To develop more effective health systems to improve health status, reduce health inequalities, and enhance fairness in delivering and financing of health care, policymakers need access to information and need to learn from the experiences of others and from their own country's past. In an effort to expand the knowledge base on health reform and link health systems (and their research components) worldwide, the Partnerships for Health Reform (PHR) Resource Center (RC) was established. The mission of the RC is to collect information on health reform from a broad spectrum of sources, organize the information in an automated bibliographic storage and retrieval system, provide research and reference services, and disseminate the information to constituents worldwide. To enhance dissemination, PHR's electronic strategy includes using online information services as part of the acquisition strategy; actively publicizing PHR reports and events; generating topic-specific bibliographies for posting to the website; and making the searchable bibliographic database available on the web. To date the RC has collected over 3,000 documents on health reform including particularly hard-to-access grey literature. Citations for these documents, including ordering information as available, are included on the web-based database. Last year, some 11,000 documents, both electronic and hard copy, were distributed to constituents worldwide. Visitors from 100 countries accessed the PHR website and downloaded full text copies of over 65 PHR publications. Generating and disseminating an information base on health reform quickens the pace of on-going reform. Systematic generation and dissemination of information is key to better inform health policy decisions.
Learning Objectives: At the conclusion of the session, participant will be able to: 1. Outline the basic steps for planning, staffing, and maintaining a resource center. 2. Determine the most appropriate method(s) for disseminating research results. 3. Identify steps along the continuum from publication to dissemination
Keywords: International Health, Publication
Presenting author's disclosure statement:
Organization/institution whose products or services will be discussed: None
I do not have any significant financial interest/arrangement or affiliation with any organization/institution whose products or services are being discussed in this session.