HIPNET - Health Information and Publications Network

Mission Statement
As a mission-driven partnership, HIPNet addresses a key public health need for access to technical health information materials and innovative information technologies that strengthen the performance and sustainability of health care organizations, programs, and services around the world.

HIPNet facilitates collaboration among organizations that produce and disseminate print and electronic information in the field of international health.

Through quarterly meetings, biannual conferences, an online resource center and an email forum, HIPNet ensures that members investments in health information materials and technologies are efficient, effective and widely used.

Update on Planned FP/HIV Working Group Activities
The idea of the working group was to develop a framework that charted the lifecycle of any integration effort, then assess the different materials already available to see at what stage in the lifecycle they would fit. They wanted to conduct an informal needs assessment of the materials needed in the field.

USAID then decided to hire a consultant to do more comprehensive needs assessment. The consultant was provided with a list of names of contacts in the field in order to facilitate the assessment. The consultant’s report is complete, and will be shared with the FP/HIV working group shortly.

FHI will be hosting a meeting on September 23-24 2004 to discuss the scientific aspects of integration. The FHI meeting on the 24th ends midday, and thus the HIPNet meeting will be held on the same day from 2-5pm at the same venue-Phoenix Hotel in Washington DC.

Call for Collaboration on Gender Checklist
Proposal from INFO to get HIPNet input/collaboration on developing a gender checklist for publications and other products.

Vidya Setty presented the gender checklist proposal to the group. She wanted to invite CA input and/or collaboration for this project. This project is at its infancy and any and all input is welcomed.

Some of the points that came up during the group discussion:

• The joint writing of the knowledge management paper was seen as a model that this project could follow
• Points that could be taken into consideration:
  1. add cultural norms to gender
  2. Address the audience appropriately
  3. try to involve southern-based groups like AHILA
  4. involve person at PRB who works with Interagency Gender Working Group
  5. are there really ways to make our content and readability more gender sensitive without just dumbing it down for front-line professionals?
  6. maybe there should be a variety of products for a variety of audiences
  7. get Laura Raney’s feedback
  8. build in something about having women’s advocacy groups provide collective feedback
  9. look for blind spots
  10. come up with catch way to present to editors as a checklist
  11. there are needs at multiple/different levels
  12. gender and translation issues
  13. need for gender sensitive strategy for promotion and dissemination
  14. gender sensitive evaluation strategy
  15. women’s advocacy groups could be asked to take part in the editorial process
• Someone suggested that at the end of the checklist development, a gender sensitivity information session should be held to raise awareness about the checklist specifically and the issues in general
• Another suggestion is that this should be integrated with field activities

Update on HIPNET collaboration ideas and further discussion of proposals:
For all three proposals, members were encouraged to speak to point people in their organizations who would be dealing with distribution and publications etc. and then determine whether they would be interested.

The first proposal we discussed was the Collaborative warehousing and distribution proposal.

Highlights of the discussion:
The beauty of this proposal is that is does not require the participation of everyone for it to yield benefits to those who do participate. It would only require a few more clients paired with CCP in order for the rates to apply, more organizations could then join in as time went by.

Clarifications:
- These are group rates negotiated for HIPNet members Each organization would still be responsible for signing their own contract and following up with complaints on their own
- There would be NO joint mailings or joint mailing lists, each CA would maintain their own preferred system with the company. The company is open to different formats by which they can process orders and requests that can be tailored to each organization.
- No minimum volume is required for these rates to apply, therefore whether you ship 20 CD’s a year or 200,000 the rates are the same. This would especially benefit smaller organizations who do not send out much stuff.
- The mail is sent directly from the US to the country to which it is being sent (direct injection)

Drawbacks:
These packages cannot be tracked door to door. They can only be tracked to the point when they are delivered to the recipient country’s mailing system.

The second proposal discussed was the Collaborative Mailings to Libraries proposal.

The idea would be to pool all CAs lists of libraries or resource centers etc, figure out which ones were still operational, and if so what kinds of materials they would be interested in receiving, in what language, topics etc.

Then the interested centers would receive a bulk “best of” set of publications collected from all the CAs. The idea grew from the WHO Blue Trunk Project where yearly “best of” lists were created to aid people in finding relevant and up-to-date resources for their information needs.

The lists would be broken down by language and country. Further down the line they could also be broken down by topic based on the needs expressed by the centers.

It was suggested that the first step if this were to be implemented would be to get feedback from the libraries for two reasons.

1. If the libraries no longer exist, it would be a waste of resources to ship materials to them
2. It would also be pointless to ship materials that are unwanted.

1. Should we be catering to different reading levels?
2. When sending materials, should lists of future/other publications be sent as well?

The final proposal was the Coordination of Planning Publications Among CAs proposal

This proposal requires the participation of all HIPNet members to yield benefits. Everyone agreed that this proposal was a good idea in theory, but needed to be clarified and defined more before it could be implemented. The argument is that by the time ideas are brought to the HIPNet table, these materials are already in the works and therefore there is little flexibility in terms of collaboration. The idea then, would be to pitch ideas early in the planning process, so that areas for collaboration could be identified earlier when things are more flexible.

Issues that came up:

1. Branding
2. Bureaucracy. Members were concerned that this sharing/collaboration would become mandatory, and then there would be no room to create independent materials.

1. Start small, maybe collaborate by one type of material (training materials, policy materials etc) or topic area
2. Have informational meetings before decisions are made, so that areas of possible collaboration can be identified
3. Other organizations can then pitch ideas (that the original CA can incorporate), or offer to do a chapter, or a small piece of the material.
4. Involve other CAs in the peer review process

Possible Collaboration with INASP
Beth Robinson reported on the ongoing Global Review for Access to Health Information in Developing Countries being conducted by a number of organizations including the WHO, The Lancet, DIFID etc. The review will be published in the British Medical Journal (BMJ). The review will look at the information available now, who has access to what information, how this information is utilized etc. There will also be a needs assessment aspect to the review.
Areas of possible collaboration for HIPNet members include (but are not limited to):
1. help define what is looked at
2. outlining steps that have already been taken/are currently being taken that could feed into a wider system

A videoconference would be set up at some point so that interested HIPNet members can participate.

Interested in working with INASP on “Access to Health Information” global review of progress, lessons learned and ways forward.

Lori Ashford, lashford@prb.org -policymakers’ access to information
Steve Goldstein, sgoldste@jhuccp.org
Nina Pruyn, npruyn@advanceafrica.org
Willow Gerber, wgerber@path-dc.org
Robert Gringle, rgringle@msh.org
Susan Alton, salton@amwa-doc.org -access in medical schools
Theresa Norton, tnorton@jhuccp.org
Beth Robinson, brobinson@fhi.org
Vanessa Carroll, vcarroll@jhuccp.org
Laura Raney, lraney@pcdc.org
Ruth (Abt)
Sandra Jordan, sjordan@usaid.gov
Tina Flores, tflores@globalhealth.org
Lori Delaney, ldelaney@intrahealth.org

Questions

1. Is new, field-based research required? If so, how can we realistically participate since we don’t have this incorporated into our work plans already?
2. Maybe we can participate by using the information we’ve already collected for various other reasons – each contribute what they can.
3. could we link to the proposed HIPNet needs assessment or the FP/HIV integration needs assessment that has been done?

The technology of performance improvement: How we get results
September 14, 2004
The Washington Club,
15 Dupont Circle, ½ block from Dupont Circle South Exit.
8 AM-5 PM

-Full day, interactive workshop
-Focus on results. Learn what works best and how to use it
-International PI expert, Dr. Sivasaliam Thagarajan (Thiagi) will kick off the day.
-CA, NGO, and USAID staff and PI professionals are welcome
-Hosted by The Public Health Institute/Population Leadership Program for USAID
-More information / to preregister: dmcneill@popldr.org

Next HIPNet meeting
September 24, 2004

Discussion on proposal to establish a process for coordinating materials development across CAs

• Use the listserv, especially at the beginning stage of the process of developing the concept, to find out what already exists and what other CAs are thinking of doing.
• Use this process as a way to get experts for peer review of publications (peer review is a part of collaboration)
• Learn from existing examples: IUD meetings (FHI); FP/HIV integration; gender-based violence; Global Technical Briefs
• Share literature review and research together.
• We should look at the positive side of collaboration / emphasize good parts. Don’t focus on making it mandatory.
• Emphasize the financial incentives for a smaller group in collaboration – they could be part of a larger publication
• Would give groups a forum for pitching ideas to each other
• Need flexibility and to understand how we reached point where we are now – limited resources; want wider audiences
• Branding (how to brand something that is collaborative)
• Should not enforce participation.
• Promote collaboration at the ‘chapter’ level
• Role of writing collaboration into workplans – still important especially for larger publications that require bigger investments of time and energy
• Need to involve interagency working groups in the process
• Procedures could be different for different types of publications
• Incentives – what could they be?
• Expand on the ‘types of collaboration’ draft document (send to Jude, Ward)

1. encourage CAs who produce training materials to collaborate at workplan stage if possible
2. get CAs who produce policy-oriented materials together
3. divide up collaboration based on audiences / types of materials
4. some collaboration on topic areas
5. develop models that would make it more manageable
6. learn from example of Synergy Project – documents from group of CAs (submitted by each CA; final decision with USAID) to be distributed on CDs with USAID branding. Maybe HIPNet could produced CDs.

ATTENDANCE:

1. Susan Alton, Reproductive Helath Initiative, AMWA salton@amwa-doc.org
2. Lori Ashford, PRB lashford@prb.org
3. Renuka Bery, SARA/AED rbery@smtp.aed.org
4. Linda Bruce, PATH lbruce@path-dc.org
5. Gloria Cae, USAID gcae@usaid.gov
6. Bruce Carlson, POPTech bcarlson@poptechproject.com
7. Tricia Closky, PATH pklosky@path-dc.org
8. Natalie Culbertson, JHPIEGO nculbertson@jhpiego.net
9. Peggy D’Adamo, JHU/CCP INFO mdadamo@jhuccp.org
10. Samantha Ender, Advance Africa sender@advanceafrica.org
11. Suzanne Fischer, FHI sfischer@fhi.org
12. Tina Flores, Global Health tflores@globalhealth.org
13. AJ Furay, JHPIEGO ajfuray@jhpiego.net
14. Steve Galdder, JHUCCP sgaldder@jhuccp.org
15. Willow Gerber, Path - wgerber@path.org
16. Steve Goldstein, JHU/CCP INFO sgoldste@jhuccp.org
17. Jude Griffin, MSH, jgriffin@msh.org
18. Robert Gringle, MSH rgringle@msh.org
19. Sandra Jordan, USAID, sjordan@usaid.gov
20. Jill Leonard, The Synergy Project jleonard@s-3.com
21. Bob Leone, Population Leadership Program/PHI rleone@popldr.org
22. Robin Lowney, Reproductive Helath Initiative, AMWA rlawney@amwa-doc.org
23. Rachel Lucas- USAID, rlucas@usaid.gov
24. Sidney Moore, MACRO Sidney.Moore@orcmacro.com
25. Theresa Norton, JHUCCP/INFO tnorton@jhuccp.org
26. Liz Nugent, PHP+/URC liz_nugent@abtassoc.com
27. Erica Nybro, Measure DHS erica.nybro@orcmacro.com
28. Ronni Padberg, Policy Project v.padberg@tfgi.com
29. Nina Pruyn, Advance Africa, npruyn@advanceafrica.org
30. Laura Raney, Pop Council lraney@pcdc.org
31. John Robinette, INFO jrobinet@jhuccp.org
32. Beth Robinson, FHI BRobinson@fhi.org
33. Anjali Sanghvi JHUCCP/INFO asanghvi@jhuccp.org
34. Matt Sattah, USAID, msattah@usaid.gov
35. Pat Shawkey, JSI DELIVER pat_shawkey@jsi.com
36. Elizabeth Stevens, Futures Group e.stevens@tfgi.com
37. Mercedes Torres, Advance Africa mtorres@advanceafrica.org
38. Ellen Weiss, Horizons eweiss@pcdc.org
39. Elizabeth Westley, Family Care International ewstley@familycareintl.org
40. Chris Wright, JSI DELIVER chris_wright@jsi.com