The projects described below were funded by the National Library of Medicine through the NN/LM Pacific Southwest Region, UCLA Biomedical Library.

A list of previous projects is available on our Project Archive webpage. If you are looking for more specific information about a project please contact us at psr-nnlm@library.ucla.edu

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Express Outreach Awards

Outreach to Students through College Health Services: Pacific Islanders Pilots
University of Guam, Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Library, Mangilao, Guam

Project Director: Paul Drake
Period of Performance: May 2012 - April 2013
Project Type: Express Outreach Award
Funding Awarded: $12,700

College students are at a time in life when they are developing habits and decisions that affect the direction and quality of their lives. This project seeks to establish partnerships between college libraries and college health services for health outreach to Pacific Islander college students. The two entities are responsible for information (library) and health (student health services) resources and dissemination on a college campus. Personnel in both service areas would receive training on NLM resources. Working together they will develop strategies and activities to inform and prepare students to develop their health literacy and make healthy lifestyle decisions. Participating colleges include the University of Guam and one to three other colleges on Guam, American Samoa, Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, or the Republic of Palau (all two-year colleges). All these colleges have Pacific Islander populations with first generation student populations where English is not their first language. An anticipated barrier to health information outreach is the lack of health information in non-English languages. The project hopes to identify specific health topics that need to be developed or revised to address the needs of minority population students. This is a pilot project, so specific recommendations will be developed to promote the benefits of the partnerships and what further work can improve access to health information by college students and their families.

Integrating Patient-Centered Health Information into the Patient Centered Medical Home
University of Nevada School of Medicine, Savitt Medical Library, Reno, NV

Project Director: Terry Henner
Period of Performance: May 2012 - April 2013
Project Type: Express Outreach Award
Funding Awarded: $12,000

Savitt Medical Library will create a multifaceted mechanism to facilitate patients' use of information technology and encourage greater patient involvement in their own medical care. Building on the concept of the patient centered medical home (PCFM), the University of Nevada School of Medicine (UNSOM) has launched an innovative clinical facility for improving primary care for Nevadans. The UNSOM Patient Centered Family Medicine Clinic (PCFMC) model of care is designed to improve outcomes by organizing medical care around the patient and by focusing on education to enhance the ability of patients to actively understand and influence their health status. Within this clinical context, four specific aims will promote improved access to reliable consumer health education information and help patients engage in meaningful discussions with health care providers: (1) the creation of a patient education web portal integrated in the PCMH clinical environment; (2) provision of tablet devices in examining rooms for clinician and patient use; (3) creation of an online educational resource to guide patients in the creation and use of personal health records; and (4) participation of on-call librarians to provide mediated virtual support to assist patients in using health information resources.

Bridging the Health Information Gap: Saturday Science Academy II and the Charles R. Drew University Health Sciences Library
Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science, Health Sciences Library, Los Angeles, CA

Project Director: Darlene Parker-Kelly
Period of Performance: May 2012 - April 2013
Project Type: Express Outreach Award
Funding Awarded: $11,988.36

The Saturday Science Academy II is one of the University's oldest pipeline programs. For years it has been strengthening the math, science, and health education of K-12 students through more involved instruction and demonstrations by local teachers, parents, and faculty members. Activities can range from students increasing their mathematic skills, to students wanting to become scientists or physicians because they now understand the scientific process and have been encouraged to dream. The program has been responsible for sparking the interest of numerous young people in careers involving science and medicine. The academy has three 8-week sessions and one 4-week session offered during the summer. Bridging the Health Information Gap will supplement these activities by providing training in using NLM resources to both instructors and students. The key tools that will be used are outlined in NLM SIS K-12 Science and Health Education website. Depending on the age group, NLM resources such as Tox Town, MedlinePlus, and the Visible Human Project would be introduced to the instructors of the Saturday Science Academy II in order for them to use these materials with their students. A librarian would be present during selected classroom sessions to conduct training for the teachers, monitor NLM resource use, and provide further instruction for interested teachers and students. At the conclusion of the project, all participants would be surveyed to gauge how effective our efforts had been in introducing NLM resources.

Community Mini-Conferences on Disaster/Emergency Preparedness Health Information
Pacific College of Oriental Medicine, Library/Learning Resources Center, San Diego, CA

Project Director: Naomi Broering
Period of Performance: May 2012 - April 2013
Project Type: Express Outreach Award
Funding Awarded: $11,086

The Pacific College of Oriental Medicine Library (PCOM) will lead the Community Disaster/Emergency Preparedness Health Information Outreach Program in collaboration with the County of San Diego-Public Health Service (SDPHS), to conduct six local mini-conferences at partnering sites. The Libraries of SD Public, SD County and Chula Vista, the AME Prince Chapel/Church, the La Jolla Community Center and the PCOM/UCSD Integrative Medicine Group are the six collaborating participants. The project goals are to conduct mini-conferences that promote access to disaster and emergency preparedness health information, and increase awareness and use of the National Library of Medicine (NLM)'s Disaster Information Management Research Center (DIMRC)'s resources. The meetings will feature PHS emergency speakers and PCOM library instructors. They will provide cross training opportunities to benefit emergency public health responders, health professionals, librarians, and the public. Attendees will learn where and how to get quick access to online emergency health information resources, from mobile devices to WISER, MedlinePlus.gov, and other related sites during San Diego wildfires, earthquakes, blackouts, and hazardous disasters. The aim is to encourage partnerships among medical librarians, emergency responders, and health workers to share their expertise and resources for recovery planning with each other, and with local geographically dispersed organizations throughout SD County (e.g. churches, community centers, corporate and public libraries, and health practitioner groups). The PCOM library staff is experienced in conducting mini-conferences that combine speakers with subject expertise and information access training using the NLM resources.

Health Professionals Information Use in Patient Care in Research-Rich Settings: Implications for Librarians, Health Professionals and Patient Care and Opportunities for Training
Stanford University Medical Center, Lane Medical Library, Stanford, CA

Project Director: Lauren Maggio
Period of Performance: May 2012 - April 2013
Project Type: Express Outreach Award
Funding Awarded: $10,933

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) Public Access Policy requires (since 2008) that all peer-reviewed journal publications resulting from NIH funding be made publicly accessible within a year of publication in PubMed Central (PMC). This Policy has the potential of translating into increased information use by the public, including health professionals. To assess the policy's potential and actual impact, benchmark measures of current health-professional use of this research in different settings are needed to see what happens when this research is and is not available to health professionals. As an initial step, this study investigates the information use of health professionals at Stanford University Medical Center (SUMC), who have relatively complete access to the biomedical literature, as well as popular point-of-care (POC) services, such as UpToDate. Stanford's robust collection will be used as a surrogate for the access to eventually result from the NIH policy, with the aim of establishing an understanding, through web log analysis and interview data, of the types of information used by health professionals and their knowledge of the Public Access Policy. This mixed methods approach will provide data to be synthesized, presented through hands-on trainings, and published to provide an evidence base for open-access policy makers, health science librarians, and health care practitioners to inform policy; to guide librarians' creation of information training, case studies, and collection development policies; and to raise awareness of the NIH Policy.

E-Science Day: An Opportunity for Education & Networking
Blaisdell Medical Library, University of California Davis Medical Center, Davis, CA

Project Director: Raquel Abad
Period of Performance: December 2011 - April 2012
Project Type: Express Outreach Award
Funding Awarded: $5,100

Designed as both an educational and collaborative event, participants will be introduced to e-science through a varied suite of activities. The morning will feature keynote and panel presentations delivered by experts in topics relevant to e-science: the VIVO project, community engagement, regional initiatives, and how e-science might be applied within hospital libraries. The poster and paper presentations and lightning rounds that follow will provide an informal setting to showcase various e-science-related activities taking place within the region. To conclude the day, break-out sessions will be facilitated by the morning speakers and event participants will be challenged to address a seed question that will encourage networking and discussion, with the aim of inspiring future institutional and regional collaborations.

Digital Empowerment for Diabetic Patients
San Francisco General Hospital, UCSF/Barnett Briggs Medical Library, San Francisco, CA

Project Director: Joy Graham
Period of Performance: August 2011 - April 2012
Project Type: Express Outreach Award
Funding Awarded: $10,000

The ultimate goal of the project is to improve the health status of disadvantaged diabetic patients by providing them with the computer and internet skills necessary to find and evaluate health information on the web. Because research shows that diabetic patients with higher health literacy levels have better health outcomes than those with lower literacy levels, the project will develop culturally and linguistically appropriate teaching materials to teach both Spanish- and English-speaking diabetic patients from San Francisco General Hospital's outpatient clinics how to use computers and the internet to find reliable health information. The teaching materials will be adapted from the National Institute on Aging's Senior Health Toolkit for Trainers for use with diabetic patients. SFGH's Family Health Clinic's Patient Advisory Boards will assist in writing, revising, and translating the Toolkit, to ensure that the content is linguistically and culturally appropriate for its target audience. SFGH will collaborate with Caminos, a community organization whose mission is to empower Latinos by providing training in digital technology.

Healthy Teens
Huntington Memorial Hospital, Health Sciences Library, Pasadena, CA

Project Director: Sherrill Olsen
Period of Performance: August 2011 - March 2012
Project Type: Express Outreach Award
Funding Awarded: $4,000

Huntington Hospital is proposing a pilot program to increase teen awareness of the necessity of "whole health." Health education outreach to the teen population and to their parents to provide them with enough information to make better decisions is currently one of the unmet needs of the Pasadena community. The goal of the program will be to address common teen health and lifestyle issues and foster awareness of community support resources for teens and their parents. The project aims to pilot this by creating teen-targeted health programs at a local area high school and branches of the Pasadena Public Library in conjunction with a teen health-focused website for ongoing health information needs. The main objectives are to: increase the knowledge and awareness of teen health issues in both teens and adults and increase the consumer's ease and ability to find information in this area in local, print and electronic formats.

Diabetes Information Outreach to the Latino/Hispanic Population of Pomona
Western University of Health Sciences, Harriet K. and Philip Pumerantz Library, Pomona, CA

Project Director: Pat Vader
Period of Performance: August 2011 - March 2012
Project Type: Express Outreach Award
Funding Awarded: $3,600

Western University of Health Sciences in conjunction with the Pomona Public Library will develop and operationalize a diabetes information outreach program aimed at the Hispanic/Latino population of the City of Pomona, Los Angeles County, California. In the computer lab of the Pomona Public Library, the project will conduct bilingual training/diabetes education sessions. Many members of Pomona's Hispanic population do not have access to computers, and by holding the sessions at the PPL lab, they can be made aware of this free resource. Because older Hispanic community members are often not trained in computer use, each session will begin with basic instructions as to how to access the internet, how to search, and specifically, how to access and utilize free health information resources. Following this training segment, a faculty member from WesternU will present information relating to various aspects of diabetes care. Topics may include: proper diet and nutrition; pharmacology (drug interactions, prescriptions, herbal medicine, etc.); the importance of optometric and dental screenings; disaster preparedness; and the care and prevention of wounds.

Cooperative Agreements

Arizona Outreach
University of Arizona, Arizona Health Sciences Library, Tucson, AZ

Project Director: Jeanette L. Ryan
Period of Performance: May 2011 - April 2013
Project Type: Cooperative Agreement
Funding Awarded: $76,997

The purpose of this project is to: extend the reach of the NN/LM by engaging the staff of the Arizona Health Sciences Library, the NN/LM Resource Library in Arizona; share experience about working with Native American groups and provide recommendations on how to work with urban Native Americans; and share experience in working with Native American groups and provide recommendations on how to work with urban Native Americans. In order to accomplish this, AHSL proposes to: jointly fund an Outreach Librarian who will be responsible for carrying out an outreach program in Arizona that attempts to meet the needs of Arizona health professionals and Arizona communities; determine collaboratively the goals and objectives of the new effort; provide reports that characterize the entire outreach effort in Arizona; build on the successful programs that are a tradition in Arizona; and improve AHSL's in-depth planning skills and research-oriented outreach.

Information Services Outreach for Rural and Frontier Nevada
University of Nevada School of Medicine, Savitt Medical Library, Reno, NV

Project Director: Terry Henner
Period of Performance: May 2012 - April 2013
Project Type: Cooperative Agreement
Funding Awarded: $28,000

This project aims to increase access to health information for care providers and healthcare consumers in rural and frontier Nevada in order to promote best practices of care and to enable the public to make informed decisions about their health. Lessons learned from this project will be shared with other rural areas. To accomplish this, the project will increase the ability of the NN/LM to influence the effectiveness of health care services in rural and frontier Nevada; conduct a needs assessment to better address challenges of health information practice in rural areas; establish a professional position as Health Outreach Librarian with responsibility to provide information services and training to clinicians and care providers in rural and frontier Nevada; and develop, through the activities of the Health Outreach Librarian, a mechanism for promoting online distance instruction methods in the pursuit of training and educational goals.

Health Information for Pacific Islanders: An Outreach Program
Pacific Resources for Education and Learning (PREL) Resource Center, Honolulu, HI

Project Director: Jane Barnwell
Period of Performance: May 2011 - March 2012
Project Type: Cooperative Agreement
Funding Awarded: $6,457

This outreach effort will target the health practitioners, educators, and government officials in the U.S. Territories in the Pacific. Some activities may involve members of the public. Due to a long history of isolation in the Pacific, there may be little expectation for access to health information, particularly very recent health information. Frequently health workers who do not have extensive education and training provide health care. Only recently has adequate Internet access been available, and even now, access may be restricted to only a few locations, such as community colleges. Perhaps the greatest barrier to health information is not online access, but instead the expectation that it is appropriate to seek health information due to little exposure to quality sources. It is the intent of this project to: increase awareness of health information to Pacific Islanders; encourage the use of health information in making health care decisions; and identify and remove barriers to health information in the U.S. Territories in the Pacific.

Funding Opportunities

Health-related programming is a great way to reach out to your community. Depending on your target audience, you might want to organize a health fair, hold classes to teach seniors to search for health information online, or invite health professionals to speak on relevant topics. In any case, funding can help make your ideas a reality. To learn more about funding opportunities, eligibility, and summaries of actual projects, please visit our Funding Opportunities page.

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