Outreach to public health professionals: lessons learned from a collaborative Iowa public health project

In 1995, the National Library of Medicine (NLM) and the Public Health Service (PHS) recommended that special attention be given to the information needs of unaffiliated public health professionals. In response, the National Network of Libraries of Medicine (NN/LM) Greater Midwest Region initiated a collaborative outreach program for public health professionals working in rural east and central Iowa. Five public health agencies were provided equipment, training, and support for accessing the Internet. Key factors in the success of this project were: (1) the role of collaborating agencies in the implementation and ongoing success of information access outreach projects; (2) knowledge of the socio-cultural factors that influence the information-seeking habits of project participants (public health professionals); and (3) management of changing or varying technological infrastructures. Working with their funding, personnel from federal, state, and local governments enhanced the information-seeking skills of public health professionals in rural eastern and central Iowa communities.     

Sharing MedlinePlus®/MEDLINE® for Information Literacy Education (SMILE): A Dental Public Health Information Project

The SMILE project represented a partnership among the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio Libraries, the Gateway Clinic in Laredo, and the San Antonio Metropolitan Health District. The project focused on improving dental practitioners' access to reliable information resources and integrating the best evidence into public health dental practice. Through its training program, SMILE cultivated a set of “power information users” among the dentists, dental hygienists, and community health workers (promotores) who provided public health preventive care and oral health education. The dental public health practitioners gained information literacy skills and increased their knowledge about reliable sites such as blogs, PubMed®, and MedlinePlus®. This project fostered opportunities for expanded partnerships with public health personnel.     

The Disaster Information Specialist: An Emerging Role for Health Librarians

ABSTRACT

This article describes the emergence of disaster information (DI) specialists, with particular focus on their presence in health libraries. Although literature on the subject of disasters and libraries is dominated by accounts of librarians preserving collections and ensuring continuity of library operations following a flood, fire, or other disaster event, the work of DI specialists extends beyond these traditional roles. DI specialists conduct outreach in the community, providing information services to emergency managers and other disaster workers. This article recounts a history of disaster information service in which public librarians served communities during disaster recovery periods, and health librarians became involved in organizational disaster planning activities. DI products from the National Library of Medicine are introduced in addition to federal funding opportunities for DI outreach projects. The development of the Medical Library Association's Disaster Information Specialization Program is presented, and the article shares recommendations for library administrators to encourage DI training for librarians and support the development of outreach services to disaster workers.     

A Review of: “Answers to the Health Questions People Ask in Libraries. Kane,Laura Townsend; McConnaughy,Rozalynd P.; Wilson,Steven P.; with David L. Townsend as Medical Consultant.”

This article reviews the formation of the Frontera Collaboration, a coalition of health sciences librarians serving clinicians and public health personnel in the U.S.-Mexico border region. Based on findings from an assessment of the target populations’ learning needs, the Frontera Collaboration participants developed a shared set of training materials that have been used in pilot training sessions. The Frontera Collaboration's participants learned several lessons related to collaborative health information outreach and increased their understanding of the concerns and needs of clinicians and public health personnel serving border communities.     

Sharing MedlinePlus®/MEDLINE® for information literacy education (SMILE): a dental public health information project

The SMILE project represented a partnership among the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio Libraries, the Gateway Clinic in Laredo, and the San Antonio Metropolitan Health District. The project focused on improving dental practitioners' access to reliable information resources and integrating the best evidence into public health dental practice. Through its training program, SMILE cultivated a set of "power information users" among the dentists, dental hygienists, and community health workers (promotores) who provided public health preventive care and oral health education. The dental public health practitioners gained information literacy skills and increased their knowledge about reliable sites such as blogs, PubMed?, and MedlinePlus?. This project fostered opportunities for expanded partnerships with public health personnel.     

Evolution of an academic–public library partnership

A partnership to improve access to health information via an urban public library system was established in St. Louis, Missouri, in 2011. A multiyear project was outlined that included an information needs assessment, a training class for public library staff, information kiosks at library branches for delivering printed consumer health materials, and a series of health-related programming. The partnership evolved to include social service and community organizations to carry out project goals and establish a sustainable program that met the health and wellness interests of the community.     

Statewide Initiative to Embed Consumer Health Librarians in Public Libraries: A Case Study

In 2004 a collaborative, statewide outreach project in Delaware was undertaken where consumer health librarians were embedded in public libraries. In order to explore the effect of the embedded librarians on the quality of health information provision, unobtrusive reference visits were made to half of the public libraries in the state. The query “Do vaccines cause autism?” was posed to library staff; resources provided were recorded. In 67 percent of visits, public library staff provided authoritative health information resources. It appears the embedded librarians had a positive residual effect on the provision of authoritative health resources for addressing an ambiguous query.     

A Value-Added Partnership Between a Chief Learning Officer and a Medical Librarian

A community-based participatory research project was conducted to identify health information needs of clients (an underserved population) at a homeless shelter. Staff at the shelter, medical students, and public librarians were sought as outreach partners; their needs and challenges in accessing health information resources to serve underserved populations were also assessed. The community needs assessment yielded results that helped shape a medical library's efforts in supporting medical students’ service-learning activities related to humanistic education. The resulting data also informed library decisions on health information education outreach programs tailored to vulnerable, underserved populations and community partners serving the specific populations in the communities.     

A power information user (PIU) model to promote information integration in Tennessee's public health community.

Observation and immersion in the user community are critical factors in designing and implementing informatics solutions; such practices ensure relevant interventions and promote user acceptance. Libraries can adapt these strategies to developing instruction and outreach. While needs assessment is typically a core facet of library instruction, sustained, iterative assessment underlying the development of user-centered instruction is key to integrating resource use into the workflow. This paper describes the Eskind Biomedical Library's (EBL's) recent work with the Tennessee public health community to articulate a training model centered around developing power information users (PIUs). PIUs are community-based individuals with an advanced understanding of information seeking and resource use and are committed to championing information integration. As model development was informed by observation of PIU workflow and information needs, it also allowed for informal testing of the applicability of assessment via domain immersion in library outreach. Though the number of PIUs involved in the project was small, evaluation indicated that the model was useful for promoting information use in PIU workgroups and that the concept of domain immersion was relevant to library-related projects. Moreover, EBL continues to employ principles of domain understanding inherent in the PIU model to develop further interventions for the public health community and library users.     

Public library consumer health information pilot project: results of a National Library of Medicine evaluation

In October 1998, the National Library of Medicine (NLM) launched a pilot project to learn about the role of public libraries in providing health information to the public and to generate information that would assist NLM and the National Network of Libraries of Medicine (NN/LM) in learning how best to work with public libraries in the future. Three regional medical libraries (RMLs), eight resource libraries, and forty-one public libraries or library systems from nine states and the District of Columbia were selected for participation. The pilot project included an evaluation component that was carried out in parallel with project implementation. The evaluation ran through September 1999. The results of the evaluation indicated that participating public librarians were enthusiastic about the training and information materials provided as part of the project and that many public libraries used the materials and conducted their own outreach to local communities and groups. Most libraries applied the modest funds to purchase additional Internet-accessible computers and/or upgrade their health-reference materials. However, few of the participating public libraries had health information centers (although health information was perceived as a top-ten or top-five topic of interest to patrons). Also, the project generated only minimal usage of NLM's consumer health database, known as MEDLINEplus, from the premises of the monitored libraries (patron usage from home or office locations was not tracked). The evaluation results suggested a balanced follow-up by NLM and the NN/LM, with a few carefully selected national activities, complemented by a package of targeted activities that, as of January 2000, are being planned, developed, or implemented. The results also highlighted the importance of building an evaluation component into projects like this one from the outset, to assure that objectives were met and that evaluative information was available on a timely basis, as was the case here.     

国外公共图书馆健康信息服务项目的研究与启示——以EIFL"公共图书馆服务创新项目"为例

[目的/意义]公共图书馆健康信息服务对公众"身心健康"具有积极作用,探析国外公共图书馆健康信息服务项目的建设经验,可为我国公共图书馆开展健康信息服务提供重要启示。[方法/过程]通过调查 EIFL-PLIP国外公共图书馆健康信息服务项目,以 13个发展中国家和经济转型期国家的健康信息服务项目为切入点,分析国外公共图书馆健康信息服务项目在项目主题、项目对象、项目内容、项目效果、项目保障上的实践特点。[结果/结论]我国公共图书馆在健康信息服务方面应进行多元协作,获取外部支持并发挥引导作用;关注需求,考虑用户特点兼重视弱势群体;培养人才,制定培训计划以提升服务技能;打造内容,加强资源建设与丰富服务类型;转变理念,规划试点项目及提升服务形象。     

Assessing the Health Information Needs of Unaffiliated Health Professionals and Using Training on Openly Available Search Tools and Resources to Provide Solutions to Their Information Access Challenges and Barriers

This article will describe a year-long (2010–11) joint project between Columbia University Medical Center's Health Sciences Library and the Institute for Family Health (IFH), a network of Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs) serving disadvantaged populations in New York State. This National Institutes of Health-funded pilot project aimed to (a) determine the medical literature and training needs of IFH personnel, (b) develop generic licensing agreements with publishers that would enable a health sciences library to provide access to electronic resources for FQHC personnel, and (c) develop reference/education services for IFH personnel. How the reference and education aims were met will be described and discussed here as the lessons learned from this project may be useful to librarians considering doing instructional outreach to unaffiliated health professionals working at FQHCs nationwide.     

Creating an online information literacy course for concurrent enrollment students: A collaboration with a state-sponsored online school

This article discusses a collaborative project to create an online one-credit library research course for high school students in a dual credit program. The project included a team of reference and instruction librarians at a midsize public university, the university's concurrent enrollment program, and an online state-sponsored school that provided courses to high school students. Current literature related to the information literacy knowledge gap, outreach to secondary schools, dual credit or concurrent enrollment programs, and for-credit online information literacy courses is reviewed. The process of creating the course will be discussed along with the benefits and challenges of the project.     

A health education outreach partnership between an academic medical library and public library: lessons learned before and during a pandemic

Background:Public libraries serve as community centers for accessing free, trustworthy health information. As such, they provide an ideal setting to teach the local community about health and health literacy, particularly during public health crises like the COVID-19 pandemic. Since 2018, an outreach partnership between an academic medical library and public library has developed, delivered, and continuously evaluated a health education program targeting public library users.Case Presentation:Health education activities were integrated into three existing public library programs: adult workshops, child and family programming, and circulating family activity kits. Prior to COVID-19, events were held at the public library, which then pivoted online during the pandemic. An interprofessional team approach combined the expertise of academic medical and public librarians, medical school faculty and staff, and medical students in developing the educational programs. Twelve in-person and five virtual programs were offered, and five circulating health education family kits were launched. Activities were assessed using program evaluation surveys of the adult and children''s programs and circulation statistics of the kits.Conclusions:This case report showcases the lessons learned from implementing a longitudinal outreach partnership between an academic medical library and public library before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. The interprofessional team approach and flexibility in program design and delivery in both the in-person and virtual environments proved critical to the success of the partnership. This partnership could serve as a model for other libraries interested in pursuing interprofessional collaborations in educating local communities on healthy behavior and health information–seeking practices.     

Creating a consumer health outreach program for Western New York senior citizens: continuing a library school project

The Internet has made accessing information a simple task. Each day millions of Americans log on to the Web in search of information on a variety of subjects. One of the most sought after type of information is medical information. Individuals are taking a more proactive role in their personal health care and the health care of their friends and families. Attempting to locate and evaluate quality health care information can pose a variety of problems for the consumer. Academic libraries have an opportunity to play a crucial role in facilitating the consumer's access to quality, reliable health information by developing and implementing consumer health outreach programs designed to address search problems and information interpretation difficulties. The benefits for both the community and the library are numerous when a consumer health information outreach program is successfully employed. This article will chronicle the creation of a Consumer Health Outreach program, entitled "WNY Consumer Health," intended for senior citizens in Western New York. This program was designed to satisfy the requirements of a graduate special project for the completion of the authors' MLS degree.     

Creating a Consumer Health Outreach Program for Western New York Senior Citizens: Continuing a Library School Project

ABSTRACT

The Internet has made accessing information a simple task. Each day millions of Americans log on to the Web in search of information on a variety of subjects. One of the most sought after type of information is medical information. Individuals are taking a more proactive role in their personal health care and the health care of their friends and families. Attempting to locate and evaluate quality health care information can pose a variety of problems for the consumer. Academic libraries have an opportunity to play a crucial role in facilitating the consumer's access to quality, reliable health information by developing and implementing consumer health outreach programs designed to address search problems and information interpretation difficulties. The benefits for both the community and the library are numerous when a consumer health information outreach program is successfully employed. This article will chronicle the creation of a Consumer Health Outreach program, entitled “WNY Consumer Health,” intended for senior citizens in Western New York. This program was designed to satisfy the requirements of a graduate special project for the completion of the authors' MLS degree.     

Library Service to Student Athletes

Abstract

Student athletes at Penn State have been identified and targeted as an underserved population, and over the past year a new outreach program has been created and piloted to meet their needs. The student athletes share the characteristics of distance learners much of the time and present a number of challenges to the librarians who serve as mentors for this program. This paper describes this project, emphasizing the different skills and technologies necessary to reach this unique group of students.     

Using focus groups to evaluate a multiyear consumer health outreach collaboration

Objectives:Academic health sciences librarians sought to evaluate the efficacy and future of the Health Information Specialists Program, a five-year consumer health information outreach collaboration with public libraries across the state.Methods:Five focus groups were held with participants from all five years of the program. Thirty-four participants from the program attended. Facilitators used structured interview guides consisting of eleven questions regarding the impact of the collaboration on participants'' abilities to connect themselves or others to health information; the usefulness of materials or knowledge gained and its applications; any consumer health outreach projects that arose from the program; and suggestions for future topics, formats, or modifications. Data was hand-coded and analyzed using the framework analysis methodology for qualitative research.Results:Participants reported feeling improved confidence and comfort in providing health information services to their patrons. Numerous instances of knowledge transfer—in their personal lives, with their colleagues, and for their patrons—were described. Participants reported improved abilities to both find and evaluate consumer health information, and many adapted class materials for their own programming or teaching. Suggestions were provided for future class topics as well as a program website.Conclusion:Based on data from the five focus groups, the Health Information Specialists Program has positively impacted participants in a number of ways. Primary among these were self-reported improvement in both health information retrieval skills and the ability to evaluate the reliability of health information online, as well as in the confidence to help patrons with their health information needs.     

Community partnerships for health information training: medical librarians working with health-care professionals and consumers in Tennessee

In Tennessee, several medical library outreach projects have involved collaborative work with health-care professionals, public librarians, consumers, faith-based organizations and community service agencies. The authors are medical librarians who worked as consultants, trainers and project directors to promote health literacy using PubMed medline and other health information resources in the several funding projects described here. We explain the programmes briefly, focusing on lessons learned and suggestions for those who follow us.