From Evidence to Practice: Addressing Disparities in Birth Outcomes, the new course released by the New York State Department of Health and the University at Albany School of Public Health, is for practitioners who make decisions and take action about issues that affect the public’s health. The issue of disparities in birth outcomes illustrates the process of using evidence-based decision making to reduce these disparities.

This free course at <http://www.ebph.org> was developed with support from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Assessment Initiative and the Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System Program, the New York State Department of Health, and the New York - New Jersey Public Health Training Center.

A recent report by the organization Save the Children highlighted the distressing fact that the United States has among the worst neonatal mortality rates in the developed world.  This report also found higher neonatal death rates among minorities and disadvantaged groups living in the United States. For black Americans, the neonatal mortality rate of 9.3 per 1,000 live births is more than double that of whites at 3.9 per 1,000 live births, and Hispanics or Latinos, with 3.8 deaths per 1,000 live births.

From Evidence to Practice is an engaging, self-paced online course that teaches the evidence-based public health decision-making process by immersing learners into a realistic situation. In the course, learners are asked to use the evidence-based framework to research and identify an intervention strategy that addresses disparities in birth outcomes in a local community. Learners must find and interpret data that helps to accurately describe the problem, review scientific evidence for effective interventions, judge their applicability to the community, and defend their choices. The course outcome - securing funding for interventions chosen - depends on sound evidence-based decision-making. As learners work through their assigned tasks in the course, feedback alerts them to how well they have understood the material presented. Upon finishing the course, which takes about three hours, users may print out a certificate of completion or receive continuing education credits. The course is approved for continuing education credits for health education, nursing and medical education.

More information is available at <http://ebph.org/overview.cfm>.