MyPublicHealth: Knowledge Management for Improved Public Health Decision-making

PROBLEM: How to manage the information that drives public health (PH) and provide the timely access and distribution that is central to effective PH practice.

APPROACH: Knowledge Management (KM) is widely used by knowledge-based organizations that seek to bridge the "know-do" gap and deliver results more effectively. We are applying KM principles—e.g., understanding information needs prior to design—to build an online content management system (CMS) that supports the collection, description, management, and retrieval of PH documents, data sets, guidelines, learning objects, and tools. myPublicHealth is designed to provide more effective ways to share PH knowledge and support innovative problem-solving and strategic thinking.

METHODS: Input from local public health professionals, through an information needs assessment and workflow analysis, have informed the system requirements, interface design, toolkits providing subject-based content, and customizability features. Rapid access to public health resources is achieved by integrative web services that support and enhance retrieval of critical information needed for decision-making by PH professionals. The myPublicHealth knowledge repository is being built in collaboration with local PH practitioners and administrators, librarians, PH academics and researchers, and software engineers at all phases of development.

RESULTS: myPublicHealth has been collaboratively designed as a "one-stop" PH CMS. The current web site is in beta form and is soliciting input from PH practitioners and potential users on a word-of-mouth basis. Plans are underway to incorporate this input into the next release, which will be followed by intensive marketing and formal requests for review and input from the practice community.