There are many useful and beneficial reports and other references that are useful to the public health leader and manager. This page will give you the citation and a brief overview to each of the resources discussed. These resources will include technical reports, articles, websites, and so on. The newest entry is at the top.
A GLOSSARY FOR EVIDENCE BASED PUBLIC HEALTH, Lucie Rychetik, Penelope Hawe, Elizabeth Waters, Alexandra Barratt, and Michael Frommer,Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, 2004, 58, 53-545. This article is unusual in that it provides and excellent glossary on the emerging field of evidence based public health. Our Australian colleagues present definitions of the terms evidence, public health, evidence based public health, burden of proof, logic of evidence based intervention, and many other related terms. You should pair this glossary with another excellent article by Ross Brownson, James G. Gurney, and Garland Land, EVIDENCE-BASED DECISION MAKING IN PUBLIC HEALTH, Journal of Public Health Management and Practice, September, 1999,5,5 86-97.
PATIENT PROTECTION AND AFFORDABLE CARE ACT(HR 3590) SELECTED PREVENTION, PUBLIC HEALTH & WORKFORCE PROVISION, Trust for America’s Health, 2010. This report is an excellent and clear summary of the public health provisions of the new health reform act. If you need to find out quickly about the public health provisions, here is the place to find it. You can access the report by going to the Trust’s website. www.healthyamericans.org
NATIONAL HEALTH SECURITY STRATEGY OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, United S tates Department of Health and Human Services, 200o. This is the first national health security plan. It is a well written document that all health professionals need to read. National health security is defined as creating an environment for the Nation and all Americans to be prepared, protected and resilient enough to face any health threat or incidents. The plan was designed to help build community resilience and strengthen and sustain our health and emergency response system. A set of ten strategic objctives are presented and discussed. Operational capabilities are also discussed. For more information on this report and the draft implementation plan report, go to http://www.hhs.gov/aspr,nhss/index.html
THE MIND TOOLS GUIDE TO GROUP DECISION MAKING, Mind Tools,2009. If you are a leader, manager or trainer, the Mind Tools site is an excellent resource for all kinds of tools to help you do your wor. www.mindtools.com This report is jampacked with all sorts of instruments to help in group decision making. The report covers how to organize team decision making activities, multi-voting techniques, delphi technique, stepladder technique, nominal group process, and avoiding the pitfalls of groupthink.
PUBLIC HEALTH SKILLS AND CAREER FRAMEWORK, Public Health Resource Unit, NHS(Great Britain, 2008. Oover the past decade, American public health professionals have discussed the need to develop the public health workforce. We have faced two challenges–lack of consistency in the identification of the public health workforce and difficulty in defining what workforce development really means. The British have developed an excellent model for defining public health skills and developing a career framework for a multidisciplinary workforce.The framework defines nine different career levels from entry into the workforce following university training to major leadership roles later in the career of the public health professional. Competencies are divided into four core area(surveillance and assessment, assessing the evidence, policy and strategy, leaadership and collaboration) and five public health practice areas(health improvement, health protection, public health intelligence, academic public health, and health and social care quality). This structured model is excellent and can guide our work in workforce development. www.phru.nhs.uk
STRENGHENING THE PERFORMANCE AND EFFECTIVENESS OF THE PUBLIC HEALTH SYSTEM, Grantmakers in Health, November, 2008(Issue Brief No, 31). this is a very useful report addressing the types of programs that foundations support that build public health infrastructure. Many foundations are committed to building organizational capacity. In recent years, they have supported projects related to regionalization and the establishment of new local public health authorities. Foundations have also funded projects to advance information technology by acquiring new technology and tools, building accessible information resources, and providing mechanisms for integrating public health information systems. Foundations have also been intereted in facilitating collaborative learning. Finally, these foundations have funded projects to strengthen the public health workforce. You can find out more about Grantmakers in Health at www.gih.org
PANDEMIC FLU PREPAREDNESS:LESSONS FROM THE FRONTLINES, Trust for America’s Health, june,2009– Many of the best reports and issue briefs on critical public health concerns can be found from the Trust for America’s Health( www.healthyamericans. org ). This brief reviews ten early lessons learned from the 2009 H1N1 outbreak. The majority of the report summarizes ten important recommendations for addressing core vulnerabilities in U.S. Pandemic Flu preparedness . The ten recommendations are grouped into strategic stockpile and vacine development, adaptable and science-based planning and coordination, core public health infrastructure improvement, and surge capacity and care. For a more practical approach, see Bryan Walsh, “How to Prepare for a Pandemic,” in Time Magazine for May 18,2009,30-33.
YOU, TOO, CAN BE AN EFFECTIVE HEALTH ADVOCATE, Trust For America’s Health, 2004. This is another useful report from the Trust. It seems that advocacy is becoming more critical for all leaders in the human services arena. This report presents a five step approach to becoming a successful advocate. The five step plan includes skills for the identification of who is the person or group who is necessary to persuade,, know all the facts, communicate, advocacy day, and follow-up concerns. www.healthyamericans.org
BUILDING PUBLIC WILL,Metropolitan Group(edited byEric Friedenwald-Fishman, Laura K. Lee Dellinger, Jennifer Gilstrap Hearn, and Jeanette Pai-Espinosa, 2009(Revised). This report deals with the imortant communication strategies necessary to build public will and support for sustainable community change. The authors define public will as a communication building approach to gain public support for social change. The strategy combines this communication approach with grassroots outreach activities. Howevewr, it is necessary to respect strong community values, the community context, the identification of critical target audiences as well as the integration of grassroot communication. A five phase framework is presented with examples to demonstrate the building of public will. These five phases are the framing of the issue, building community awareness of the issue, building knowledge about how to address the issue, creating a personal conviction to change, and finally evaluating the successes or failures of the strategy.. The Metropolitan Group website is an excellent source of information on community engagement and the importance of communication in the process. other useful papers can be downloaded from the site as well. www.metgroup.com
WHITE HOUSE FORUM ON HEALTH REFORM(March 5,2009). This report will be one of the important resource documents in the ongoing discussion on health reform. The report is extremely beneficial in that it lays out the critical issues that will define the health reform debate. Many organizations in the governmental and non-governmental sector took part in the one day kick-off session to the debate. I did find myself concerned that the public health community had limited participation or representation in the discussion. In the Executive Summary as well as the individual comments during the workshop, many of the critical economic issues in reform were discussed. Issues from universal health care coverage to cost containinment to governmntal control were all discussed. The word prevention was mentioned several times, but did not seem to be discussed in the context of population-based public health strategies. In a comment towards the end of the Forum, Dr. Redliner from the Columbia School of Public Health mentioned the research capabilities of public Health. He did not mention the important components of public health practice in the health reform debate. The report is available from www.whitehouse.gov/assets/White_House_Forum_Report
Center for Health Policy, Columbia University School of Nursing, PUBLIC HEALTH EMERGENCY EXERCISE TOOLKIT(June 2006). Public health managers and leaders spend much of their professional life within a system of laws, rules, regulations, and protocols. For this reason, these managers and leaderss are appreciative of documents that create tools for carrying out their day to day activities or guidelines for dealing with public health emergencies.. This toolkit provides excellent guidelines and templates for the planning, designing, conducting, and evaluating drills, exercises, and simulations for local public health emergency exercises.. The report also will help public health professionals facilitate public health aspects in emergencies with larger multi-agency emergency exercise events. The first half of the report presents the steps in carrying out a exercise p[lan. The various appendices have all sorts of forms for documenting all the activities which are carried out. The toolkit will also be useful to Meta-Leaders who develop exercises inside their agencies as well as exercises at the community level. For further information on this report, refer to http://www.nursing.columbia.edu/chphsr
Public Health Informatics Institute and National Association of County and City Health Officials(2006), TAKING CARE OF BUSINESS. When studying local health departments, it is difficult to make comparisons between these entitites. Utilizing a public health informatics perspective and applying this perspective to nine business processes, a methodology is presented which allows for comparisons across local public health departments. The report also utilizes a informatics model related to business process analysis,business process redesign and requirements definitions. Specifically, it is important to define the information that will be needed to support local health department business processes. Two excellent tools are discussed with numerous examples—context diagrams and task flow diagrams. The approach taken in this report is innovative and will give public health leaders excellent tools for organizational analysis. For those that utilize meta-leadership perspective, these tools are also very useful for situational awareness,leading within the silo, and across agencies and sectors. You can download the report by going to www.phii.org
Rowitz On Leadership 