Using web forums for capacity building in public health administration

Public health administration and leadership faces two large challenges: how to bridge the gap among siloed sectors within and outside of traditional public health fields, and how to exchange information effectively and with hard-to-reach populations. To address both of these issues, the Public Health Institute created Dialogue4Health (D4H - www.dialogue4health.org), an online conferencing forum and social network. Through this communications platform, the dissemination of actionable knowledge to communities and professionals across the globe has never been easier or more cost-effective. Since 2008, the D4H team has supported 174 highly-rated Web Forums to over 25,000 diverse participants across the U.S. D4H Web Forums aim to stimulate thinking on current topics, spread ideas, and develop a new audience for community health improvement. The free Web Forums offer a promising model to train public health administrators and develop core competencies, and bridges the gap between global and local health efforts by bringing together speakers working at every level to discuss their work. Additionally, the online platform allows speakers from all reaches of the globe to present together, linking formerly disparate communities and effecting more productive knowledge sharing. This presentation will discuss how Web Forums can be used in capacity building, provide an overview of best practices in production, and demonstrate how an online communications platform can enable information exchange around the globe.