Resource Guide for Public Health Preparedness

1
For more information contact Lily
Pregill Special Projects Manager The New York
Academy of Medicine 1216 Fifth Avenue New York,
NY 10029 Tel [phone] Fax
212-423-0266 lpregill_at_nyam.org
Resource Guide for Public Health Preparedness
http//www.phpreparedness.info Lily Pregill,
Janice Kaplan The New York Academy of Medicine,
New York, NY

• Introduction and Objectives
• In July 2002, the National Library of Medicine
  (NLM) awarded the New York Academy of Medicine
  (NYAM) a two-year contract to develop a web-based
  Resource Guide for Public Health Preparedness.
  The Guide will provide a single point of access
  to essential information resources in public
  health and disaster preparedness, selected by
  information specialists and reviewed by subject
  experts from a wide range of disciplines.
• The specific aims of the Resource Guide project
  are to
• Assess the health information needs of public
  health professionals with regard to disaster
  preparedness and bio-terrorist threats and
• Streamline access to relevant documents and
  guidelines by creating and distributing a
  regularly updated Internet resource guide that
  directly links users to accurate and reliable
  sources of health-related preparedness
  information.

Current Status The database now contains
approximately 1440 records and is updated
biweekly. Subject Heading
Distribution Resource Type
Distribution Current Awareness
Updates You can subscribe to monthly
reports of new content added to the database.
Reports are delivered via email for your
convenience.
Application Development Initial user testing
(July, 2003) indicated that a cleaner, more
streamlined search interface was needed. An
exhaustive interface redesign was subsequently
carried out by the project intern, working in
collaboration with NYAM IT staff and the project
consultant. A new Google-style simple search
interface was added in October,
2003. Search Options Basic
Search A simple keyword query will search for
your term in the three Subject fields, as well as
the Author, Sponsor, Annotation, and Abstract
fields of the database. Advanced Search A
keyword search combined with drop-down filters to
define Audience Type, Event Type, and/or Event
Category. Browse Resources may be browsed by
Audience Type, Primary Subjects, and CDC Focus
Areas.

• Data Model
• The elaboration of a community-specific metadata
  model was a key challenge in the early months of
  the project.
• The Project Director and Project Librarian,
  working with NYAM IT Director P. Clancy and XML
  specialist T. Catapano, developed the original
  data model in an MS Access database. The desktop
  application is a convenient tool for managing
  data and generating reports but does not offer
  the stability or scalability needed for a robust
  web application.
• MySQL and PHP were selected as the technology
  platform for a prototype web application.
  Consultants developed the application and scripts
  for rendering output in XML and HTML.
• Collaboration Conformance with information
  standards and non-proprietary data formats will
  facilitate exchange between the Resource Guide
  and other information systems.

Project Partners
Collection Development The Resource Guide is a
web-accessible bibliographic database of
electronic resources related to public health
preparedness. Some of the resources focus on how
the public health workforce can improve its
readiness to respond to emergencies others
provide guidance on how to mitigate and manage
the public health consequences of disasters.
Audience While most materials are for the public
health workforce, the Guide does include
information for the general public and the
research community. Scope The Resource Guide
provides access only to those items freely
available on the web in an electronic format. A
variety of materials can be found in the Guide,
including research and review articles, testimony
before Congress, PowerPoint presentations, and
fact sheets. Not included are works without a
public health connection (e.g.,political and
general news sources, like Google News.)
Who Paolina Taglienti, Project Librarian
Lily Pregill, Project Director
Constance Malpas, former Project Director What
Project management content development and
description application development
Who Catherine Selden, National Information
Center on Health Services Research and
Health/NIH/NLM What Content recommendations
guidance funding

• Mapping Needs and Resources
• A variety of needs assessment activities in Year
  1 of the Resource Guide project revealed that
• Core preparedness resources are difficult to
  find without advanced Internet searching skills
• Information services for the public health
  practice community are scarce and under-funded
• Library professionals are rarely included in
  preparedness planning or disaster mitigation
  activities.
• Insights from key informant interviews with
  public health professionals and information
  specialists were supplemented by feedback from
  discussion and question/answer sessions at
  Resource Guide project presentations at regional
  and national meetings.
• Project staff have devoted special effort to
  leveraging existing information systems and
  networks in support of the Guide. Outreach
  efforts have focused on building local and
  regional partnerships between the 4000 members
  of the National Network of Libraries of Medicine
  and the 33 federally-funded Centers for Public
  Health Preparedness.

• Methods and Workflow
• Content Discovery Searching is done in a
  variety of environments.
• General purpose Internet search engines (e.g.
  Google) are utilized to identify websites,
  conferences and web-documents of interest.
• Relevant NGO (e.g. RAND) and government sites
  (e.g. CDC) are regularly scanned for relevant
  reports, testimony, monographs titles.
• Specialized databases are searched for articles
  and interviews (e.g. HazLit, PubMed).
• Search terms are varied in scope and source to
  ensure adequate coverage. Terms are drawn from
  controlled vocabularies (LCSH, MeSH, etc.) as
  well as natural language (e.g. Public Health
  Preparedness, Emergency Response).
• Scanned Sources are sites that are regularly
  reviewed. These include
• Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
• Government Accounting Office
• National Academies Press
• Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Review
• British Medical Journal
• Canadian Medical Association Journal
• Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality
• Public Health Grand Rounds series (UNC/CDC)
• Collaboration Content recommendations
  (suggested sources) are actively sought and
  harvested from the project website. Topical
  bibliographies contributed by colleagues in the
  library science and public health communities are
  also culled for relevant content.

OPPORTUNITIES FOR COLLABORATION !
Next Steps Convene a virtual advisory group
for content evaluation and content
development. Develop an online survey tool for
feedback from users on content and web
interface. Become an OAI-PMH Data Provider by
creating an OAI-PMH Static Repository for the
Resource Guide, making the Guides metadata
accessible to the community of OAI-PMH Service
Providers.
Growth of the Resource Guide 2003-2004
Funding Source The NYAM Resource Guide for Public
Health Preparedness project is supported by NLM
contract N01-LM-2-3505. Project Officer
Catherine Selden, NICHSR