Access to the Medical Literature for Public Health
Biography
Overview
North Carolina Public Health and Mental Health services have been under pressure as the state budget crunch has become more serious. The 17 counties in the Northwest AHEC area include significant minority populations. The agencies in the largely rural 17 counties in the Northwest AHEC area have been offered online access to evidence-based and other medical databases for a nominal annual fee and have declined. The literature points to a lack of informatics awareness/training in the public health professions. Internet access is only a partial answer', just a small fraction of web sites, such as the CDC, can be considered evidence-based resources. It is the intent of this grant to train healthcare providers in both database and Internet searching skills, focusing on peer reviewed Evidence-Based resources. For the granting period, sites would be given membership in the North Carolina Digital Library, a portal to subscription-based peer reviewed resources. A membership in the Northwest AHEC Library Information Service, which includes the services of a medical librarian, would also be of major benefit to the sites. Objectives: 1. Provide online access to PubMed (Medline) and other National Library of Medicine databases to underserved Public Health and Mental Health organizations in the 17 counties of the Northwest AHEC. 2. Provide on-site training in PubMed (Medline) and other online clinical resources to key healthcare personnel at these sites. 3. Provide information services: membership in the North Carolina AHEC Digital Library, literature searches, document delivery and other services as needed. This will be accomplished through a membership in the Library Network of the Northwest AHEC. 4. Conduct extensive follow-up after training; evaluate each training session. 5. Maintain frequent contact to ensure provision of services and additional training.
Among the outcomes measured will be the impact of information access on healthcare best practices.
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