Abstract
Borrowing from business, quality improvement programs, and strategic planning principles, environmental scanning is gaining popularity in public health practice and research and is advocated as an assessment and data collection tool by federal funding agencies and other health-related organizations. Applicable to a range of current and emerging health topics, environmental scans — through various methods — assess multiple facets of an issue by engaging stakeholders who can ask or answer research questions, exploring related policy, critiquing published and gray literature, collecting and analyzing qualitative and quantitative data in both primary and secondary forms, disseminating findings to internal and external stakeholders, and informing subsequent planning and decision making. To illustrate the environmental scanning process in a public health setting and showcase its value to practitioners in the field, we describe a federally funded environmental scan for a human papillomavirus vaccination project in Kentucky.
Highlights
Environmental scanning is a process used by businesses and other organizations to assess internal strengths and challenges and external opportunities and threats
Environmental scans were used to collect, organize, and analyze information on issues and practices in public health and medicine to look for quality improvement opportunities and research priorities, guide interventions, educate decision makers, and improve health outcomes
In recognition of the utility of environmental scans in public health practice and the need for more applied examples, in this article we describe the steps for an environmental scan and use as an example the environmental scan that we conducted of a federally funded human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination project in Kentucky
Summary
Environmental scanning is a process used by businesses and other organizations to assess internal strengths and challenges and external opportunities and threats. Environmental scans focus on acquiring relevant and credible information through various methods, including literature reviews, online database assessments, social media scanning, policy reviews, competitor appraisal, and solicitation of stakeholders’ opinions (eg, customers, board, staff), among other strategies [3]. When properly executed, this process leads to a series of evidence-based responses that an organization can use to improve strategy and performance [4]. Our goal is to help public health practitioners successfully apply this methodology in the context of public health practice and research
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