Strategies for Staying Informed about Public Health Concerns Kristine Alpi, MLS, MPH November 6, 2004

Objectives and Competencies Articulate three strategies for staying informed about news and developments relevant to public health. Analytic assessment. “Identifies relevant and appropriate data and information sources.” Inform, educate and empower people about health issues. “Research for new insights and innovative solutions to health problems”

Why Adopt Strategies to Stay Informed? Credibility and advance preparation time Limited budgets for meetings, etc. Potential to identify collaborators Professional responsibility Changes in speed of information access Are there other reasons that would convince colleagues or administration to make time for keeping up?

Strategies for Keeping Up Identify specific resources in areas of interest: 1.Web sites that have news updates or continuous news feeds. 2. discussion lists (Listservs™) 3. announcement/notification lists 4.Journal table of contents (TOC) of the latest issue 5.Automated subject-specific literature searches 6.Professional organizations Outline a plan for incorporating keeping up-to- date into a work routine

Characteristics of Workable Strategies Efficient – provide the most useful items in the least amount of time Maintainable – share monitoring duties with others Modifiable – change easily as issue develops Reasonable – require limited information disclosure for registration; opt-outs available Time-sensitive – can be short-term, project- specific, long-term & ongoing

Web Sites with News Updates Find a relevant general site or specific topic site [search on keyword and news or what’s new or update] –Bookmark it –Make it your default home page Follow up on the news to actual studies Track page without a what’s new category –Change detector sends when changed

Medscape

NY State Home

What’s New page

Change Detection

Discussion Lists (Listservs™) Discussion lists are interactive lists –Disadvantages –postings volume, no quality control –Advantages – ability to post questions and get feedback Reduce volume with daily Digest format Review or search list archives Sign on to observe a list for a week and then re-evaluate.

Discussion Lists Find relevant lists by searching the Web sites of likely organizations or browsing some of the following resources: Partners in Information Access for the Public Health Workforce - Discussion and Lists – The School of Public Health and Community Medicine, University of Washington has several lists through the Mailman system (example on next screen) – Central list directories: –CataList: L-Soft - –Topica (formerly Listz of Lists) - –Tile.Net -

PH-Info List Yes to Digest if you want to have fewer messages.

Announcement Lists One-way communication of information Frequency varies Volume of these lists tends to be lower and more predictable than interactive lists Many Sites offer a What’s New update Subject-specific or organization-specific –See Discussion & Lists page on the Partners site

Partners Lists

Tables of Contents of Journals Offered from publisher Web sites (E-Alerts) –Single journal or multiple journals from same publisher –Some require registration Activate the online access for print subscriptions Can also set up for multiple journals as automatic search (next slide) Core Journal List provides possible titles –

Tables of Contents Individual title services such as: –Morbidity & Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) – –Emerging Infectious Diseases – Examples of multiple title alert services include: –Individual publisher sites –BioMail searches of PubMed by journal title –Paid services

Oxford Sample Contents

Automated Subject-Specific Literature Searches Search by subject, author, institution or journal title Free searches of PubMed (MEDLINE) by Biomail ( or PubCrawler ( Pre-prepared searches linked from a web site – Healthy People 2010 Information Access Project ( People 2010 Information Access Project

PubCrawler

Professional Organizations Benefits of membership for keeping up –Newsletters and journal subscriptions –Discussion lists –Live and virtual meetings –Continuing education opportunities Assessing an organization –Examine sample newsletters on web –Ask colleagues about networking –Consider local chapters of national organizations

Discussion and Planning Has anyone tried any of these strategies already? How did it go? How much time could you make available for keeping up? Each day? Each week? Set-up time takes longer than maintenance. Ask an information professional colleague to assist with set up.

Outline a Plan to Stay Informed How much time do you have? Will you follow the resources yourself or assign to staff members? What is your focus? News, legal, best practices, scientific research… Do you prefer to receive or go out to resources?

Questions or Comments? Contact information: Kristine Alpi

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