EAHIL Conference Cluj Romania

World Health Organization

Special Interest Group sessions

2006-09-12 and 2006-09-15

Notes of the Meetings

Background

     

  1. The meeting was opened by Ms Paivi Pekkarinen Finland who welcomed colleagues from the World Health Organization, and from World Health Organization Documentation Centres in Poland, the Czech Republic, Italy and the United Kingdom.

  2. Paivi outlined her role as temporary co-ordinator for the special interest group, and this was unanimously agreed. Paivi invited Sue Thomas WHO Centre Wales UK to be secretary to the group, and this was also agreed.

  3. The purpose of the meeting was to discuss the establishment of the special interest group, receive an update from World Health Organization colleagues, exchange best practice between centres based on the results from the circulated questionnaire, and determine the way forward.

Establishment of the Special Interest Group: WHO Documentation Special Interest Group extends to become Public Health Special Interest Group.

  1. The special group was being formed following a special interest group meeting at the EAHIL conference at Santander in 2004, where delegates agreed that such a group should be established. The EAHIL board approved the formation of this group in January 2005. Following discussion, delegates to this meeting agreed that the group needed to be wider in its remit and that membership should be extended to all library and information services in EAHIL interested in public health.

  2. The current mission agreed was 'to enhance communications between documentation centres themselves and between centres and the World Health Organization.'

  3. At this point, Mr Arne Jackobson EAHIL president joined the meeting. In his introductions, Arne emphasised his past experience in running a documentation centre, and his understanding that with limited resources it was difficult for such centres to become involved in EAHIL. The abolishment of the EAHIL membership fee was a real solution for these centres.

  4. Arne outlined the benefits of the special interest group being part of EAHIL. These included:

  • Supportive infrastructure to market new group

  • EAHIL newsletter for informing members about public health issues

  • Dedicated support to set up public health web pages on the EAHIL site

  • EAHIL to set up email discussion list

  • Use of EAHIL membership database to enhance communication between the members of the special interest group

  • Biennial conference for all health libraries in Europe offering the opportunity to have information sessions on public health as part of the conference programme and poster presentations.

  1. Marina Ghitoc from the World Health Organization was invited to comment on the mission statement and the benefits of establishing this special interest group as part of EAHIL.

  2. Marina agreed that the need for enhanced communication as part of the documentation centres was welcomed, but emphasised that WHO EURO did not have the resources to sustain any formal network, including an email discussion list. The benefits of setting up a special interest group as part of EAHIL were therefore very welcome, and WHO would want to continue to be part of this work. Arne stated that WHO would be able to use EAHIL more actively through the group and the conferences to promote WHO health messages.

  3. All agreed with the EAHIL President that the remit of the special interest group should be extended from solely concentrating on WHO documentation centres to being a 'Public Health Special Interest Group'.

  4. A letter to the EAHIL board would be needed to request their agreement for this change of name, and a revised mission statement to reflect this expanded role would be required. PP agreed to draft a revised mission statement to be circulated to the members present, and to write to the EAHIL board.

Update from the World Health Organization

  1. The continued emphasis as reported in previous meetings on the move towards electronic access was highlighted by WHO EURO. The majority of materials are open and freely accessible in electronic format. The need for the newly independent states to have printed documents was however recognised, particularly in Russian, and these would continue to be provided.

  2. The need for marketing of these free resources was a key requirement and WHO will be doing this in the future. The establishment of the Special Interest Group would assist with this activity.

  3. It was agreed that WHO still required focal points in countries, and were looking to expand the centres. Where previously WHO policy was to have only one centre per country, this was changing to reflect the emphasis on electronic access. The costs of distributing printed documents meant that it was too expensive to have more than one centre in each country, but with electronic publishing as long as the centres have the IT infrastructure they would be able to be accredited.

  4. Thomas Allen from WHO HQ outlined the work he was doing around training, and in particular the ‘travelling road-show’ on the Global Health Library. WHO HQ need to have more information about the WHO information is being used through evaluations to determine the impact on policy and practice. Training materials will be available on the WHO web site as an interactive tool. Licenses are currently being looked at as to whether this training will be available free to all.

  5. Thomas also reported that WHO HQ were retrospectively scanning all World Health Reports back to 1947 so that these would be available as searchable PDF documents.

  6. The Global Health Library is currently being developed to promote the information already available from World Health Organization, as it was clear that many people have difficulties in accessing this. It is likely that HENARI would be part of the library.

  7. In response to a question on the possibility of WHO EURO sponsoring a delegate the next EAHIL conference in Krakow, Marina stated that there was no specific budget which could be used for this. Marina did however suggest that a proposal for support for the WHO documentation centres could be developed and presented, but there were no certainties as to how successful this would be.

  8. All present agreed that alternative sponsorships should be looked for including external sponsors or an approach to EAHIL.

  9. The need to gather evidence of impact and evaluation was agreed to be difficult, but essential. It was suggested that this could be one theme for the next public health session at the Krakow workshop.

Update and exchange of best practice in WHO Documentation Centres

  1. Sue Thomas presented the main results and themes from the questionnaire that had been sent by email and by post to all documentation centres. To date only nine questionnaires had been returned, and this reflected problems with the contact details for the centres, both addresses, email, and the correct contact person. Marina agreed that this was something which WHO EURO could check and resolve.

  2. There would three main activities being undertaken by the centres:

  • Collection building/organising - There was a trend not to collect and catalogue all resources but only those relevant to the country or the needs of the clients in the organisation. All activity is done electronically via databases.

  • Marketing/promotion/ dissemination - All centres market their role as a WHO documentation centre. The activities and the extent of these depends on the level of access to the library, whether open to all or more restricted access. The co-location of a documentation centre with a national library opened up access to WHO information to all health and other professionals in the country. The majority of the communication activity was within countries, with only the Czech Republic centre referring to active communication with WHO HQ.

  • Training - This was a new theme for the centres, but all mentioned some training activity, either with library customers, or as in the Lithuanian Library of Medicine as part of an annual course for other librarians.

  • Evaluation - no centre referred to any activity in evaluating the use made of WHO information.

  1. Good Practice included:

  • effective use of multiple copies of WHO documents being sent to branch libraries in Lithuania and public health libraries in Wales

  • redesign of web sites to highlight WHO resources in Finland and Poland

  • the cataloguing of information in both local electronic and union catalogues in Lithuania

  • the use of RSS feeds as part of an alerting service in Switzerland

  • annual training courses for medical librarians in Lithuania and

  • cataloguing of articles in Hungarian about WHO in Hungary.

  1. Questions were raised on the need for information on health technology assessment, evidence for clinical effectiveness and the cost effectiveness of health services. The centre in Poland wanted the International J of Occupational Medicine and Environmental Health to be available via HINARI. Thomas Allen explained that this would be possible if the journal publisher made this freely available as part of HINARI.

  2. Following discussion it was agreed that the questionnaire should be repeated, and that once the contact details of the centres were correct, and the email discussion list established via EAHIL it would be possible to have an increased response rate. A question should be included on evaluation and impact in future.

  3. All respondents to the questionnaire were supportive of the need to establish the Special Interest Group. Those present at the meeting agreed with the co-ordinator that a great deal had been achieved in the meeting, but that further work should be held until after the main session on public health in the conference. This was agreed, with Paivi tasked with organising this additional session and informing colleagues that it was to take place.

Notes from the WHO Group Session on 15th September 2006

  1. The session was attended by thirty conference delegates, demonstrating the interest in the public health agenda.

  2. The session covered three presentations from Thomas Allen World Health Organization Geneva, Marina Ghitoc World Health Organization Copenhagen, and Tatyana Kaigorodova World Health Organization Documentation Centre in the Russian Federation.

  3. These notes summarise the main themes from the presentations that can be downloaded from the EAHIL conference web site.

Thomas Allen - Global Health Library: a WHO initiative for access to health knowledge

  • This initiative aims to increase access to health information as a global network.

  • Health information and knowledge are key to health systems, but there are great differences in different parts of the world in accessing library and information services and health information.

  • The Global Health Library is to be the first point of access to health information, with health workers and librarians the key focus for WHO.

  • This initiative would not be creating new information, but is a directional tool to signpost people to resources that already exist.

  • All delegates were encouraged to get involved in the working groups being set up for the Global Health Library.

 

Marina Ghitoc - Electronic Publishing for public health

  • An outline of electronic publishing initiatives at WHO EURO to meet the needs of active readers, illustrated with two examples.

  • The WHO’s knowledge management strategy is to ‘improve access to the world’s health information’. WHO also recognise a growing demand for health information and knowledge as the basis of decision making. Alongside this, there are increasing expectations on WHO from the fifty-two member state of the WHO European region.

  • The audiences of WHO information are very diverse, and therefore have very distinct information needs. Users need information that is relevant, specific, fit for purpose, concise and easy to understand.

  • To meet these diverse needs WHO offers customers many ways of getting evidence. It is important for library and information services to provide summaries of information as well as full documents. Users need to be able to repackage information for their own needs.

  • Documents now published electronically at WHO are not the traditional PDF of printed reports. These have been designed for electronic publishing as multi-layered products, easy to navigate, providing a portal to other databases and references not necessarily WHO information.

  • Examples of two electronic published documents were given to illustrate the concept - European Health Report 2005 and Highlights on Health Series.

  • The European Health Report 2005 concentrates on children as its main topic. To enable easy navigation to information on effective interventions the information is repackaged into synopsis sections that can be read without scrolling on the screen. Policy makers can therefore get all the information they need in one easy step. The table of contents for the full report appears consistently on the left hand side of each page, and there is also a page of resources so that via links you go directly to other resources available electronically. There is also the option to download PDF of each chapter or the full report.

  • It was agreed that this template was a useful resource, which could be shared amongst the network. Marina agreed to see if this was possible.

Tatyana Kaigorodova Guidelines on the use of WHO web-resources to improve access for Russian speaking consumers

  • The difficulties of distance in accessing information in the Russian Federation have been lessened by the availability of information on the Internet, but despite this many users find difficulties in accessing WHO databases.

  • To make it easier for users to use these databases, an extensive set of guidelines have been produced. These have been based on the guidelines available from WHO EURO. Amongst other areas the guidelines provide information on: how to get WHO documents, copyright, health topics, health policy topics for decision makers, WHO library databases, searching tips, Health for All databases, Health Evidence Network.

  • The guidelines offer a step-by-step approach with different ways to search for information.

  • Information Bulletins have also been developed for health care professionals, administrators, and students. These contain short summaries of main WHO documents and publications, as well as brief details of relevant ongoing international projects in the Russian Federation with project deliverables, results and lessons learnt.

  • There has been a high take up of these bulletins at regional level of 84% and evaluation showed good results.

  • It was agreed that there was a need to look at producing such guidelines for people with visual impairments, and to consider whether these extensive guidelines could be translated into English.

Special Interest Group Continuation of Meeting 12th September 2006

  • A number of delegates not present at the initial meeting of the Special Interest Group joined this continuation meeting.

  • They agreed that the decision to extend the group to become a Public Health Special Interest Group was the way forward.

  • Discussion focused on the next steps needed to ensure a good representation of public health topics at the 2008 Helsinki EAHIL conference.

  • It was agreed that the Krakow workshop would be a key planning session, and that advertising the new group via the web and the EAHIL newsletter should result in more people involved and attending the sessions.

  • Themes for the Krakow workshop were discussed, and it was felt that something could be developed around continuing education and training based on the work of Thomas Allen and Tatyana Kaigorodova. This would be a ‘Train the Trainers’ hands on session.

  • An outline might be: ‘Public Health: Train the Trainers: Key tips on how to access public health information.’ Attend this session to get advice from expert trainers at WHO Geneva and the Russian Federation. Share your ideas and experience in 'a hands on' session.

  • The conference organisers to be approached with this theme.

  • The actions as agreed at the meeting on the 12th September 2006 were endorsed.