Abstract
Disparities in health between minority and majority populations have become a topic of high interest in the health care and information communities. This paper describes the National Library of Medicine's (NLM's) oldest outreach program to a minority population, a project that has been going on for over fifteen years. The overview is based on internal documentation and reports, interviews, personal communications, and project reports. This is a historical overview of the Environmental Health Information Outreach Program, from its beginnings in 1991 as the Toxicology Information Outreach Project. The initial collaboration began with nine historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) that had graduate programs in biomedicine. The current program includes representation from HBCUs, institutions serving Hispanic students, and tribal colleges. In addition to working with these institutions to promote the use of and access to electronic health information and related technology, this program brings attention to scientific research related to health issues that disproportionately affect minorities. The program expanded due to its perceived success by the initial participants and NLM's management. Not only have faculty, staff, and students at the participating institutions received training in using NLM's toxicology, environmental health, and other electronic resources, but the participants ascribe other successes to their collaboration with NLM.
Highlights
Diversity, health disparities, and environmental justice are all important aspects of public health
NLM undertook a one-year pilot project to strengthen the capacity of historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) to use National Library of Medicine (NLM’s) toxicological and chemical databases
The findings showed that, did this small NLM program help strengthen the capacity of these institutions to use online toxicology information, it helped them in other unanticipated ways [21]
Summary
Health disparities, and environmental justice are all important aspects of public health. Starting in 1989 with the publication of its first long-range plan focused on outreach, NLM and its National Network of Libraries of Medicine started training health professionals to use the library’s online databases [2, 3] While these efforts met with substantial success in mainstream medical schools and larger hospital centers, many institutions, those that were largely minority, were struggling to keep up with access to online databases and the required technology. NLM undertook a one-year pilot project to strengthen the capacity of historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) to use NLM’s toxicological and chemical databases This pilot project was intended to have an impact on the institutions themselves, and on their surrounding communities
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