
For the inaugural column, Jennifer Fu of Florida International University Libraries provides us with a general assessment of GIS, and specifically some of her valuable web resources. Most of these web resources link directly to government agencies that provide interactive geographic analyses of their data. Jennifer started as a government documents librarian. She found interest in tracking the geospatial information published by Census Bureau, USGS, NASA, and the EPA, and eventually found her way to GIS librarianship.
Five years ago, few of us would put geographic information systems, librarianship and public health in one phrase. Many of us still don't see the connection among the three. However, we are often asked reference questions such as “how can I find the distribution of lead poison cases among children under 5-years-old in county by census tracts?” Let's see: “lead poison cases” – that's health statistics; “children under 5-year-old … by census tracts” – that's census/demographic information; “distribution” of these data – that's computerized database mapping.
We are very familiar with health statistics and census information. It's the computerized database mapping, in a broader term, geographic information systems (GIS), that's dazzling us. The information world has come to a new era – an era of geospatially locating, displaying and analyzing information. As information specialists, librarians naturally take the role of managing, organizing and retrieving geospatial information.
For health reference librarians, retrieving geospatial data could be challenging since GIS is a new and complex technology. Any of these three words “new,” “complex,” or “technology” can scare as well as excite people. If you haven't been exposed to this novelty, I'd like to share two websites that are specifically related to public health GIS data:
Additionally, there are conferences we could attend to broaden our horizon in public health and GIS, such as the GIS in Public Health conferences sponsored by various health organizations in U.S., including Agency for Toxic and Disease Registry (ATSDR) at http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/gis.
***
For further information on GISRSAL at FIU, please visit http://gislab.fiu.edu, or contact Jennifer directly.
As grey literature proliferates and information specialists around the world grapple with its expansion, a major resource has been lost to us: GreyNet (http://www.greynet.org) is no more. MCB University Press, parent company of GreyNet - The Grey Literature Network Service, recently announced that the services of GreyNet have been discontinued. Although grey literature stalwarts may yet pick up the pieces, for the time being there will be no more conferences, no grey literature compendium, no International Journal of Grey Literature. The plug has been pulled.
It was said that volume 1 of the International Journal on Grey Literature was accessible at http://www.liblink.co.uk/, but I have not been able to access it there. [Editor Note: the journal is currently listed at http://www.mcb.co.uk/ijgl.htm] GreyNet publications are said to be available through interlibrary loan/document delivery only, via the British Library Document Supply Centre at http://www.bl.uk/index.html. This includes the proceedings of the conference series.
MCB University Press bought GreyNet about two years ago, hoping to make a quick profit off GreyNet's rare commitment to facilitating access to grey literature. Grey literature for fun and profit? Maybe it's just grey literature for fun.
What characterizes a successful outreach project? What approaches work in different settings? How is outreach to public health professionals different from that to other health professionals? What are some of the barriers, and solutions, to reaching out from an academic environment to a community practice setting? How can the National Library of Medicine (NLM) and health science librarians nationally reach out to the public health community more effectively in the future? A forum to explore these and other questions will be held at NLM on April 4-5, 2001. The program will focus on NLM-funded outreach directed to public health professionals. More than 20 projects form the core of this effort. Background information about these projects can be found at <http://www.nnlm.nlm.nih.gov/partners/public.html>.
A considerable amount of experience and information has been accumulated from this work over the last 2-3 years. Through focused panel sessions and discussions we hope to distill that experience and information into knowledge, perhaps even some wisdom, about what works and what is a good investment for future outreach.
Information has been gathered on NLM-funded public health outreach projects. The committee planning the forum is analyzing this information with the intent to learn, among other things, what these projects have in common and what are unusual or unique aspects. Panels are planned on such topics as 1) assessing the information needs of public health professionals and research questions associated with attempting to do that, 2) based on assessed needs, determining objectives and evaluating the outcomes, 3) effective means of making national, state, and local information resources available (via websites, e.g.), and 4) partnerships between libraries and public health entities and project sustainability. Invited speakers from the public health community will also address how this is viewed from the other side of the equation – from the perspective of those who are the targets of this outreach – and introduce actual applications of knowledge support to public health problems.
Representatives from the outreach projects will be participating in the forum, along with staff from each of the Regional Medical Libraries, several NLM staff, and representatives from many public health agencies and organizations. An agenda and more program details will be available in February on the Partners' website at <http://www.nnlm.nlm.nih.gov/partners>, and more information will appear in this newsletter as it is available. This program is offered at no cost. If you are interested in attending, please e-mail Dora Smith at <nichsr@nlm.nih.gov> for more information.
The members of the forum steering committee are: Neil Rambo, University of Washington, chair; Kris Markovich Alpi, Weill Medical College of Cornell University; Cathy Burroughs, University of Washington; Marj Cahn, National Library of Medicine; Jocelyn Rankin, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; and, Joan Zenan, University of Nevada-Reno.
The National Information Center on Health Services Research and Health Care Technology (NICHSR) has added this distance learning program to its website at http://www.nlm.nih.gov/nichsr/outreach.html.
The course was developed by Dan Melnick, Ph.D. through a contract from NICHSR and was originally presented by Dr. Melnick at the 2000 Annual Meeting of the Medical Library Association. It is based on Dr. Melnick's latest book, Portrait of Health in the United States.
Health statistics can be elusive and difficult to interpret. Hopefully this course will provide librarians and researchers with some basic concepts for understanding health statistics, as well as pointing to some invaluable Internet portals.
We are looking for constructive feedback! Please send your comments on this program and/or suggestions for future related courses to nichsr@nlm.nih.gov.
[Editor's Note: the full text of this article is available]
It seems obvious that social factors influence health status, but current research into the complex interactions between biological health, psychological well-being and socioeconomic factors is bringing new prominence to the field of social epidemiology. Social epidemiology is interdisciplinary, involving medical and public health professionals, psychologists, sociologists, anthropologists, economists, and public policy experts.
Access to health care and educational attainment directly influence health status and health behaviors. The impact of other factors, such as race/ethnicity, gender, and socioeconomic factors is less clear. A considerable body of research, accrued over the last 20 years, suggests that economic inequality and social hierarchies may directly affect public health, perhaps through neuroendocrine mechanisms. Research relating negative health outcomes to inequality raises controversial social and bioethical issues. The sources outlined below provide an introduction to current literature in inequality and health, and identify some of the centers sponsoring research in the area.
Go on to the full text of Selected Sources on Inequality and Social Determinants of Health
Tobacco use is the single largest cause of preventable premature death in the United States and exposure to environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) is a preventable cause of significant morbidity and mortality. Preventing tobacco use in children and adolescents, reducing tobacco use in adults, and reducing nonsmokers' exposure to ETS are essential public health objectives for communities.
Coming in February 2001 the following reports will be available full text through the National Library of Medicine's HSTAT (Health Services Technology Assessment Text) database. (http://hstat.nlm.nih.gov)
Reviews of Evidence Regarding Interventions to Reduce Tobacco Use and Exposure to Environmental Tobacco SmokeEvidence Reviews and Recommendations on Interventions to Reduce Tobacco Use and Exposure to Environmental Tobacco Smoke: A Summary of Selected Guidelines
Recommendations Regarding Interventions to Reduce Tobacco Use and Exposure to Environmental Tobacco Smoke
These reports are the latest additions to the Community Guide to Preventive Services and represent the work of the Task Force on Community Preventive Services, an independent, nonfederal group of national, regional, and local public health and preventive service experts supported by public and private partners. These reports are the second published section of the Guide. The first published section, on vaccine-preventable diseases, is already available in HSTAT. To access these and future Guide reports, go to "Contents" in HSTAT. If you have questions regarding these reports or other HSTAT holdings, please contact nichsr@nlm.nih.gov.
The National Commission on Library and Information Science (NCLIS) has unveiled a legislative proposal which would establish a new federal government information agency. NCLIS has proposed the creation of a "Public Information Resources Agency - PIRA. PIRA's "primary mission [would be] to serve as the federal government's focal point for providing timely dissemination and permanent public availability for its public information resources." If Congress and others would approve such an agency, it would be part of the Executive Branch and would consolidate the Superintendent of Documents (SuDOc) the Government Printing Office (GPO), including the Federal Depository Library Program and the National Technical Information Service (NTIS). The NCLIS' working draft proposal, the Executive Summary and a related NCLIS Fact Sheet are available at the NCLIS website listed above.
GrayLIT Network provides a portal for over 100,000 full-text technical reports located at the Department of Energy, Department of Defense, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). Collections in the GrayLIT collaboration include the DOE Information Bridge; the Defense Technical Information Center (DTIC) Report Collection; the EPA National Environmental Publications Internet Site (NEPIS); the NASA Jet Propulsion Lab Reports; and the NASA Langley Technical Reports.
[From the Scout Report] This new site from the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) is designed to serve as a portal to resources and information on nutrition, healthy eating, and food safety available across government websites. These resources are organized by category on the main page, including food facts, food safety, lifecycle issues, research, and health management, among others. Each of these is further divided by topic pages which offer links to related resources, some of which are annotated. While the organization of these varied sources of government information on one site is appreciated, Nutrition.gov does have a few minor drawbacks. The site's method of displaying links is more visually appealing than a standard metapage site listing, but it slows down the site unnecessarily. Some direct links are provided to selected reports and publications, but the press releases section just sends users to the appropriate pages at various agencies. Finally, the keyword search engine indexes all of FirstGov, producing a majority of irrelevant returns. [MD]
All items from the Scout Report are copyright Susan Calcari, 1994-1998. 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.
Chemical Hazard and Environmental Fate Databases
1. FREE trial to Bretherick's online Reactive Chemical Hazards Database http://www.chemweb.com/utils/email.cfm?id=501&uid=115245 (Free Chemweb registration required)
Bretherick's is the leading reference work on reactive chemical hazards and is an essential companion for all those working with chemicals. The database covers over 5000 elements or compounds and one of its most valuable features is the extensive cross-referencing of data which links similar compounds or incidents not obviously related. The online version of the database is both text and structure searchable. Searching and viewing the short list of results will always be free, but as a special introductory offer, full records will also be completely FREE of charge until February 1st 2001." (From ChemWeb)
2. The free web version of the Environmental Fate Data Base has just been updated with over 600 new chemicals and over 550 new references. This database, developed by the Syracuse Research Corporation (SRC), which is hosted at http://www.syrres.com/esc/efdb.htm [Ed. note: Updated link 3/17/04] covers physical properties, environmental degradation and transport studies, and ambient, effluent, food, and occupational monitoring data on over 16,500 chemicals and 35,000 references.
From Stephanie Bianchi's Sci-Tech Library Newsletter (12/15/00)
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Officials and residents in 3,082 U.S. counties can now access a Web-based snapshot of their county's health status, the U.S.
Department of Health and Human Services announced today. Causes of deaths, infectious diseases, teen mothers, and a host
of other indicators from existing national data sets can be found on the Web at http://www.communityhealth.hrsa.gov.
This unique source of data is found in the Community Health Status Indicators Reports (CHSI) funded by HHS' Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) and produced in collaboration with the National Association of County and City Health Officials (NACCHO), the National Association of State and Territorial Health Officials (ASTHO) and the Public Health Foundation (PHF). The data covers the period from 1988 to 1998. |
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This information from the "What is CAMEO?" page. Thanks to Deb Kellenburger of Indiana University for alerting us to CAMEO.
CAMEO® is a system of software applications used widely to plan for and respond to chemical emergencies. It is one of the tools developed by EPA's Chemical Emergency Preparedness and Prevention Office (CEPPO) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Office of Response and Restoration (NOAA), to assist front-line chemical emergency planners and responders. They can use CAMEO to access, store, and evaluate information critical for developing emergency plans. In addition, CAMEO supports regulatory compliance by helping users meet the chemical inventory reporting requirements of the Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act (EPCRA, also known as SARA Title III). CAMEO also can be used with a separate software application called LandView® to display EPA environmental databases and demographic/economic information to support analysis of environmental justice issues.
The CAMEO system integrates a chemical database and a method to manage the data, an air dispersion model, and a mapping capability. All modules work interactively to share and display critical information in a timely fashion. The CAMEO system is available in Macintosh and Windows formats.
Click on a state on the map or choose a state name from the list provided below the map to get a list of health facts about that state. Facts include total non-elderly population, total low-income population, and total Medicaid spending in 1997.
The National Library of Medicine recently completed a new Current Bibliography on Youth Violence Prevention Resources which may be found at: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/pubs/cbm/youthviolence.html.
Check out William Ted Johnson's "Healthy Environment, Healthy Children, and Healthy Future: Essential Resources," a new column with sources related to the natural environment and healthy children.
A new report, Online Content for Low Income and Underserved Americans has been issued on the digital divide by the Children's Partnership. It recommends that web content feature information to support the needs of working class communities, such as job and low income housing opportunities, lower literacy level materials, information in multiple languages, and culturally appropriate resources. See http://www.childrenspartnership.org/pub/low_income/index.html for the complete report.
This collection of links was selected by the Delta Omega, Alpha Chapter Honorary Society of the Johns Hopkins University School of Hygiene & Public Health, in collaboration with the American Public Health Association's Computer Software Exchange and Computer Theater. In the past, the list of public domain public health software on this site has been promoted in the Computer Lab at APHA Meetings.
Public Health Data: Our Silent Partner is a course, based on a video tape and workbook, that was developed to improve the ability of public health professionals to understand and use data in their jobs. The complete set of materials video tape, workbook, Facilitator's Guide, and Student Guide can be ordered for $28.00 plus shipping and handling from the Public Health Foundation (PHS) Training Resource Center at http://bookstore.phf.org/prod100.htm or by calling 1-877-252-1200. The workbook for Public Health Data: Our Silent Partner can be downloaded from the information page at http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/training/phd-osp.htm.
Robert Teeter, librarian at a California water agency, has put together this metasite containing a variety of useful links in the field of water resources along with other library-related links. Agencies, databases, publishers, organizations, libraries, mailing lists, and more are featured. Teeter has organized the links by page type and indicates which sites are newly added or personal favorites. [URL updated 1/6/02] [From the Scout Report]
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