Are there organizational characteristics that Public Health Departments share in common? Dominique Smart The Department of Biomedical Informatics Columbia University Ms. Rosalind Wilson

Summary  Public Health organizations must ensure a high level of performance to deliver essential services.  They are hindered by limited public resources. Public health managers need to understand how organizational networking can have a significant impact on the progress and advancement of their Public Health agency.

Purpose  The purpose of this project is to determine if there are common structures and performance between various P.H agencies. This research applyies a statistical tool, ORA (organizational Risk Analyzer), that helps managers visualize and understand the flow of information and organizational dynamics of their agency.

Goals 1. To support managers in local Public Health Departments by analyzing and showing how to improve communications by showing how information flows 2. Modify an existing software program (ORA) to produce reports that can be used by public health managers 3. Develop a survey instrument to capture a common set of public health task, resources and knowledge for network analysis 4. Test survey instrument and ORA reports in two local health departments.

Key points we all should know about ORA & Networks ORA is a statistical analysis program for analyzing complex systems as dynamic social networks. Networks show how people, businesses & organizations are connected. A network is consisted of a set of items called Nodes, with connections between them called, edges. Typical social network studies address issues of centrality (which individuals are best connected to others or have most influence) and connectivity (how individuals are connected to one another).

ORGANIZATIONAL NETWORK ANALYSIS An empirical, descriptive technique for modeling organizational systems as interlocking networks of people, knowledge, resources, tasks Premise Organization as information processing entity Network analysis is based on graph theory Purpose Understand the flow Find patterns, draw inferences from theory--social sciences, complexity, behavioral Product Visualizations, measurements Insight on structure of the network—how information flows Implications for decision-making, planning, overall culture of the organization

Simple & Complex Networks Figure 1. A social network showing a highly centralized structure Figure 2. How complexity emerges three nodes=16 possible connections Figure 3

Methodology  Surveys with a series of questions were asked to fill out by employees in 2 local health departments. These questions were regarding Organizational Networks in departments and the connections between them. Questions asked were based on Public health service knowledge, position/title, service tasks, work attributes, Administrative tasks, resources, information & data relevant to task and outside partners for task completion.  Surveys were completed in 2 local Counties. 150 were completed in the first and 137 were completed in the second county.  Surveys were checked for completeness  Surveys were sent off to get scanned for results on a flat text file.

Methodology Cont...  This electronic file was sent off to a computer programmer to convert the data for input into ORA using a parser, which is a small computer program that can read text files  The parser converted the flat file into Dynetml, which is like HTML and can be analyzed by ORA  ORA (a tool for analyzing data), is responsible for two outputs, Visualizations and Measurements. After calculations were complete, analysis part was complete. Interpretation of the results will occur in a conference with the local health department managers.  Researcher, Jacqueline Merrill, developed a list of requirements for changing ORA’s functionality, and I transferred all the requirements onto an excel sheet.  I am currently working with the programmer to make sure that there’s consistency in the ORA application. My job is to go through ORA to identify and recommend fields that are not consistent between screens.

Network Analysis of a Health Department Commissioner Environmental Water Lab Administration Public Health Nursing Communicable Dx Control Public Information Office Medical Examiner Health Information Clinical Physician

Results & Further Studies  Data analysis is ongoing. After the pilot testing of the survey instrument and the ORA reports the method will be implemented in a national sample of 8 local health departments.  Network results in 8 local health departments will be correlated with the performance scores (using a national performance instrument).  Is network structure related to health department performance?

Citations Page          content/affection.jpg&imgrefurl= daughter/&h=284&w=396&sz=28&hl=en&start=1&um=1&tbnid=FQBs- B0kQ1okhM:&tbnh=89&tbnw=124&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dchains%2Bof%2Baffection%26svnum%3D10 %26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26client%3Dfirefox-a%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla:en-US:official%26sa%3DG

Acknowledgments  Dr. Sat Bhattacharya  Harlem Children Society & Staff  Ms. Rosalind Wilson  Dr. Jacqueline Merrill  Department of Biomedical Informatics

Thank You!