Abstract
The delivery of essential public health services depends on the effective use of relevant information by public health employees [1, 2]. Yet, despite the importance of information to the practice of public health, the complex information needs of the public health workforce are not well met [3–8]. This paper describes how the New York Medical College Health Sciences Library and School of Public Health (NYMC) and the New York Academy of Medicine (NYAM) successfully collaborated in collecting data for two separate projects that addressed the information needs of employees in the Dutchess County Department of Health (DCDOH) in New York's Hudson Valley. NYAM additionally partnered with researchers at Columbia University in the Department of Biomedical Informatics and School of Nursing. Each project required all DCDOH employees to fill out a lengthy survey, and some data elements were common to both surveys. Both projects were funded by the National Network of Libraries of Medicine with the charge that the projects “collaborate when appropriate” because they targeted the same population. DCDOH welcomed the collaboration because it reduced the response burden for its employees.
Highlights
The delivery of essential public health services depends on the effective use of relevant information by public health employees [1, 2]
Dutchess County Department of Health (DCDOH), which had 156 employees who delivered a full range of public health services to a population of about 277,000 in a suburban/rural county [10], agreed to participate in the NYMC project as well
Many variables in the NYMC survey were suitable for conversion and import into Organizational Risk Analyzer (ORA). This allowed New York Academy of Medicine (NYAM) researchers to test the feasibility of organizational network analysis techniques in a public health department using data elements already established for studying public health organizations
Summary
The delivery of essential public health services depends on the effective use of relevant information by public health employees [1, 2]. This paper describes how the New York Medical College Health Sciences Library and School of Public Health (NYMC) and the New York Academy of Medicine (NYAM) successfully collaborated in collecting data for two separate projects that addressed the information needs of employees in the Dutchess County Department of Health (DCDOH) in New York’s Hudson Valley. Each project required all DCDOH employees to fill out a lengthy survey, and some data elements were common to both surveys. Both projects were funded by the National Network of Libraries of Medicine with the charge that the projects ‘‘collaborate when appropriate’’ because they targeted the same population. DCDOH welcomed the collaboration because it reduced the response burden for its employees
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