Public Health Pronto: Module 11.3

1. How to Advance Yourself as an MCH Leader (Self-Reflection Strategy). Do you know the difference between evidence-based medicine and evidence-based public health? Take a look at a chart that the Partners in Information Access for the Public Health Workforce have compiled on the notable differences between the two and reflect on how both types of evidence support decision making.
2. How to Find and Use Tools to Help You (Information Strategy). How to Find and Use Tools to Help You (Information Strategy). The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) makes recommendations about clinical preventive services and publishes them on the USPSTF website and/or in a peer-reviewed journal. The Task Force assigns each recommendation a letter grade based on the strength of the evidence and the balance of benefits and harms of a preventive service. Do you know what the USPSTF grades mean? Access the MCH Navigator's Training Brief to learn more about Identifying and Using Evidence-Based/Informed Resources to Address MCH Issues.
   
3. How to Activate Your Organization (Organizational Strategy). Is your organization looking for ways to highlight examples of how evidence drives public health policy and program decision-making? Check out this recap of a Twitter chat focused on the theme of "Why Being #All4Evidence Serves Public Well-Being." The one-hour chat, hosted by nine policy research organizations, included a total of nearly 600 tweets and retweets that reached nearly 700,000 Twitter users. Participants offered resources and perspectives on a range of topics, including:]
           • How federal, state, and local governments use evidence
           • How to make evidence more accessible and useful for policymakers
           • How evidence can be used to advance education and alleviate poverty
           • What opportunities Big Data presents for policy research
           • How to learn more about the use of evidence in various policy areas
   You can search the hashtag #All4Evidence for additional news, resources, and perspectives on evidence-based policymaking. Consider hosting a similar opportunity for others to join in your conversation. Feature a question-of-the-week topic related to evidence-based policymaking for research and policy experts to discuss.
   
4. How to Incorporate Partners (Systems Strategy). Health Impact Assessment (HIA) is often seen as one component of an overall Health in All Policies approach towards decision-making that emphasizes collaborations and partnerships across sectors. As HIA becomes a widespread practice for assessing policies, programs, plans, and projects within communities, local health departments have the opportunity to use documentation from HIA activities to achieve or maintain accreditation from the Public Health Accreditation Board (PHAB). Oftentimes, however, health department staff conducting the HIA have little to no involvement in the accreditation process. Siloing within a health department can prevent agencies from maximizing the data collection, analysis, evaluation, and community engagement activities led during the HIA. Use this tool to help HIA practitioners in your organization better understand how an HIA can overlap with certain standards and measures of accreditation. Moreover, the tool can help accreditation coordinators with a limited understanding of HIA become aware of the multiple potential uses for an HIA.
   
5. How to Engage Your Communities (Community Strategy). In the last 20 years research output has grown exponentially making it really difficult to keep up with the evidence. The Cochrane Collaboration is an international not-for-profit and independent organization, dedicated to making up-to-date, accurate information about the effects of health care readily available worldwide. It produces and disseminates systematic reviews of health care interventions and promotes the search for evidence in the form of clinical trials and other studies of interventions. Those who prepare the reviews are mostly health care professionals who volunteer in one of the many Cochrane Review Groups, with editorial teams overseeing the preparation and maintenance of the reviews, as well as application of the rigorous quality standards for which Cochrane Reviews have become known. Cochrane is looking for volunteers to help unlock the evidence. Become a Cochrane citizen scientist and join the collaborative effort to help categorize and summarize health care evidence so that we can make better health care decisions. No previous experience required, you can start now or read some frequently asked questions about one of the tasks.
   

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• I had never heard of the Twitter Chat (or participated in one), so was a little intimidated to access it. But it looks like a great way to carry on a discussion over time. I wish we could figure out more topics like this that could be discussed in an ongoing way.
• Nice to see USPSTF included as a strategy. I wonder what other resources there are outside of what we typically think of MCH/public health that we could use as examples/models.