Gearing PHSSR up for 2009!
Filed under: HSR Special Issue, Keeneland Conference, National Library of Medicine, Office of the Chief of Public Health Practice, PHSSR Grants, Public Health Workforce, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF), Uncategorized, Workforce
Dear Friends & Colleagues,
Goodness, how time flies. I obviously owe you another post! First, let me visit a minute about the meeting that Dr. Tim Van Wave held in early December at Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Tim asked Dr. Glen Mays, Dr. Paul Halverson and I to make presentations about Public Health Systems & Services Research to the science directors of the various units of CDC. You may also download a copy of my presentation from our PHSSR website. We were to speak in the morning and then the science folks had an afternoon session facilitated by Dr. Les Beitsch about how the various units of CDC could consider incorporating PHSSR in their programs. Two folks didn’t need much of a start to do just that. Dr. Mildred Williams-Johnson of Coordinating Office for Terrorism Preparedness & Emergency Response (COTPER) has already used PHSSR as the backbone of the new grants for preparedness centers. She made some great comments in the meeting about the utility to their unit of PHSSR. She also caught me at the break to talk about bringing the grantees together at the Keeneland Conference for their meeting and to encourage them to attend sessions that they may be a part of or where they might pick up some ideas. Dr. Carol Crawford was there, as well. Obviously, she knows the important relationship of workforce issues in PHSSR.
Let me digress a bit at this point. We have established an advisory committee for the Center of Excellence in Public Health Workforce Research and Policy. I have reported on our efforts with this activity before. In addition, we will be holding an advisory committee meeting in conjunction with the Keeneland and will be holding session dedicated to workforce and PHSSR. Look for more info on that as we proceed with our research. Additionally, we have identified a number of databases on workforce already in existence. Our colleagues in epidemiology, as you might imagine, have some good workforce data, as do the nutrition folks, the state dental directors, maternal & child health researchers and public health laboratories. We are posting info about these databases, as we find them, on the NLM HSRR/PHSSR website.
Well, activities are heating up, even in the cold weather. We are in process of announcing and promoting the mini-grants for PHSSR. As you know, we make available a series of small $10K grants for junior faculty (within 3 years of their initial appointment) and dissertation research. The announcement and the application, on line, are available at www.publichealthsystems.org. Please apply online, if you are eligible and share this with someone who would be interested. While it is modest, new folks to the research area would find this money useful, I believe.
In addition, while it is cold, remember that Keeneland Conference is coming. We are, as you know, already making plans. We have issued a formal call for proposals and officially opened registration. This is rapidly shaping up to be a major session this year. We have several colleague organizations that are joining us in the Spring to hold concurrent meetings and to provide attendees the opportunity to listen to presentations, network and enjoy the races! Please consider sending us an abstract and begin making travel plans now. Abstracts must be submitted by Friday, January 16, 2009. The cost to attend the conference is nothing! Robert Wood Johnson Foundation is anxious to promote the PHSSR agenda and their graciousness allows us waive the registration fee. While we are aware that travel budgets are tight, this will be money well spent. The material and networking gleaned is priceless.
Many know that my colleague, Dr. Bill Keckand I have written a book, the Third Edition of Scutchfield and Keck’s Principles of Public Health Practice is essentially done. That is my Christmas present. Having that out of the way has allowed me to turn my attention to the manuscripts waiting to be cleaned up and submitted, it also allows me to work to get the HSR Special Issue on PHSSR ready. I’m also looking forward have time with family during the holidays. Please know, from all of us here at UK that you are in our hearts during this holiday season. Please have a wonderful time with family and friends. Be careful traveling and know that we are thinking of you.
‘Till next time.
Scutch
APHA Presenations, Posters and Receptions!
Filed under: APHA, Finance, Health Care Finance Org. (HCFO), Health Services Research (HSR), Keeneland Conference, Nat'l Center for Health Statistics, Office of the Chief of Public Health Practice, PBRN, PHAB, PHSSR Grants, Public Health Foundation, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF), University of Arkansas for Medical Science
Dear Friends & Colleagues,
Guilty as charged, things have just been too hectic and I owe you a new blog posting, so here it is, drafted post-APHA in San Diego. Some of the news obviously involves the conference, but other things are on the agenda as well. The “Founding Five” public health practice based research networks were selected by our friends at University of Arkansas Medical School (UAMS) and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF). The Kentucky Public Health Research Network, otherwise known as KPHReN, is proud to be one of those founding five alongside Washington State, Colorado, Massachusetts and North Carolina. Several new grantees attended the PBRN networking reception at APHA and were joined by the next round of applicants. I believe that UAMS will announce their new timeline shortly, focusing on a new group in the spring of 2009.
Speaking of new grant awards, the new round of our mini-grants is open for submission of proposals. Remember there are two categories, junior faculty (within three years of appointment), and dissertation awards. Grantees will be awarded $10,000 each and brief proposals should be easy to prepare. If you have any questions, the resident gurus here are Tourette Jackson and Donna Schmutzler who are responsible for overseeing this round of submissions. During APHA, we had a panel of mini-grantees that Dr. Torrie Harris chaired. I am pleased by the excellent presentations of our initial grantees. We have implemented a paperless submission process with the help of RWJF. Potential applicants can complete the online submission process and the deadline is January 2009.
There were several PHSSR presentations and receptions at APHA. The Journal of Public Health Practice Management (JPHPM) honored Dr. Peggy Honore’s and her contribution to the special issue on Health Disparities now available online with a reception at APHA. Dr. Honoré, along with Drs. Joxel Garcia, the Assistant Secretary of Health and Garth Graham, Deputy Assistant Secretary are responsible for the release of a new statement on public health quality initiatives, . The consensus statement is available for review online, also. Kudos to Dr. Honoré for her successes in this effort over the last year. Many may also take advantage of Dr. Honoré’s continued work on public health finance through the PHF resources section of the web site.
Dr. Glen Mays and his colleagues gave several presentations at APHA. In addition to his work with PBRNs, he also continues to collaborate with the team conducting typologies research. Many of the PHSSR and HCFO grantees also presented their work at APHA on topics ranging from typology to professional relationships between public health workers. All in all, it was a very good show for public health systems and services research.
Last year’s mini-grantees will present their work at the 2nd Annual Keeneland Conference. The conference is slated for April 7-9, 2009 in Lexington, Kentucky. A number of events will be held in conjunction with the conference:
- ‘Founding Five’ Public Health PBRNs initial meeting
- Board of Directors meeting for the Public Health Accreditation Board (PHAB),
- Data Harmonization committee meeting and
- others to be announced.
We are excited about the speakers already committed to the conference, including Drs. Carolyn Clancy, Director of Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) and Ed Sondik, the Head of National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS). Our colleagues at RWJF wanted to develop the premier national meeting for PHSSR and I believe we have exceeded their expectations. Make travel plans to attend the Keeneland Conference now. Online registration will open in December and there is no cost to attend. I ran into a colleague at APHA who enjoyed it so much last year and they plan to bring their family with them for Spring Break in Kentucky.
The special issue of HSR continues to take shape. Dr. Nicki Lurie and I are serving as co-editors and several of our colleagues have submitted manuscripts for peer review. We give many thanks to our colleagues who agreed to review manuscripts for the issue. Reviewing for journals is a lot of work, so please know that we appreciate your time and dedication. All familiar with the speed in which we publish journals realize this one will not be released until the fall 2009, at the earliest. Nevertheless, we feel this is an important contribution to the field of PHSSR, which will link our efforts with those made by our colleagues in health services research.
The PHAB Board of Directors met immediately following APHA in San Diego to organize, redo bylaws, gear up to hire a new CEO, straighten out finances and evaluate financial arrangements. Mostly down and dirty organizational work, but necessary for success. Some may be aware of the series of folks conducting an alpha test of the standards, a desk audit of sorts. The results are not available yet, but we believe it will help guide the organization to further enhancement of standards. We are moving forward at a reasonable pace now that the working pieces have come together.
There are a lot of other projects in the works for the final months of 2008. Dr. Tim Van Wave from the Office of Chief of Public Health Practice (OCPHP) has called a meeting in December to discuss the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) role in PHSSR and a recent CDC & Public Health Foundation (PHF) contract will enable the University of Kentucky College of Public Health to evaluate the public health workforce. I will include more information about these two items in my next post. Take care and start planning to spend spring in Kentucky.
Scutch
Onward and Upward…Progress Is Made!
Filed under: APHA, Accreditation, Community Health Status Indicators, Keeneland Conference, Nat'l Center for Health Statistics, PBRN, Public Health Accreditation Board (PHAB), Public Health Foundation, United Health Foundation, University of Arkansas for Medical Science
Dear Friends & Colleagues,
Dialing back a week or so. We had a meeting of the Kentucky Public Health Practice Based Research Network (KPHReN), to go over our submission to the University of Arkansas for Medical Science (UAMS). I don’t know how many were submitted or who was asked to submit full proposals. I do know that they plan to let folks know this week or next who was selected to receive funding and will become part of the “Founding Five”. I am excited; even if we are not successful ourselves. The excitement of having these new networks begin some good practice based research is thrilling. We will be having the first KPHReN Board Meeting in conjunction with Keeneland Conference this year and anticipate some interesting stuff!
I have written about PHAB, the Public Health Accreditation Board, which recently held a conference call for the members. We have extended an invitation for PHAB to have their spring meeting in conjunction with our Keeneland Conference. Our goal is to start a dialogue on the relationships of standards, quality improvement, research data from both of those and the evaluation of accreditation efforts. Dr. Bill Riley, the interim executive director of PHAB, is also interested in scheduling a PHAB research and evaluation committee meeting in Lexington in December. We are working with him to ensure the success of that meeting.
I was in Atlanta recently at a conference on development of community health indicators. The conference was sponsored by National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) and Dr. Ed Sondik did an excellent job pulling some good folks together. The notion here is that “what gets measured, gets done” and that we need community health indicators, like the United Health Foundation Score Sheet to focus attention on what we need to move indicators on. The conference was excellent, a workshop really, and consisted mostly of small groups working to identify: the top-level indicator, domains that lend themselves to consideration, indicators in those domains and how to link indicators to evidence based programs for modifying them. Michele Bohm at CDC has the power points and will be posting the results of the meeting soon, her email address is evd5@cdc.gov.
One of the staff at the meeting, Marilyn Metzler, talked about Community Health Status Indicators, these were previously on the web in the 90’s, and disappeared. They are back; click here for a preview. As you can see, this provides county level health data and compares it with benchmarks including peer counties. Many will remember Norma Karnack at Johns Hopkins now, formerly of the Public Health Foundation (PHF) as the Godmother of CHSI. She was in attendance and excited about the release of this new iteration. There are a lot of bells and whistles on this one that were not on the original. You will definitely want to bookmark the site in your browser. One of the most interesting parts of Marilyn’s presentation discussed the modification of these indices. Enjoy!
We are trying to put together here a list of all the PHSSR events scheduled for APHA, so that you can catch as many of the sessions, posters, presentations, panels as possible. If you have events you would like for us to include, please be in touch with Kara Richardson, via email kara.richardson@uky.edu. We have three pages of activities, but I suspect there is more. Once the list is ready, we will have it posted at our site.
‘Til next time,
Scutch
Meetings, Meetings, Meetings!
Filed under: APHA, Accreditation, NACCHO, Public Health Accreditation Board (PHAB), Workforce
Dear Friends & Colleagues,
The month of August is always slow, awaiting the return of the new academic year, whether you are a professor or a parent. But September is here, along with Labor Day and things will pick up. Some things are going on this month: PHAB research and evaluation committee met in DC to work on their agenda and ASTHO-NACCHO will be holding their annual meeting in Sacramento, CA.
A quick look at the PHAB website, will give you some idea of who is part of the research and evaluation committee. All are first-rate PHSSR researchers and will obviously have the opportunity to make an impact with their efforts.
Preparation time is also upon us. As I have mentioned in previous blog entries, a number of researchers have submitted PHSSR posters and presentations for APHA. Our team members attending APHA will prepare a trip report complete with information on the sessions. We will post PDFs of the presentations, posters and reports online in our PHSSR Resources section.
The other major event important to the advancement of PHSSR is the ASTHO-NACCHO Meeting from September 9-12th, 2008. The Center for PHSSR will be set up in Booth 237, please come by and introduce yourself, enter our drawing and log on to become a member of our online community. Membership provides you with announcements of current news and events, the monthly InsideTrack e-Newsletter, funding opportunities and access to the Discussion Board.
I have been asked to attend a meeting the National Center for Health Statistics is having in Atlanta. I suspect the reason is our continued commitment to working with our practice colleagues. PHSSR’s goal is to assist practitioners with the survey research they are conducting. We must also look at the issue of how NCHS will respond to topics related to PHSSR. The next blog entry will include a brief report of my trip and the forward momentum for our new Center.
I also want to commend our colleagues at the National Library of Medicine for their continued support of our efforts to make the HSRR website more user friendly. The librarians in the Medical College who assist us with PHSSR are worth their weight in gold. Catherine Selden and her colleagues have been wonderful.
In a previous blog, I mentioned a meeting held in Atlanta by the Office of Workforce and Career Developments. OWCD’s is making strides to include new disciplines into the research related to public health workforce. One immediate result is a new listserv managed by the University of Chicago. If you are interested, you will want to be in touch with Tom Summerfelt, via email tsummerf@bsd.uchicago.edu. Stay attentive to our blog and email updates for information related to research developments regarding the public health workforce.
BTW, I will be at the University of Michigan in a couple of weeks to help open their semester with a conversation based on remarks at the CDC conference. I am looking forward to Ann Arbor in the fall.
Stay in touch, till next time.
Scutch
Workforce, Networks & HSR Journal
Dear Friends & Colleagues,
I am just back from a trip to Atlanta for a conference put on by the Office of Workforce and Career Development at the CDC. Carol Crawford heads is the Director for Science in that unit. The conference was focused on workforce, but brought a series of folks with social sciences backgrounds from disparate areas to talk about their work with workforce, and to help those of us from the public health side of the house think outside the box on looking at public health workforce. We, at UK, have established a good relationship with that office and I believe some good collaboration is likely to be forthcoming.
I ran into several colleagues in Atlanta, as you might imagine, Kris Gebbie, the reigning guru of public health workforce was there. She tells me she is leaving Columbia to be a dean! I did a mini mental status exam and found no obvious explanation for her obvious temporary loss of her senses. I wish her the best. Mike Meit, who has been in the blog before was also there, Mike is at the Walsh Rural Research Center at NORC, and is doing some good work on rural public health. He is in Lexington this week talking about his work with drug abuse in the Kentucky mountains, but will be meeting with us at UK to talk about rural public health work at NORC and some potential collaboration.
Those who were asked to submit a full proposal for the public health practice based research networks that our colleague Glen Mays from Arkansas is responsible for are busy trying to get final proposals to him by early September. It looks like he and his colleagues will choose some five networks as the founding set. Glen tells me that there will be ten more next year, so the competition is not over. He has been circumspect about the news, but now will have more to say as these first five are rolled out. Watch his component of the PHSSR web site for news and information as this initiative moves forward.
We continue to be busy, Glen Mays, Debra Perez and Nicki Lurie, who are working on the supplemental issue of HSR on PHSSR. I have been getting good inquiries and it looks like we will have a number of good manuscripts submitted for review. I am delighted that so many good folks are working in the area and are ready to publish. It is the sign of a growing and prosperous research field. My thanks too for those who are submitting manuscripts, you are the ones that are making the field go.
Till next time.
Scutch
Accreditation and Workforce
Filed under: APHA, Accreditation, Public Health Accreditation Board (PHAB), Workforce
Dear Friends & Colleagues:
I just returned from a meeting of the Public Health Accreditation Board (PHAB) and the workgroups who are preparing standards for accreditation. Most know the history of this project, a lot of effort early on lead to a project, “Exploring Accreditation” that recommended that public health proceed with the creation of a voluntary accreditation system for health departments. You may wish to review their final recommendations, too. The organization of PHAB has been largely supported by the CDC and RWJ. The PHAB is in its early stages of development.
The original board of incorporators included the CEOs of the major national public health practice organizations, APHA, ASTHO, NACCHO and NALBOH. They will rotate off and a new board is being created. A new board is being organized, additional support staff brought on board and work groups created. I would encourage those with an interest in accreditation to visit the website www.exploringaccreditation.org. Obviously, the standards are, to the extent possible, driven by science, but for many standards or issues data does not exist to help policymakers in decision making. This is clearly a clarion call for the PHSSR community to do the work to assure that all of the standards have a solid scientific basis. In addition, the results, de-identified, will become an important tool for ascertaining health department performance.
I, along with some colleagues, will travel to the CDC for a Public Health Workforce conference. Dr. Carol Gotway Crawford is the lead on this effort. The Office of Workforce and Career Development Science Unit is the convener. The conference is Social Sciences Perspectives on Workforce Policy and will be held from August 6-7, 2008 in Atlanta, Georgia. As most know there were some efforts a few years ago, at PHPPO, around public health workforce. Drs. Kris Gebbie, Hugh Tilson, Joan Cioffi, Maureen Lichtvelt and others have made a substantial contribution to our knowledge base of the public health workforce. I believe that Dr. Crawford is on the way to revitalizing that effort and bringing some new partners and thoughts to the discussion of the workforce.
Many of us know and like Mike Meit, the rural public health guru. He left Pittsburgh a couple of years ago for the University of Chicago and the NORC Walsh Center for Rural Health Analysis, one of the rural health services research centers funded by the Federal Office of Rural Health Policy. They have just released a series of very good briefs and reports on rural public health financing for health promotion and the issues of rural public health department accreditation. I heard Mike present the accreditation materials and found them very interesting. You might, too. These reports are available from Mike Meit at the Walsh Center if you would like copies.
Scutch
PHSSR in the Summertime
Dear Friends and Colleagues,
Summer is a slower time for most things and I suppose PHSSR is no different. After the AcademyHealth and Yale meetings on PHSSR not much specific is going on. There will, of course, be meetings of NALBOH in Wisconsin this summer and the ASTHO/NACCHO meeting in Sacramento in September. To our knowledge nothing specific is planned on PHSSR, except the results of NALBOH’s survey will be presented and I suspect that ASTHO will also be presenting some of their data from the survey. There will be session on accreditation and quality improvement, key to PHSSR in a lot of ways. The UK group will be at both meetings to continue to try and encourage the participation of practitioners in the efforts to translate research into practice and to assure we know the sorts of questions on the minds of our colleagues to guide our research agenda.
Welcome this month to Dr. Chuck Moon. He is the new data and research guru at NALBOH. He has attended some of our data harmonization meetings and was at the special interest group at AcademyHealth. We welcome him to our merry band of colleagues. He will, of course, be working closely with the NALBOH survey of local boards of health, results of which should be available soon. Similarly, some of us saw early results from Jim Pearsol’s analysis of the state survey at the AcademyHealth special interest group. In fact their presentations, along with the other AcademyHealth PHSR Special Interest Group presentations are on the web. In a similar vein, many of the presentations at the Yale meeting following that are now on their web site. it is also on this web site at the Resources area.
A number of quick catch ups, we have a number of posters and abstracts for APHA, I suspect others do as well. We will try to track that and see if we can help with a guide to APHA and PHSSR, with the must dos. The practice based research network invitations are out, but there is a one month delay in deadlines. Any questions get to Dr. Glen Mays in Arkansas. We are waiting on the word for full proposals from the most recent round of calls for brief proposals for PHSR from HCFO. Drs. Mays, Perez and I have agreed to take on a supplemental issue of Health Services Research on PHSSR. We are delighted that the journal has asked Dr. Nicki Lurie to be our Senior Associate Editor for that issue. Again, consider this a call for papers; we have them due to us by August 21st 2008, for publication in October 09.
If you have websites we need to link to in PHSSR, please let us know as we are trying to expand the number of quick links on this web to increase its utility for all who come to the site. You help us help others with those suggestions. Our library folks tell me that they will be adding over 50 new citations to the PHSSR EndNote Library shortly. Some of those will be in the electronic newsletter Inside Track, so keep your eye peeled for that to be on your electronic inbox.
If you have ideas or suggestions ornways we can improve the web site to make it more user friendly, let us know. We are anxious to make it work for all. Hope you had a great 4th weekend!
Scutch
Yale, HSR Special Issue & Mini-Grants
Filed under: AcademyHealth, Keeneland Conference, PHSSR Grants, Yale PHSSR
Dear Friends and Colleagues:
I did a quick note after the AcademyHealth PHSR Special Interest Group in DC last week. There were several panels and presentations in the main Annual Research Meeting. Dr. Glen Mays did one on typology, performance, and outcomes. Our own Dr. Julia Costich did a presentation on her work about public health financing knowledge, skills education and capacity development.
Immediately following that meeting, several of us moved across the Potomac to Arlington for a session on lessons from HSR that can inform the work of the PHSSR field and introduce PHSSR and HSR researchers to each other. Yale, and their Dean of Public Health, Dr. Paul Cleary, was responsible for this conference. I did two sessions, one was a presentation on where we are in the field of PHSSR and moderated a panel on the public health survey data sets from ASTHO, NACCHO and NALBOH. We will be posting these presentations in this website’s Resource page.
Dr. Glen Mays did a nice job outlining the current state of the art on his PHSSR research. Several small group sessions focused on how to bring HSR principles and knowhow to the PHSSR discipline. There were a lot of familiar PHSSR faces, including some of our practice colleagues, as well as some new HSR folks. The meeting is coming with a series of recommendations that will be of utility to a variety of folks and in a bunch of venues. Look for more on this to follow.
We have agreed to a contract with the journal, Health Services Research (HSR). HSR is one of AcademyHealth’s leading journals. Drs. Mays, Perez and I will be the guest editors. Consider this a call for PHSSR papers that you might want to submit to us for possible inclusion in the HSR PHSSR supplement. Mss are due no later than 21 August. Please, if you are interested, get in touch with either Glen Mays or myself.
We are gearing up for the minigrant application process for PHSSR. We will be giving 7 minigrants for dissertation research and 7 for junior investigators. We anticipate the call will go out in July or August. For all our senior folks, here is a chance to get one of your younger colleagues rolling in PHSSR, either at the doctoral level or one of your new faculty colleagues.
I suspect things will calm down a bit, but the PBRN work is gearing up, a brief proposal is due 20 June. This has been a targeted solicitation, but if you have questions, there is some information on this website and I believe that the good Dr. Mays would be open to emails or phone calls from interested parties. Several of the troops here, and I suspect elsewhere, have submitted proposals for the HCFO PHSSR solicitation. So that will keep some folks busy this summer too. Again, I am sure that AcademyHealth and the folks that run the HCFO solicitation are open to questions, as well.
Well, mark your calendar for the next Keeneland Conference, April 7-9. We are looking forward to the chance to show some of our southern hospitality. The meeting this year should be even more eventful, as the field is growing and so there is opportunity for many more presentations and panels. We are looking forward to the meeting already.
Scutch
PHSSR Special Interest Group Meeting
Filed under: AcademyHealth, Data & Methods, Finance, Health Care Finance Org. (HCFO), Public Health Accreditation Board (PHAB), Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF)
Dear Friends & Colleagues:
Well, I am blogging from the AcademyHealth 25th Annual Research Meeting in D.C.. Today was the PHSSR Special Interest Group. The session was vey good. Kate Papa and her colleagues deserve a lot of credit for the fine job today. Several good presentations, David Grembowski’s presentation on the relationship of public health expenditures and disparities (there were little and what there were moved in the wrong direction), was interesting. There were a number of good student posters and the session was very good. The meeting is proof that there is good research going on relating to public health systems and services.
Dr. Debra Pérez, at the outset, talked about the current crop of PHSSR programs and projects. She suggested there might be a call for quality improvement research in the future. Dr. Bill Reilly, who heads up the PHAB research and evaluation committee, will have responsibility for that effort on their part. Kate Papa also talked about the PHSSR activities of AcademyHealth, including the HCFO programs. The panel late in the day who discussed sharing a vision for a path ahead was good. Dr. Glen Mays talked about moving from descriptive to inferential to intervention research in the discipline. He asked us to open the “Black Box” of public health systems to better understand what’s inside, and how the system operates.
There are several presentations on PHSSR topics during the rest of the meeting, including the work that Dr. Glen Mays and some of us completed on typologies of health departments. I am pleased to see PHSSR being included as a part of the larger HSR scene, and there are more things coming on line to further enhance that. Dr. Glen Mays, Dr. Debra Pérez and I are working to put out a special issue of HSR on PHSSR. Actually, we have a meeting with the editors and publisher during AcademyHealth to firm up the details. If any of you folks have PHSSR manuscripts that they would like us to consider, let me know.
My guess is that there will be some discussion of the new PBRN program that Dr. Glen Mays is leading and which is on this web site. The first round of these networks is in the offing. The meeting, so far has been really stimulating and fun. I have enjoyed seeing a lot of old friends.
Now, I had no idea that Big Brown would blow it today at Belmont. I figured with Casino Drive scratched that it would be a cake walk for him. Well, that is why they made horse races. I know that he has already been syndicated for $50M and probably will not race again, since he is too valuable as a stud to risk something happening to him. But the guys who bought into the syndicate just lost about half of the value of his stud fee. A Triple Crown winner has a very dear price. While one who only won two of the three doesn’t command such a large sum. I have no idea why he didn’t have this one in him. But the Three Chimneys farm owner is having a stiff bourbon tonight.
Scutch
1st Annual PHSSR Keeneland Conference
Filed under: Data & Methods, Finance, Keeneland Conference, NACCHO, Office of the Chief of Public Health Practice, Public Health Accreditation Board (PHAB), Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF)
Dear Friends and Colleagues:
Well, Keeneland has come and gone. I think that most had a good time. Some of our friends are now very good race handicappers. I happen to know that Dr. Glen Mays cashed a ticket on a long shot and took home a nice check. Dr. Ed Baker is now hooked. He went home and watched his horse come from the back of the pack to win on the Keeneland web site.
In addition to a lot of fun, we got a fair amount accomplished. There were some really great keynote speakers. Dr. Jim Marks, of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation did an outstanding job linking what we are doing to the lives of people. This, in turn, allowed Dr. Debra Perez to be personal in her
presentation, which really brought home in a personal way the fact we are talking about the life and health of real folks. Her willingness to share her own family experiences was inspiring to all of us there. Dr. Stephanie Bailey made masterful use of the horse analogy for her talk, which was an incredibly enthusiastic presentation and got everyone’s blood pumping.
The presentations from our colleagues were great. There were several on partnerships and networks: Drs. Laura Hall Downey, Danielle Varda, Jackie Merrill and Betty Bekemeier all had great presentations on this theme. They enjoyed the opportunity to share notes about their research and in a couple of cases, working with Carolyn Leep at NACCHO on how best to use NACCHO data to facilitate their research. This is just one of the areas where colleagues were able to network on research issues. Dr. George Avery, one of our mini-grantees, presented his data showing that the first thing you do with your BT money is to hire a coordinator. If you do that other things follow; absent that, you don’t have the pieces in place for your preparedness muster.
Dr. Peggy Honoré rolled out some tools for use by public health financial folks. On this website, if you go to the public health finance information, the material she posted to help all is there. Her presentation of the information and how to use it was very well received. In a similar vein, Dr. Glen Mays had his first face-to-face advisory committee meeting for the public health practice-based research networks. We anticipate he will be releasing the request for proposal for those initial networks shortly.
I would encourage all to begin to use www.publichealthsystems.org to find out what is going on in the field. This blog is obviously on it. But there is also material from the Keeneland Conference, the public health PBRN, financing and the like. We also have the EndNote PHSSR bibliography on the web and a discussion board for your use. The more that it is used, the more useful it becomes to us all. Let us know what we can post there that will make it useful to you and will prompt you to go there more often. I would also suggest that all mark their calendar for next year’s Keeneland Conference, April 7-9, 2009. More to follow on the website.
There were other happenings around this week as well. The Public Health Accreditation Board (PHAB) had its first organizational meeting in Orlando (I won’t make any snide remarks about the meeting site). Dr. Al Gray reports it was a good meeting. There are series of workgroups that have materials they are doing for the board, from equivalency to standards. The new Board appears to be a good group, broadly representative and likely open to new discussions or ideas. We (yes, I am on the board) are still getting settled and figuring out where we belong in the process, but suspect the group will coalesce shortly and move quickly to make a contribution.
A new RFP came out a few weeks ago on preparedness and Public Health Systems & Services Research. Several have indicated that they will respond. This is an important piece where PHSSR can make a contribution. I suspect that the Office of the Chief of Public Health Practice had some role in the verbiage which requires systems thinking and approaches to the issues of preparedness. I suspect we will see more of the RFPs or FOAs from there focusing on some PHSSR issues as a part of the funding requirement. That fulfills, in some measure, what Dr. Jim Marks has consistently been saying about using categorical programs to ascertain how PHSSR can benefit those programs and have applicability to other issues as well.
I will sign off. Please feel free, as with any blog to rant or recognize. It is intended to be a source of information and discussion. Be well.