Outreach Subcontracts

Boston Public Health Commission, Mayor’s Health Line & AIDS Action Committee of Massachusetts
Boston Health Information Project.
The Mayor’s Health Line is an information, referral and advocacy service over 5,000 residents each year. AIDS Action Committee’s HIV Health Library provides people and providers with reliable and continually updated information on HIV treatment. The goal of the project is to increase access to health information for immigrants, linguistic minorities and other low-income residents, and community health workers who serve them. The project will provide culturally competent NLM resources to Health Line callers who require information; trainings for community health workers on NLM resources and their use in improving health outcomes; and involve providers and public health officials in the project’s assessment.

Littleton Regional Hospital, Gale Medical Library
Northern New Hampshire Health Information Outreach
This project will conduct a pilot project at three sites in northern New Hampshire that do not have convenient (if any) access to health sciences library services: Cottage Hospital in Woodsville, NH, Indian Stream Health Center in Colebrook, NH, and The Morrison in Whitefield, NH. The primary goal of this project is so that Health professionals at rural health care facilitated in the northern New Hampshire will have regular access to health information resources in order to provide high quality care.

Massachusetts General Hospital, Treadwell Library
Head Start CAPIC Collaboration
The project will establish an onsite Health Information Resource Center at the CAPIC (Community Action Programs, Inter City, Inc.) Head Start Program in Chelsea, MA. CAPIC Head Start serves low-income families with young children in Chelsea, Revere, and Winthrop. Many families are recent immigrants. The Project team will create a physical resource room and a web site containing resources on general child health and wellness, nutrition and healthy eating. The Project team will teach parents and Head Start staff how to find and use appropriate and authoritative health information.

Mid Upper Cape Community Health Center, Hyannis MA
Diabetes Education: Cape Cod Outreach Project.
This is a health education collaborative between three partner institutions: Mid Upper Cape Community Health Center, Cape Cod Hospital and Cape Cod Community College. The health education will target low income patients who have diabetes, many of them who are Portuguese speakers. The 18 month project will offer culturally and linguistically informed classes focused on diabetes prevention and control, diet, nutrition and the resources available through the National Library of Medicine. Most of the 90 class participants will be Health Center patients with diabetes, and their family members; health care providers will also receive training. The project goals of improved patient knowledge of diabetes and online health information resources will be measured by pre and post tests during each class.

Outreach Worker Training Institute (OWTI) at Central Massachusetts Area Health Education Center, Worcester, MA
OWTI Health Information Outreach
The project aims to develop, implement, and evaluate a series of three, 15-hour trainings with community health workers (CHWs) from across the state. Community health workers are considered public health front liners; they are multidisciplinary clinical team members who work with under-reached populations. OWTI will develop a curriculum based on research and OWTI’s expertise in community health workers’ competencies related to web access and sharing NLM health information with patients, communities, and clinical teams. OWTI will conduct an evaluation by the pilot course participants and developers.

River Valley Healthy Communities Coalition (RVHCC), Rumford ME
River Valley Health Information Literacy Outreach Project
The goal of the River Valley Health Information Literacy Outreach Project is to increase awareness of reliable online health information and improve the health literacy of youth and young adults in rural Northern Oxford County, Maine. RVHCC and its collaborators will assess community health information needs, increase the capacity of teachers and librarians to use reliable resources, and pilot health information literacy lessons in schools, adult education programs, and public libraries. Resources and outcomes will be compiled in a sourcebook and disseminated by RVHCC in partnership with the Maine Network of Healthy Communities. RVHCC is a non-profit organization serving nine towns (Andover, Byron, Canton, Dixfield, Hanover, Mexico, Peru, Roxbury, and Rumford).

Tufts University, Hirsh Health Sciences Library
Selected Patient Information Resources in Asian Languages (SPIRAL)
The goal of the SPIRAL project is to promote health literacy by collecting health information in multiple Asian languages for non-English speakers to search, and for health care providers to make available to their non-English speaking patients.

University of Massachusetts Medical School, Lamar Soutter Library
Development of an eScience Portal to Support Learning and Collaboration
Funds are requested to support the creation of an e-Science web portal that will consolidate information on the latest resources, initiatives, and tutorials in those collaborative enterprises that require access to large data collections, large scale computing resources and high performance visualization for multi-site researchers. The portal will create an online learning community of librarians who are engaged in or developing eScience services across the region. Usability testing will be utilized through the development of the site and usage statistics and user comments will recorded as primary methods of evaluation.

University of Vermont Dana Medical Library
Connecting Patients, Providers, and the Community with Quality Health Information
This project will assess the use of consumer health information in a clinical setting located in a rural and economically disadvantaged community. Dana Medical Library will team with medical and professional staff of the Milton Family Practice to provide educational modules on quality patient and consumer health sources. The partners will also enhance the ability of the Milton Public Library and the Milton Family Community Center to support the health information needs of the community.

Yale University, Cushing Whitney Library
Information Needs of Connecticut School Nurses
This project is designed to determine the information needs of Connecticut school nurses and to develop resources and training that match those needs. The information needs of the school nurse population have not been reported in the literature, and it is therefore assumed that it is an understudied area. The project will center on the use of a survey as well as focus groups as the main tools to discover how school nurses currently find new information, what their needs are, and what would be the most helpful way for them to access information in the future. Results of the data collection will be analyzed to develop a strategy of information delivery and potential training opportunities.

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Awards

Project Funded During 2001-2006 Contract

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