By Deb Clark, NN/LM NER Healthy Communities COI Leader

Hello All, Hope you had a relaxing summer break. The Healthy Communities COI has some great educational webinars planned for fall. We’ll begin on October 10 with a session, “Creating Effective Health Information Handouts.” I’ll show examples of patient education materials which are easy to read and understand. I’ll also discuss all the elements of what makes written patient communications most effective using the principles of plain language and good document design. Then participants will have the opportunity to develop their own handouts or re-work some sample handouts with COI advice and support via our e-list. Finally, on December 12, a few participants will be asked to present their handout creations at our follow-up webinar.

In 2013, we are partnering with the OERC to offer a two-part webinar on “Creative Approaches to Community Health Outreach.” The dates for these sessions are January 9 and April 10. These sessions will be useful for members of both the Healthy Communities and Health Literacy COI’s so I invite you all to join in the learning and the fun. Register for upcoming NN/LM NER Community of Interest webinars on the NN/LM NER Training Calendar.

By Pat Gorman

Pat Gorman leads NER’s Healthcare Workforce Community of Interest and is a librarian at the Community College of Rhode Island.

The Healthcare Workforce COI begins its second year with a focus on the many healthcare professionals who are educated and trained in our local community colleges. From certificate programs to associate degree programs, the community college offers a variety of career paths to a highly diverse population and prepares them with the skills and competencies needed to succeed in a healthcare setting. In addition to the traditional academic degrees in fields such as nursing, dental hygiene, respiratory therapy and occupational therapy, these school often have additional workforce programs to support developing fields such as Health IT .

Our goal this year will be to look at the role of the community college the healthcare workforce, to become familiar with the resources available to them, to share regional news and personal experiences, and to explore the many ways that libraries can support these programs.

We invite those who are interested in this aspect of the healthcare workforce to join us in an initial web session on Wednesday, August 8 from 10:00-11:00. To start our thinking on the topic, here is a link to a short Q&A session with Roxanne Fulcher, Director of Health Professions Policy and the Health Professions Education Center at the American Association of Community Colleges: The Role of Community Colleges in Meeting the Nation’s Health Workforce Needs

Register for the HealthCare Workforce Community College Libraries Session on August 8th.

If you can not make the session please let us know you are interested in being a part of the Healthcare Workforce Community of Interest: send us an email.

View recordings of the NLM Theater Presentations from the Medical Library Association National Conference in Seattle.

Learn about:

•Disaster Health Information Update ( 27 min.)
•Drug, Toxicology & Environmental Health Update (20 min.)
•Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about ClinicalTrials.gov (14 min.)
•LinkOut and Submission Utility Update (8 min.)
•Managing Public Access Compliance Using My NCBI (27 min.)
•MedlinePlus and MedlinePlus Connect (23 min.)
•Native Voices and Other Voices (16 min.)
•NIHSeniorHealth Redesign (7 min.)
•Public Health & Health Services Research at NLM: A Tale of Two Portals (17 min.)
•PubMed Health (29 min.)
•PubMed Update (25 min.)
•UMLS and RxNorm Update (20 min.)

Wikipedia defines a health information exchange (HIE) as the mobilization of healthcare information electronically across organizations within a region, community or hospital system.

The emergence of HIEs is widely expected to provide a range of important benefits for patients, physicians, and the healthcare industry as a whole.The HIE provides the capability to electronically move clinical information among disparate health care information systems while at the same time maintaining the meaning of the information being exchanged. The goal of the HIE is to facilitate access to and retrieval of clinical data to provide safer and more timely, efficient, effective, and equitable patient-centered care.

Come and learn more about this important component to our healthcare future!

Announcing the second in  a series of three webinars hosted by NER’s Health-IT Community of Interest:  

Health-IT 

Community of Interest   

“Understanding the Role of HIEs”

with
Jeff Loughlin, Director of the NH-REC

 Wednesday, March 7th from 3:00-4:00 pm  

TO REGISTER:     http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/HIT-COI

Login information will be provided at registration.  

 For additional questions, contact: Mark Goldstein (mark.goldstein@umassmed.edu; 508-856-5964).