Submitted by Hathy Simpson

The Partners in Information Access for the Public Health Workforce has released two new topic pages on http://PHPartners.org on Nutrition and Workforce Development. PHPartners is a collaboration of U.S. government agencies, public health organizations and health science libraries which provides timely, convenient access to selected resources on the Internet.

The topic page on Nutrition, http://phpartners.org/nutrition.html, includes links to government, professional and research organizations that focus nutrition issues; grants and funding opportunities; legislation and health policy issues related to nutrition; published literature and research reports; and nutrition promotion, education and information resources.

The topic page on Workforce Development, http://phpartners.org/workforcedevelopment.html, provides links on public health workforce development activities and resources including education and training opportunities; legislative action; professional meetings, summits, councils, and conferences; new workers development programs; tools and resources on public health workforce issues; and workforce projects and research reports.

PHPartners.org welcomes suggestions of public health resources to post on the site. Links can be suggested at http://phpartners.org/suggestlink.html.

To keep up-to-date with public health news and new content posted to PHPartners.org, you can subscribe to the PHPartners weekly email announcement list or RSS feeds, linked from the home page of http://PHPartners.org.

Hathy Simpson, MPH
PHPartners.org Content Developer
National Network of Libraries of Medicine
New England Region (NN/LM NER)
University of Massachusetts Medical School
hathy.simpson@umassmed.edu
http://PHPartners.org (Partners in Information Access for the Public Health Workforce)

Do you work with public health professionals? Are you interested in public health? Are you interested in attending the American Public Health Association Annual Meeting?

This year’s APHA meeting will take place in San Diego, CA from October 25 - 29, 2008. Its theme is Public Health Without Borders.

The Grace and Harold Sewell Memorial Fund, Inc. is offering stipends to librarians and other information professionals to help cover the costs of their attending and/or participating in this meeting. Successful applicants from the greater San Diego area will receive a stipend of at least $650. Successful applicants from outside greater San Diego will receive at least $1,000. This amount covers most of the APHA Membership at $195 and Early Bird (pre-August 15, 2008) Member Registration at $380. Though significant, these amounts will NOT cover all costs, so stipend recipients will need to find additional monies to cover remaining costs.

Completed applications are due July 25, 2008–just over 3 weeks from today. To apply, read and complete the application form attached or download the Word application form at http://phha.mlanet.org/activities.html. Add all required application materials to the completed form and send as a SINGLE email attachment to Joey Nicholson at jnicholson@nyam.org.

For more information, contact Joey Nicholson at jnicholson@nyam.org .

Please forward this message to others who may be interested.

Hope you’ll join us at this colorful and fascinating meeting!

Joey Nicholson
Chair, Client Relations Committee
PH/HA Section, MLA

Hathy Simpson, MPH
Public Health Coordinator
National Network of Libraries of Medicine New England Region (NN/LM NER) University of Massachusetts Medical School
222 Maple Avenue
Shrewsbury, MA 01545-2732
508-856-2085
hathy.simpson@umassmed.edu

http://nnlm.gov/ner (National Network of Libraries of Medicine, New England Region)
http://phpartners.org (Partners in Information Access for the Public Health Workforce)
http://library.umassmed.edu/ebpph (Evidence-Based Practice for Public Health)

National Guideline Clearinghouse
Evidence-Based Practice Guidelines

Submitted by Hathy Simpson

The National Guideline Clearinghouse (NGC) (http://www.guideline.gov) is a free online resource for evidence-based clinical practice guidelines and related documents. Most guidelines have a clinical focus towards treating individual patients, but many guidelines can be applied to population-based public health practice. A benefit of NGC is that it includes guidelines developed by U.S. and international organizations including government agencies, professional societies, and private organizations. Updated weekly with new content, the NGC is produced by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Key Features of the Clearinghouse:

• Structured, standardized abstracts about each guideline and its development.
• A guideline comparison tool for comparing attributes of two or more guidelines.
• Links to full-text guidelines when available and ordering information.
• PDA downloads of summaries.
• Guideline Syntheses, synthesis of guidelines covering similar topics, highlighting areas of similarity and differences. For example, how do the recommendations for mammography screening from the American Cancer Society differ from the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists?
• Expert Commentary, perspectives written and reviewed by editorial board members. For example, a recent commentary is about practice guidelines on eating disorders.
• What’s New, an update on what guidelines have been added each week.
• NGC Update Service, a weekly electronic mailing of new guidelines and updates to existing guidelines.

Searching Options

1. Browse – Scan guidelines available by disease/condition, treatment/intervention, or organization. For example, view all guidelines developed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
2. Basic Search – Enter a search term to quickly search the database.
3. Detailed Search – Use to limit search by attributes such as guideline category, publication date, intended users, or target population. For example, to search for population-based public health guidelines on reducing the prevalence of obesity in adolescents, select “Prevention” under guideline category and limit the age of target population to “Adolescent.”

Search Results

• Citation (title, source, date, etc.).
• Guideline status – current status and previous releases.
• Brief summary with a link to the complete summary of the guideline.
• Recommendations with evidence ratings if available.
• Evidence supporting recommendations – please note that an “inconclusive” or “lack of sufficient evidence to determine effectiveness” does not mean a strategy does not work. It means that there is not enough research evidence to determine if the strategy works or not.
• Guideline developers, source of funding, and names of committee members.
• Links to full-text guidelines (if available for public access), ordering information, and links to related documents.
• Patient resources if available.

The National Guideline Clearinghouse is available on the Evidence-Based Practice for Public Health website, http://library.umassmed.edu/ebpph/ under “Evidence-Based Guidelines.” If you have any questions, comments, or interest in a demonstration of evidence-based resources for public health practice, please contact me.

Hathy Simpson, Public Health Coordinator
hathy.simpson@umassmed.edu

Submitted by Hathy Simpson

I have been busy developing a new skill building section for the Evidence-Based Practice for Public Health (EBPPH) website, http://library.umassmed.edu/ebpph. The section is intended to provide public health practitioners and health science librarians with an overview of the process of practicing evidence-based public health. Below is a sampling of this new section.

What is Evidence-Based Public Health?
Evidence-based public health (EBPH) is the use of the best available evidence to develop interventions, policies, and health promotion programs for population-based public health practice. EBPH requires integrating public health practitioner expertise, experience, and community values with the best evidence from systematic research.

The Evidence-Based Public Health Process
Evidence-based public health process involves selecting, implementing, and evaluating demonstrated interventions to address an identified public health problem. For example, do school-based intervention programs prevent obesity in children?

The process can be broken down into six steps:

1. Define the problem
2. Find the evidence
3. Assess the evidence
4. Develop and prioritize potential solutions
5. Implement the selected solution(s)
6. Evaluate the results

Step 1: Define the Problem
Write a statement of the problem. This statement should include:

• The health/safety issue of concern
• The population affected by the concern
• The size and scope of the problem: Public health data and statistics to help quantify the problem can be found at PHPartners.org: Health Data Tools and Statistics (http://phpartners.org/health_stats.html)
• Potential interventions (brainstormed solutions to the problem)
• Potential outcomes of these solutions (the measurable results you hope to happen)

Step 2: Find the best evidence
Search and select the best evidence for effective solutions to the problem. The EBPPH website is designed to allow users to find the best evidence to inform public health practice decisions. The resources are arranged along a Pathway of Evidence-Based Resources. (http://library.umassmed.edu/ebpph/pathway.cfm) We recommend that you search for evidence in the following order:

1. Evidence-Based Guidelines (http://library.umassmed.edu/ebpph/guidelines.cfm)
2. Systematic Reviews (http://library.umassmed.edu/ebpph/syst_reviews.cfm)
3. Pre-Formulated and Filtered Searches of Published Studies (http://library.umassmed.edu/ebpph/filt_search.cfm)
4. Best Practices (http://library.umassmed.edu/ebpph/best_pract.cfm)
5. Public Health Databases (http://library.umassmed.edu/ebpph/dblist.cfm)
6. Public Health Journals (http://library.umassmed.edu/ebpph/journallist.cfm)
7. Sometimes evidence, especially for a new public health problem, is not available from the published literature.

The Partners in Information Access for the Public Health Workforce ( http://phpartners.org), provides access to additional public health information resources:

• Health data sets and statistics (http://phpartners.org/health_stats.html)
• Government reports and grey literature (http://phpartners.org/guide.html#Reports%20and%20Other%20Publications)
• Newsletters, listservs, and news feeds (http://phpartners.org/news.html)
• Policy statements, laws, and regulations (http://phpartners.org/legis.html)
• Conference abstracts, presentations, and webcasts ( http://phpartners.org/conf_mtgs.html)

Step 3: Assess the Evidence
Assess the quality, relevance, and usefulness of the evidence to solve the identified problem. Compare your community’s health problem to the research findings.

Determine the following:

• Characteristics of population groups studied or targeted
• Possible interventions to resolve the problem
• Relevance of the findings to your community’s problem and target population(s)
• Potential benefits, harms, and costs of the intervention(s)
• Barriers to implementation

The EBPPH website will link to resources for critical appraisal of public health practice evidence.

Step 4: Develop and Prioritize Potential Solutions
Based upon the results of assessment of the evidence, develop and prioritize feasible solutions to the problem.

Step 5: Implement the Selected Solution(s)
Translate the evidence into practice. Develop an action plan and implement the selected solution(s) to solve the public health problem.

Step 6: Evaluate the Results
Evaluate the implemented solutions. The evaluation should include both performance and outcome measures to determine if the program was effective in meetings its goals and objectives.

I will keep you posted on the progress of this new learning section of the website. Feedback is always accepted and greatly appreciated! I am also available to provide free training on how to search for evidence for public health practice. I can be reached at hathy.simpson@umassmed.edu or 508-856-2085.