Week 2: Data Sources recordings

Well, week 2 of the EBPH webinars has just come to a close. What a great group! Thanks for the questions. I've got some research to do (dang, homework!!!). Actually, the homework is pretty interesting.

For example, the Youth Risk Behavioral Surveillance System has data for Texas and Texas minus the Houston Independent School Districts. Why? And is the data for the HISD available separately? It turns out it is!! There is a page for local data with a link to Houston data.

Want to know more? The recordings are available online now from the two sessions if you'd like to take a listen. While I have the same agenda for both sessions, there will be a few unique tidbits in each session. For example, during the Thursday session we looked at pregnancy data from VitalWeb. Way cool, if you ask me.

Tuesday Data Sources recording
Thursday Data Sources recording

The sessions did refer to a couple of handouts (Census data, birth data, death data) so I wanted to be sure to include the link to those.

Lastly, thank you to the participants of these sessions who give me feedback, let me know when I can't be heard or the screen can't be seen! I've made some changes in how I do things to try and improve my performance; the feedback is absolutely essential! And thank you for questions! Keep them coming.

Next week, we'll look at research databases (i.e. journals articles and such) so we gonna have some fun! Hope you're looking forward to it as much as I am....

Determinants of health

During both webinars, I mentioned a couple of articles I'd read related to determinants of health. These particular articles were meaningful to me for different reasons. I wanted to share the citations with you so you can judge for yourself!



As I was developing CHARTing Health Information for Texas, I needed a framework for organizing the determinants of health. Someone referred me to this article:


Hillemeier,M.M.; Lynch,J.; Harper,S.; Casper,M. Measuring contextual characteristics for community health. Health Serv.Res. 38, (6 Pt 2), 1645-1717, 2003.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1475-6773.2003.00198.x

and it made so much sense to me! Their schema really helped me pull together all of the links I had into a cohesive format. At least, it was cohesive for me!

Another article I mentioned was one about the importance of African-American males completing high school to greatly reduce the risk of them entering the criminal justice system. I'm not wording it very well so here's the 1st sentence from the author's abstract, "This paper analyzes the relationship between levels of educational attainment and outcomes for African American males, in particular the likelihood of conflict with the criminal justice system. "

Here's the citation:
African-American Males: Education or Incarceration. By: Green, Robert L.. 1991 34 pp. (ED346184)

Lastly, I mentioned an analysis of research on various social determinants of health to determine if there was one determinant more influential than any others. According to this author, it's education! I still need to find the article but as soon as I do, I will post the citation here.

Happy weekend!

Xtreme logic models!

During the Thursday session, I mentioned a book by some fo the faculty here at the UTSPH. It's called "Planning HealthPromotion Programs : Intervention Mapping, 2nd Edition" by L. Kay Bartholomew, Guy S. Parcel, Gerjo Kok, and Nell H. Gottlieb. The title of the first edition was just plain "Intervention Mapping".

I'm really simplifying it by calling intervention mapping an "Xtreme logic model". Basically, they describe a systematic approach to intervention mapping using behavioral theories, data, and research to guide the processes. It's an amazing book and well worth the $$ spent on it.

In addition, they've made available an online resource:
http://www.sph.uth.tmc.edu/chppr/interventionmapping/

Lastly, Dr. Bartholomew offers a short course (face to face) a couple of times each year. I believe the next course is coming up soon!

NEW SHORT COURSE: Intervention Mapping: Developing and evaluating theory- and evidence-based programs for health education and health promotion(August 2008 and April 2009)

Webinars have started!

I've finally begun a series of webinars on evidence-based public health and I am pretty darn excited! The first group met Tuesday (we will meet for 3 more Tuesdays); I have another group meeting today. Each session is 2 hours long. Oh, and so I don't forget:

This project has been funded in part with Federal funds from the National Library of Medicine National lnstitutes of Health, Department of Health and Human Services, under Contract No NO1-LM-6-3505.

I was able to hire 2 awesome interns this semester, one from the University of North Texas and one from Texas Woman's University. Both are studying to be librarians (I'd written a stipend into my project to pay for library school students to work with me.)

And now, I'm going to be really brave and post a link to the recording:
Week 1: EBPH Workshop Agenda and Course Overview (Tuesday recording)
Week 1: EBPH Workshop Agenda and Course Overview (Thursday recording)

It's long-- 90 minutes or so. Next week will be 120 minutes.

That's it, I guess. I have another session this afternoon so I better make sure I'm ready!

July workshops starting!

If you're taking the webinars starting in July, welcome!



I taught a 3-hour version of this workshop at TPHA in San Antonio (2008). We really rushed through everything-- speed of light. This will a little more leisurely but there is still quite a bit to cover.



We will start with this post:

http://ebph.blogspot.com/2008/02/welcome-to-evidence-based-public-health.html



and work our way through the resources. I've set the archives to show oldest first which means you'll see them in the order of the class.

I encourage you to review the blog, post comments, suggestions, and questions. If there is a site I need to add, tell me!