HIPNET - Health Information and Publications Network
HIPNET Meeting Notes – November 16, 2007
Action Items:
1. Sandra Jordan to send around referenced Lancet article
2. Please inform Rose Reis (
rreis@jhuccp.org) if any of you have blogs or social presence on the Web. INFO would like to know and link to such resources.
3. If you want to volunteer to do some of the things listed in the M& Guide table and discussed during the meeting, like put the M&E guide on your website or approach some of the provided USAID contacts, let Peggy, Neha or Laura know. If you have M&E people we can look to do a conference call with in 6 months from now to explain the guide, please let the same people know.
4. Peggy will send table of M&E promotion around to HIPNet members. It will also be posted to the HIPNet Web site.
5. Peggy will send HIPNet members the list of libraries that received mailing materials in the last library mailing.
6. Peggy will send an e-mail out after Jan. 1. soliciting items for the French and Spanish library mailings
7. Peggy will e-mail everyone the list of list serves for them to review and provide additions or deletion.
8. HIPNet chairs will make a list of all missions with websites and put keywords that they talk about with plans on how to disseminate materials and try to find right person in DC who deals with missions. Have Sandra contact missions to ask for a few words about each mission.
9. Peggy will send goals of HIFA 2015 to the group. Get in touch with Peggy if you are interested in sharing your experience about disseminating information to health-worker audiences. Peggy will put you in touch with director or work together to submit experiences as a group.
10, The UNFPA Condom Resource Center is asking for case studies regarding successful condom programs. Let Beth Robinson know if you are interested in submitting a case study.
11. Neha will ask Sandra about list of DOCs in mission for next meeting
12. Send Laura any upcoming organizational meetings. Laura sent around a calendar with meetings in the past and is happy to update if your organization is doing something. The scheduling calendar will be put up on the HIPNet website.
13. eGranary: Each member organization should decide on 12 links to their favorite Internet sites that address healthcare in developing countries to Seth Rosenblatt,
sethro@jhuccp.org. The sites will appear on a sample HIPNet portal on eGranary.
Meeting Minutes
Presentation will be made available on HIPNet site
Background:
· Working in development since 1982 and founded non-profit Wellspring Africa
· 1995: Teaching about digital communication technology in developing countries; discovered many challenges: founded the Widernet project. The project focused on partnering.
· Sees Widernet as a coach and an advocate mostly with universities to find appropriate applications for technology.
· Started to look for practical, cost effective, solutions.
· Does not believe in "digital divide". The problem is the countries are quite poor and it is an economic divide – a matter of no having money in the first place. One must create cost effective interventions.
· 3600 people have been through lecture – average training is 20 hours. Participants turn around to teach others.
· Collected over 1.5 million dollars from Microsoft, 3M others (shipped computers to sites).
· Top focus is working with students (young people).
· Most important commodity in learning IT is time and young people have that
How do we get internet to peoples desktops so they can interact with the information?
· The internet is expensive and difficult to obtain.
· Changed question – how do we get information to people's desktops? Keeping the internet as one option but looking for other ways to do that – looking for access to information.
Internet connectivity across Africa
· 378 people/1000 in Europe are frequent users of the Internet and pay 2 % of the typical annual salary to be connected
Africa =1/1000 in Kenya and paying 3X annual average salary to be connected.
· Disparity: fewer people connected, only people connected are those with resources
Bandwidth comparison
· University of Iowa vs. Ahmadu Bello University – both have 100 Mb network bandwidth however UI has 1,0000X2 internet connection and Bello has 2 mB connection. The internet connection becomes swamped and it is impossible to do anything after 12:00 in the morning.
· Both schools paying the same dollar wise for the two connections.
· Flooded with bandwidth in Iowa – bid to drive price down because there are many vendors.
· In Africa fiber-optic connection non-existent – connection to international internet always a satellite which is much more expensive.
· We do speed tests – widernet.org – “test your speed” – will download a file from your computer and tell you how fast connection is.
Reliability
· Have servers that ping all over Africa every 10 minutes and can graph out when machines are on or off . Most institutions are hard pressed to come up with 6 hours a day – cannot leave plugged in at night
· Replace bandwidth with storewith – physically put information inside internal network. This removes the internet itself where bandwidth is fast and free.
· Can serve large numbers of people
· Everyone on LAN has access to what is on eGranary even when internet connection is broken or doesn’t exist
· Currently: 1000 authors and publishers
· Inventing social contract with many people to choose to share information – some orgs. have it as their mandate sharing one variety of info with another. Many organizations have taken a while to choose to participate since it is relatively new
· Opens thousands of time faster then internet connections.
eGranary demonstration:
· Video, multimedia, audio -200 MB video file opens up in 5 seconds and can deliver virtually everything you can deliver from computers.
· Has a search engine built in: the first takes a minutes because its first time running.
· 65MB – delivering information 4-5X fasters.
· Internet is not free access to knowledge – one of the most expensive things to do
· Whole hosts of compelling needs that don’t involve spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on the internet
· Offline access gives many more choices – undergrad population in developing countries don’t use journals and PhD students don’t necessarily need to most information. Those that do – library could figure out what the least amount of internet one can get by on
· African bandwidth usage similar to American – 95 % is recreational which is rich dense informational resources too large to download.
· eGranary is an intermediate step: can use along with Internet.
If they request a document and its in eGranary shows up 5X faster . The kinds of resources health practitioners want: practical material (i.e. professional society magazines which summarize and boil up all of the research)
· People like e Granary because it is a curated solution: many societies don’t want students on internet wasting time and money – like the idea they could make this available.
· Opened up many new options: No cost to it – librarians are putting up public access points and turning this into a public library. Inject 10 million documents into LAN – bandwidth and cost free – can be shared out to anyone in local area network
· “Knowledge sphere” – creating an umbrella that covers every organization all have free and fast access to knowledge and working with partners to get local knowledge/content/information digitized and readily accessible.
· Working with instructors to pull together instructional materials
Foresee others in same community looking to share portion of server with their own
community- will start happening at a local level.
Very simple to add a gateway that goes out to the internet – even without gateway can
serve tens of thousands of people readily
· Large patronage: working with communities creating telecenters –can add a wireless mask to turn into a library – medical school in Kumasi admin put up 10 computer lab – put up a wireless mask to use in dorm.
· Putting up knowledge sphere we leverage anyone with wireless device, computer – none of the infrastructure (i.e., electricity, computers., etc.).
· Make e-Granaries of virtually any size – can lower amount of storage and deliver to anywhere in the world.
· eGranary is seeking partners: social contract that we have with authors and publishers is that we won’t sell content – can sell the logistics of getting content from here to there. The cost of the library $750 (set up working out the door) and a server $2800. We are not for profit, promoting idea of asynchronous delivery of info – looking to work in all sorts of sectors (were not experts but others are).
· Portals – focus is on making portals for different subjects (i.e. Uganda curriculum, resources in Spanish). Next step is to come up with ways practitioners in eth field can access information most readily.
Questions:
Does the average user distinguish between eGranary and internet?
Yes – no internet is available on the eGranary wireless service unless an Internet connection is present.
How do we update?
We have written new protocol for updating websites and we will compare our copy with your copy of website. We pull out metadata and catalog and it is ready to go. We have used CD-ROM, DVD, etc. to get updates from one place to another
The last version of eGranary – 150 out the field only 6 subscribers posted updates ($ 200/yr + shipping for updates) – many are used to out of date documents.
Have you hooked up with library organizations (AHILA, PLOS, TALC, etc.)?
We had them but they withdrew everything because worried about copyrights (ETAL)
How do you manage quality control of information?
We are librarians – we don’t want to have to tell organizations that we don’t want to put in documents. It is the same as using internet information - have to determine who is a reliable source. We don’t want to have to tell them their website is not good enough (we do not accept pornography, cultural, incendiary materials).
Trying to get PubMed, Medline in – getting into some big datasets.
Can buy an eGranary server and slip a second hard drive in with hardcore med stuff. Everyone has their own penchant which is why portals are important – can add your own imprimatur.
Can you talk about the project connecting E. Africa in 2009 with undersea cables and how it will affect eGranary?
Every year there are new programs like this. It would be great if it happens but we’ll see In the cable industry much equipment is lying idle – similar cable around the West coast of Africa and in some cases like Senegal there has been as a good job with creating telecenterts using bandwidth from cable. The continent of Africa is 3 times the size of the US – the infrastructure will be along time to get away from the coast and inland – will be a long time until those cables have a major impact. We focus on the digital divide – what we are enjoying in this room are generations of physical infrastructure built up – need to train enough people, get enough electricity and management in place.
If we were to develop a portal what would our role be?
Contribute our own information.
Higher level portal – given this topic out of the 1000 web sites here are the best of the brief. Volunteer to identify best of the best.
When you take a website do you take the entire website?
If may not all be useful, so you can pick what you want – may take half of your website.
The only thing we do is remove advertisements.
How much staff do you have looking for new content./adding new content?
We have 12 volunteers at the university and 1 half time student.
Widernet has one other programmer to deal with search engines – most of the money is made from trainings and other programs.
What role are institutions in field playing? Are they helping to drive the content?
AIDS, agriculture and African studies (3 As) are the subjects those in the field are asking the most about.
Are you looking for user partners?
We are looking for ways you can use this out in the field for your content.
Who is the Ethiopia partner?
A Dutch donor group – thinking about how to use technology out in the field.
Is there a list of locations? Who subscribes to eGranary?
We currently have volunteers compiling this list along with a Google Earth map showing the location of eGranary users.
Links and terminology on USAID sponsored Web sites
Sandra Jordan – USAID
· USAID was funding the Women Deliver conference. The MCH department helped plan it. A State Department representative started calling it an "abortion conference" and USAID was forced to pull funding. There had been an ad for a Marie Stopes conference on the Women Deliver site and that tripped off the controversy.
· There will be intensified scrutiny [by right wing] in the coming year, more intense than the past years. Be careful what you link to. Cannot be on a site with IPPF. Started calling the conference "Abortion First".
· Bottom line: everyone must add in message saying "you are now leaving USAID..." [wording to be emailed from Sandra] to outgoing links from sites with USAID logos. Call her if there is any question as to the policy on this.
Exact wording: from Sandra Jordan: (to also be placed on HIPNet site):
Criteria for Links to Non-USAID funded websites or documents from GH/PRH funded websites
Websites funded in whole or in part by GH/PRH may include links to non-USAID funded documents and/or non-USAID funded websites. However, when determining the feasibility of a link, think about the purpose. USAID funded websites and publications are intended to provide credit to USAID for its work and technical leadership. When our information is co-mingled with other sites, this leadership gets lost. As a result, LPA recommends stand alone websites as the best solution.
When a stand-alone website is not feasible, we should encourage partners to import material to the site (ie pdfs of documents), rather than provide links to other sites. However, if this, too, proves impossible, links for documents/websites must meet the following criteria:
- The material in the linked document/website must be focused and germane to the area of FP/RH programming being undertaken by the CA managing the host site
- The intended audience of the linked document /website is program managers, policymakers, and/or researchers working in health, specifically FP/RH.
In addition, the GH/PRH funded website/document must be set up so that users who follow a link first reach an interim page informing them that they have left the host site. The interim page must include a disclaimer. The following language is suggested:
For documents: The author’s views expressed in this publication do not necessarily reflect the views of the United States Agency for International Development or the United States Government.
For websites: You are leaving the official website of XXX. The information provided on the web site in this link does not represent the views or positions of the U.S. Agency for International Development or the U.S. Government.
Furthermore, the CA managing the host site and the CTO will be responsible for reviewing the content of all links every six months to ensure that they continue to meet the above criteria.
Issues to consider:
- IPPF, SIECUS and Advocates for Youth, for examples, have numerous quality documents for programming adolescent RH/HIV, which do not include mention of abortion, as well as an important manual on integrating GBV into FP/RH services. These documents could be included if we import this material to the website. However, a link, even with the disclaimer, often is interpreted as tacit support for an organization’s policies or positions and can still get us in trouble with vigilant link followers. Therefore, not having a direct link in these cases would be best, and make routine checking of the site much easier.
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· Be very careful when referring to Maternal Health that you specify pregnancy. PAC is still ok. WHO and UN are under suspicion because of the Lancet article (SJ to email). Right wing has begun to critique science when faced with data on abortion deaths. This policy affects PRH funds only. PRB and INFO do this well (linking to outside sites)
Questions:
Is this grandfathered in if you’ve been approved in the past?
If you have already been approved however I’d highly recommend it [putting a disclaimer] if your site takes you somewhere that links you to IPPF, Marie Stopes or somewhere innocuous you will get demands to remove funding if you don’t put disclaimer
How do you go about what's been said at a venue into a public forum?
Have to go and talk about after with participants. This is a big issue. Much of this you can send out in a more subtle fashion or a password protected way. That’s why we invent this as we go along because there are so many ways to step in it.
Information needs of USAID staff and partners in the field
Steve Settimi, USAID
· When we talk about informational needs of partners in the field – the resounding message we were hearing was that we want material that is contextually relevant to our immediate situations in our country.
· What we’d find in many countries is that sources outside of conventional sources disseminate the information and one wonders the credibility. Our goal is to keep partners in the field informed of best practices, policies and changes in direction (some things which Sandra alluded to) What we are interested in is practices and how service providers manage the better health of our customers.
· When I hear things about abortion care, treatment – this is a concern because we know there are certain practices being done in the countries where we work – we don’t set priorities but provide advice and techniques to deal with certain situations.
· If we can build capacity, ownership and sustainability and through that process the in country folks are beginning to discuss situations like abortion, commercial sex workers, MSM, that’s their environment that they work in – we are to support continued growth, capacity building and if those are the topic areas they were interested in exploring we should provide them with the ability to explore these subject matters
· Everything we do is to enable those in the field to learn how to use the tools we provide them (i.e., eGranary) having them learn how that kind of knowledge is encapsulated, captured and disseminated for personal gain – if we could get people in the field to learn the processes we all master – if we can get them to do that they're running the game and we don’t have to be in the position to make suggestions on sensitive issues some other factions would like us not to discuss in central factors – there are always politics involved in centrally administered program
· If we get locals to develop their own subject spheres they will determine the subjects they are interested in. My message is to listen to the folks in country and to determine what their needs are in terns of acquisition of knowledge and let them determine the course and direction the development model is telling them to follow
· Local content discussed by eGranary shows there is a need to be involved at the local level – we should provide them those tools so they can spin those items and not depend use to develop resources
· I would challenge each of you in your own orgs that for the type of materials you put it – think of the model of what is driving that – are you hearing from each of those countries you work in they all want to hear about injectables or IUDs or us that a global scopic of information? Custom tailor information for each country and region -
i.e., if we want to uptake more FP in a country that is focused on HIV – find ways to introduce topics into the HIV planning – may be interested in integration or in another country where malaria is high on the list find ways to integrate where you can integrate FP and malaria – or if they are into vaccinations and childhood immunizations find ways to tailor that.
· That is the direction the information age is pulling information out of – ground up tailored – our organization wants us to listen to beneficiaries in the field and find ways to accommodate them to their job. This is above the global push find ways to make readily consumable.
· We also heard strong interest in communication technologies such as PDAs. 87 % of partners in the field are interested in that technology being used.
· 81 % responded that they had a strong interest in knowledge discussion/dissemination practices and are interested in trainings, technical assistance and more information.
· 75 % strongly agree that they have a strong interest to develop publications with local content.
· English language publications are great but Fleischer reading index places publications at level 13 and above. The general readership is 8th-9th grade level and many do not speak English as a first language.
· The preference is publications in national languages.
Questions:
What is the best way to get this info out to missions without overwhelming them?
(Sandra Jordan): We are starting a thing sent out every Friday – 360 for all the Global Health Bureau
We are starting to get a lot of feedback from field that is something they're reading – we can start doing it that way. You can send us documents and can get into mission mailings – maybe every quarter send new publications and stuff to them and let them know its coming (Sandra).
Getting out there is one thing and the uptake is another matter – this is what was discovered in the evaluation. If their mission is drawing them over to a different direction it is a waste of time sending them stuff in the first place. What is the health direction of the mission? Where are their resources going and tailor information to them. Will find there are similarities in mission portfolios.
There is a human behavioral aspects that dictates uptake of materials that we don’t have control over.
Something we’ve found in other surveys - people ask that your executive summary is actually a summary. We must find ways to condense what they are going to read – (Sandra) (Steve) You need to capture reader to read – short succinct summary is great. If you could distill farther and put out a bite to pull them in – possibly to the executive summary than to full document how we all function on the internet.
Work with colleagues on ground across partnership – arrange same collegial thing on the ground – all wind up discussing things – may want some talking points for people in the field – with your conversation with USAID.
Is a copy of the survey available?
I can give you that – it’s a bulky document but I can probably extract something.
Did you come across any way they want to receive the information?
We hear that they still want the print but the push is hard copies. We are hearing that the folks would love stuff electronically but the cost of acquiring it is expensive but they really want it in print.
IV. Blogging: INFO Experience
Rose Reiss, INFO Project
(will post presentation on HIPNet)
· Interesting to think journals displayed in reverse chronological order – very interactive.
Blogosphere- largest social network online.
Web 2.0 – dynamic. Found it interesting that even though the article is a year old out
of the 12 million blogs a year ago 100 are non-profit – much potential to harvest new
media.
· Many people looking at these things are “millenials” who absorb 20 hours of content in 7 hours – born 1980 and later . Increasingly this is a lot of people out in the field – want to appeal to them and involve them in creating content.
· These viewers are more atuned to viewing and not reading – multimedia images. Most popular blogs are tech blogs, gossip are popular. Need to create viral spreadable content, additcive.
· We have a number of presences on the social web – have a facebook group – and a MySpace profile- trying to incorporate feeds from other organizations – we'd love to involve feeds from your organizations.
· Some of the people on our blog role: IntraHealth, RH Reality Check. World Bank Blog – have really great bloggers – people who have real jobs post really thoughtful comments. If you haven’t seen this blog – a lot of really good resources –
UNICEF field notes – they have “voices from the field” so the blogs can be tailored
from the donors to involve them in the work and make them excited about
· Some interesting new things that we had: Seth posted on redesign of female condom
That’s been the model for many things – whatever catches your attention –
We also have guest posts – someone from FHI guest blogged on EE
Heart disease and COC: asked a writer to comment on article/video.
A blogging democracy: everyone has a voice on the staff: we have had posts from 8 different writers in the past week, yesterday one of our editors became a guest blogger and posted an ad for Mirena IUD and related it to a product we have in existence.
· Thinking of: increasing list of peer sites, live blogging, conferences, more presence and interactivity between HIPNet members – include photo, audio, video which mailing list can not, increases transparency of organization and outside
Were open to ideas and would love to hear what you think to increase your interaction.
Questions
Question about the registered blogger: Was that inside of CCP?
You can be registered to post on the individual posts – I think to be a registered blogger you would have to be at the INFO project since its the INFO blog
So the blogroll is links?
It is links to anyone within or outside your organizations.
Are you tracking readership?
I just registered on webmaster tools – it’s a free service Google offers so I can see who clicks on us and top searches.
How do you deal with one of the issues of anybody can post anything with projects funded by USAID? Do you exert any control? How do you prevent someone from registering and posting weird stuff out there?
In terms of subject matter the INFO staff is aware of the sensitivities that we work in and steer clear in a way – we have it worded such a way – we also have to review all comments – instead of softening language.
What is the platform?
Wordpress blogger – it's really easy.
How much does it cost?
It's open source.
Do any of the orgs you have seen link to any fundraising efforts?
Shows Appropriate Infrastructure Development Group – with a donate now button.
Anyone who goes to the INFO project will add a comment and may or may not be posted.?
All comments are moderated and need to be approved.
The reason for the blog is the new communication – is it because you want to increase the awareness of your organization? What is the main reason for your blog?
In the case of the INFO project it ties in with our larger mandate of collecting and synthesizing information – provides a conversation with people we package our services for – boils down into a two way situation – the donation is not our mandate however many other blogs may go up for that purpose.
HIPNET M&E Guide: How can you get involved!
Beth Robinson, Family Health International
Background: About 5 years ago we were mandated to begin to look at ways each org. evaluated materials – we had to think about how to be systematic about identifying what we did has an impact. There are impact indicators, process indicators – very little 5 years ago about impact indicators for dissemination of information.
We collectively (HIPNet group) developed the guide, gathered indicators that existed, looked at best indicators in literature and came up with a prioritized structured set of indicators we could all use and track in our programs. There have been other surveys- many people make some attempt to find what publications are used for – we have pulled all that together and taken over a year to put together and launched at the GHC meeting
The abstract is the first major launch. We think it’s a tremendous resource and its as strong we can get it from all input from your orgs.
· What steps are there within own orgs. to facilitate using the guide? How might you approach anyone in M&E to begin using indicators? FHI has gone though a whole process of thinking how researchers can apply – what does it look like if you succeed in sharing information?
Impact indicators: Reach, Use, Usefulness, Collaboration/capacity building
We wanted to have a conversation on ways to get this integrated and used beginning with your own groups.
· (Peggy) If you look at table this is what we came up with at meeting and Beth and I came up with from the last meeting.
· We would like same list of public health schools from developing countries – we also printed out USAID contacts since we want to send out guide to people who work with USAID we want to get them to buy into using indicators. If you could give us any more information about people that work at USAID or any other donors or to get other donors to buy in.
(Beth) We want to continue with the collaborative model through which we developed guide. When you make a new book and present it it's just another announcement– we wanted to take an educational approach and send out email to quite a list of people with how each organization is using indicators. This is something we want to know you're interested in if feasible. We’re talking about 20 efforts to publicize this where we’ve included how the indicator has been used in field programs. If we continue to represent the guide as a group effort as it has been .
· If you could attend panel at GHC and bring questions to that
· Work on making sure this effort gets into the scientific literature, business literature on KM – I’d be interested in hearing if anyone of you have ideas to integrate in org or is it realistic. Is there a way we can help you and work with you to get it incorporated?
Lori: For those who haven’t seen it: The new pdf will be available when ready and I encourage you to print it, check it out .
Does this seem relevant? MSH has used several of the indicators. I think we have a decent amount of strength in a group. If all organizations state that they are using indicators they will become a professional norm – now if FHI researchers can't say which indicators they will use in their research the research will be denied.
We’re using the guide as an internal way to vet what we do.
At GHC we will hand out an Access database with terms, products, etc. of M&E Guide – we’re interesting in seeing how relevant it is and how we can support you in the introduction.
(Hugh)MEASURE has quite a good internal system of tracking publications – that’s where it kind of ends – there's an assumption that if the info is demanded and its out there those numbers justify – it would be very good if we go one stage further.
Beth: Much is built on MEASURE evaluation – have worked with all of you to make more practically. What does it look like to you to have information succeed, what indicates relevance? The other nice thing is it can be quantitative but it also has qualitative performance. But can also use qualitative information in these indicators – people won’t tell you if they don’t know if they’ve seen an impact – when you start training people internally to see that they're using this and they tell you, you can then document feasibility.
People like internal visibility and they should get it – i.e. I know what impact is and we should be observing it. Is the evaluation component working? That’s the type of culture and educational part of it we have tried to address.
Strength: However much you’re invested and please chip in with the things you think will advance the dissemination of the guide. We want a collective face on this and then over time as you have real experience we need some more concerted efforts about what’s really working, what the donors are paying attention to.
Steve Settimi: This has the ability to become a common platform for health information partners – once access software is distributed will have one common source. Hoping to become a norm in our field and share with other professional groups tracking these indicators.
HIPNet Library Mailing Update
Peggy D’Adamo, INFO Project
· Library mailing conducted in October and there were 41 materials from 6 different orgs listed here. Only English mailing done since no one sent anything in Spanish and French. Sent to 513 libraries in 72 countries.
· Asked if libraries wanted to have email address as part of mailing list and receive documentation once is received (elibraries@rhgateway.org).
· What are requirements? Ship to INFO and we put it together and send you the bill – something like 3.00/lb slightly higher since postage rates went up.
· Mailing List/List serve: passed out at last meeting – people were asked to make comments – FHI and Program Specialists at INFO came up with some – we deleted 8 that appeared to be defunct and added a few more. Will email to everyone list serve – if you see anything wrong or want to add any notes, topics, subscribers, etc. The ones that are new are shaded.
· List of things to do to promote new materials passed aground -Can add to this list and keep on HIPNet website and when someone new comes along can pass on this list. These are Peggy and Steve’s ideas and e-Granary is on here.
Addition to mailings: USAID has a mailing to mission about every quarter – send them materials by November 29 to make sure it is approved and will let you know how many copies need to be made.
The mailing may be of little use – want that information at the time they need it – maybe send a list quarterly publications and missions check off what they want – may save money, paper, etc.
Beth – More evidence that we are wasting the money by sending them things they don’t want. What’s a way to get past what we are doing?. If we could figure out who some of the key people are and then work with them as partners tell us how to do that – may be worth picking up again – if there are themes if there are collaborative interests – May be dome topical leaders and know who at USAID is involved with topic and then come back to HIPNET (i.e., malaria and AED to know who is involved at USIAD). Needs to be more detailed
Peggy: Make a list of all missions with websites and put keywords that they talk about with plans – try to find right person in DC who deals with missions.
Have Sandra contact missions to ask for a few words about each mission
HIFA 2015
Peggy D’Adamo, INFO Project
Many are on the email group. It is a very active group that talks about info needs of health workers but its scope is much larger. Their goal is to see an effort to heave health care info for all by 2015. 3 approaches:
-promote cooperation
-building a better picture of info needs of group of people
-figuring out how to meet needs more effectively
-promoting sustainable approaches to encourage HIFA
How can HIPNet contribute?
Many groups in HIPNet have done some survey of information needs in audience.
One of ideas we had was to write something up to summarize all that we have learned about audiences. We could contribute basic information individually (i.e. we did this survey, what did we find out) so our part could contribute to the larger picture. Our audiences may be very specific. Thought would see if anyone interesting – would be compiling something you have done to submit to group
Will send HIFAs goals – get back in touch with Peggy. Peggy will put you in touch with director or work together to submit as a group – having meeting in April.
Agenda items for next meetings
· What makes your search engine pick out your publication – website hits, evaluation – google analytics vs. Webtrends (get someone from google here!) See how to get your publications./orgs up there can have him come back.
· Looking at feasibility of taking themes we work on as groups – and seeing with all of us which emerge as common themes and see if there us some way to collectively to show our sponsors what progress what they are getting from their groups collectively (i.e. on any one subject how many hits collectively) can show impact with these things . Can write up mailings into scientific paper – get into as approach which shows process and process and activities. List 10 things we have done as a group
Attendance
Next meeting date:
Wednesday April 2, 2008
