Public Health Information and Data: A Training Manual

This manual aims to support training activities being provided to members of the public health workforce on issues related to information access and management. This manual is intended primarily for librarians and others who may be responsible for developing training events. The manual was prepared based on four broad learning objectives, each corresponding to a chapter. Its objective is that participants in training events that cover the manual in its entirety will be able to:

• Stay informed of developments and events related to public health;
• Find reliable and authoritative consumer-oriented materials to support health education;
• Retrieve statistical information and access data sets relevant to public health;
• Retrieve and evaluate information in support of evidence-based practice.

Chapters are arranged in an order that reflects an increasing level of complexity in information management. The manual begins with a chapter devoted to strategies and resources for staying informed about developments and current events relevant to public health. The second chapter addresses how members of the public health workforce can retrieve current, reliable consumer-oriented information to support health education. The third chapter explores strategies and resources for finding statistics and data sets relevant to public health. The final chapter explores how public health practitioners can enhance their information retrieval and evaluation skills to formulate decisions based on the best evidence available.

Published by the National Network of Libraries of Medicine (NN/LM) and the National Library of Medicine, this manual was conceived following a recommendation made in 2003 by the NN/LM’s Public Health Outreach Evaluation Task Force, and developed and written by the Public Health Training Workgroup. In February of 2004 seventeen invited reviewers provided feedback on a draft version of the manual.