NNLM – Not just for Librarians! – a public health librarian’s notes from the field

Posted in: #CC/Academic List, #Health Interest List, #Health Sciences List, #Public/K-12 List, All Members

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Initiating “Co-Learning Communities” in the Public Health Workforce:

Leveraging Training, Continuing Education and Credentialing via the Network of the National Library of Medicine (NNLM)

Did you know? The National Network of the Library of Medicine (NNLM) is not just a network of librarians and libraries?  NNLM has a robust website that includes resources for anyone working to improve community health.  Those of us working in public health fit right into this information community!

By now we all know that public health is much more than sanitation and restaurant inspections!  It is prevention, it is addressing causes of ill health from “upstream,” it is risk factors and protective factors, and social determinants of health.  Just like the public we serve, we are constantly bombarded with information, sometimes reliable, sometimes “misinformation,” frequently confusing.  Some, like the World Health Organization have referred to this as an “Infodemic” in the wake of COVID-19, and over the years many effective tools have been developed to help people to navigate information with a critical eye (as shared in this resource guide “Evaluating Information” from Sheridan Libraries at  Johns Hopkins University).

The public health workforce includes a range of roles from epidemiologist to public health nurse to community health worker or Promotor(a) de Salud.  The public looks to us for reliable information about their health just as much as they may turn to public or academic libraries.  In fact, public libraries and their personnel also play an essential role in health information access and literacy.  And sometimes the jargon gets in the way!  In libraries there’s “information literacy”, in public health there’s “health literacy”, and where the two come together, there’s “health information literacy.”

As a public health liaison librarian, “embedded” at a college of public health, my own goal in taking this “co-learning community” approach was to bring the public health workforce into the picture, and “meet them where they’re at,” to learn together and improve both our own information literacy, and our ability to contribute to improving consumer health information literacy.

Piloting in Arizona:  Some of us prefer learning on our own, on our own time, but many also like to have a peer network or community with similar roles or interests where we can “bounce ideas around,” compare notes, and learn together. I began by approaching existing public health partners to explore training needs and interests.

Right away, most interest centered on consumer health information, and so the MLA Consumer Health Information Specialization (CHIS) and NNLM’s  Medline Tutorial for Librarians & Health Educators (on demand) was a perfect starting point!

I held several orientation sessions with our College of Public Health and its Academic Health Department, local health departments, UArizona Mobile Health Unit personnel and rural library personnel. My approach was NOT to overwhelm people with yet another training or webinar, but to enhance what is already offered, fill in some gaps in training venues, open up the awareness of NNLM as a reliable training and information source, and to highlight the NNLM as an additional path either to obtain specialization or credentials, or keep up on continuing education credit hours. The simple act of walking them through the website, sharing the training page, steps for registration for classes, and steps for subsidizing CHIS via the NNLM page, and fielding questions throughout ensured a lively and engaging group conversation.

Finally, during the overview session and in subsequent communications, I explored preferred learning modalities, and interest in networking as a “co-learning community” moving forward. To date, two co-learning cohorts have joined “debriefing” sessions via zoom.  In these sessions we discussed the learning interface, courses taken so far, classes of interest, and progress towards CHIS specialization.  It is still early stages, with about 30 people actively engaging, but there will be informal sessions at least quarterly as we continue.  So far things are evolving at a healthy pace, new connections are solidifying, and more co-learning partnerships are forming with health department personnel and other workforce members.

If you would like to adopt or adapt this “co-learning community” model in your own area, here are some things to keep in mind:

• Stay “in the know” about current and upcoming trainings via NNLM. In my case, I signed up for the Region 4 newsletter, and regularly visit the NNLM website.
• Know your “conveners” and training sources for the local or state public health workforce. In my case it was the Arizona Public Health Association (AzPHA), Arizona Library Association (AzLA), Western Region Public Health Training Center (WRPHTC), and Arizona Community Health Outreach Workers Association (AzCHOW)
• Familiarize yourself with desired credentialing or specializations and facilitate access to or visibility of training sources such as NNLM. I centered on Consumer Health Information Specialization (CHIS) from MLA, and Certified Health Education Specialist (CHES) from the National Commission for Health Education Credentialing (NCHEC).
• Partner with academic institutions, public libraries and county or municipal health departments. In my case I worked with Pima County Academic Health Department, two county health departments and a tribal health department, and rural libraries via the the Arizona Center for Rural Health (CRH) Advancing Health Equity, Addressing Disparities (AHEAD) program and the Arizona Library Association (AzLA).
• Keep tabs on public health workforce trends through national organizations such as: the American Public Health Association (APHA), the Public Health Foundation (PHF), the National Network of Public Health Institutes’ regional Public Health Training Centers, the National Association of County and City Health Officials (NACCHO) and the National Association of Community Health Workers (NACHW).
• Engage with community health workers and attend association meetings
• Work to enhance information access for diverse linguistic and cultural and traditionally underrepresented or marginalized communities, and join your regional NNLM to voice health information needs, and let us know what works, and what we can do better.
• This is an ongoing commitment to lifelong learning, community partnership and improved health information literacy.

 

Jean McClelland is an Assistant Librarian, Liaison to the Mel and Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health (MEZCOPH) at the University of Arizona, and piloted this project with the support of the Arizona Health Sciences Library subcontract with the University of Utah, Regional Library of Medicine (RLM), Region 4 of the National Network of the Library of Medicine (NNLM)