Working with a virtual health programming team

Posted by ssawyer on April 4th, 2021 Posted in: #CC/Academic List, #Health Interest List, #Health Sciences List, #Public/K-12 List, All Members

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Brandon Jason
University of Missouri LIS Student

I am working with a virtual health programming team from the Community Engagement Network of All of Us, a research program from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and Network of the National Library of Medicine (NNLM) that aims to “build one of the most diverse health databases in the world.” Through this experience, I am learning from information professionals how to produce quality, accessible virtual programs on health and medical topics, and how best to partner and collaborate with leading health, medical, and information organizations. I am assisting specifically with a program on vaccine development and efficacy, and the phenomenon of vaccine hesitancy among rural and Hispanic/Latinx populations in the United States – inspired by the COVID-19 vaccine rollout, but not exclusive to only those vaccines. We have partnered with the National Alliance of Hispanic Health (NAHH), the National Rural Health Association (NRHA), and the Juntos Center for Advancing Latino Health, and are proud to offer an all-female panel discussion featuring five Hispanic/Latinx doctors from various organizations. This program debuts via livestream on World Health Day (Wednesday, April 7). Through All of Us, I am also partnering with the American Association on Health and Disability (AAHD) to transition a pre-existing event on accessibility in virtual programming to instead focus on making library programs of all types as inclusive of different types of people as possible. This latter program will not debut during my time with the All of Us Community Engagement Network but will instead lay the groundwork for a future team to pick it up and produce it. Apart from these two programs, I have assisted by timekeeping a live panel discussion between African American women who have survived breast cancer and monitored cross-posting relationships during the livestreams of two other related virtual programs (“Life Interrupted: Telling Breast Cancer Stories”). Through these experiences offered by the University of Missouri iSchool’s Catalysts for Community Health (C4CH) grant, generously funded by the Institute for Museum and Library Studies (IMLS) I am being exposed to an area of the information profession I hadn’t know much about beforehand, and I am particularly grateful that I am gaining this insight during a time when public health is dominating the lives of everyone around the world. The opportunity to work with a national-level virtual programming team is also invaluable in my current work as a public library branch manager, since all our programming has migrated to the virtual sphere due to the COVID-19 pandemic. It is both interesting and important to see how information professionals are producing virtual health programs and partnering with leading organizations to get quality medical information into the hands of the public.