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| Online tutorial screen shot |
The online tutorial “from Evidence to Practice: Using a Systematic Approach to Address Disparities in Health Outcomes Web site” at http://www.ebph.org uses an interactive tutorial format to teach the first four steps of the evidence-based public health practice process. This tutorial reviews the steps to implementing an evidence-based approach to a public health issue using the scenario of a county that wants to apply for a grant to improve its high infant mortality rate. This online tutorial is funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Assessment Initiative, the CDC's Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System, and the New York State Department of Health. |
| Holly Tutko (left) at her poster session in Philly |
User's role The user plays the role of the deputy commissioner and grantwriter working with a county maternal and child health coalition to: develop an initial statement of the issue, examine data to understand the county’s high infant mortality rate and existing literature for what is known about factors associated with poor birth outcomes, clarify the root causes and consequences of the issue by comparing data for the county to the literature, search for and prioritize potential interventions. HIGXYZ28HIGZYX This online tutorial possesses many convenient features to facilitate learning. The tutorial is designed so that a user can stop at any point and return to the tutorial where s/he left, allows the user to “drop” pages of information into a folder for easy access at a later time, provides “real time” information and constructive feedback to help the user think through decisions, requires the user work with a community coalition to address the problem (how most public health improvement work is structured) and provides a dynamic learning experience since the decisions the user makes effects how the course unfolds.
Opportunities to enhance website A few opportunities to enhance the website exist. Since the tutorial is released for review through Feb. 26, 2006, technical kinks are still being identified and addressed (hence, the Web site includes the opportunity for users to provide feedback). The Web site does not cover the last few steps of the evidence-based public health practice process of action planning and evaluation. Perhaps in the future, links to a couple of useful resources on action planning and evaluation could be added to complete user learning. The website does take a block of time to complete, however the ability to stop and pick up the tutorial at a later point helps to address this issue.
Given the hectic schedules of public health practitioners, if possible, it may be useful to build in a feature to send a message to a user who has not completed the entire tutorial and has not logged into the website in a while to encourage him/her to revisit the tutorial. The Using a Systematic Approach to Address Disparities in Health Outcomes tutorial provides a vehicle for busy public health practitioners to learn about evidence-based decision making in public health at a time and place convenient for them. Its interactive case study approach takes into account that adults grasp concepts best by actually doing them. It is well worth a visit to this Web site at http://www.ebph.org!