Development and evaluation of a prototype search engine to meet public health information needs.

Grey literature is information not available through commercial publishers. It is a sizable and valuable information source for public health (PH) practice but because documents are not formally indexed the information is difficult to locate. Public Health Information Search (PHIS) was developed to address this problem.

Access and use of the Internet for health information seeking: a survey of local public health professionals in the northwest.

We conducted an on-line survey of 164 local health departments' staff in five Northwestern states in 2006-2007 to assess Internet access and use by staff. Most (96%) respondents had full-time access to their own worksite computer. The most important selection criterion for selecting Web sites was credibility of the sponsoring organization (55%).

Modeling public health interventions for improved access to the gray literature.

Objective: Much of the useful information in public health (PH) is considered gray literature, literature that is not available through traditional, commercial pathways. The diversity and nontraditional format of this information makes it difficult to locate. The aim of this Robert Wood Johnson Foundation-funded project is to improve access to PH gray literature reports through established natural language processing (NLP) techniques.

Modeling interventions to improve access to public health information.

In a Robert Wood Johnson funded project, we established a model-based means for automatically analyzing and representing grey literature that reports on public health (PH) interventions. We summarize the development of an intervention model for public health documents and provide a project update on the implementation of natural language technology to improve access to difficult to find public health information.