Digital Tools Adopted by Public Health Agencies to Support COVID-19 Case Investigation and Contact Tracing, United States, 2020-2021.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, public health agencies implemented an array of technologies and digital tools to support case investigation and contact tracing. Beginning in May 2020, the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials compiled information on digital tools used by its membership, which comprises 59 chief health officials from each of the 50 states, 5 US territories, 3 freely associated states, and the District of Columbia. This information was presented online through a publicly available technology and digital tools inventory.

A quasi-experimental text messaging trial to improve adolescent sexual and reproductive health and smoking knowledge in Indonesia.

Unlabelled: Background To evaluate the feasibility and acceptability of a text message intervention to improve young people's knowledge of sexual reproductive health (SRH) and harms related to smoking in Indonesia.

Methods: A quasi-experimental short message service (SMS) trial of young people aged 16-24 years receiving twice weekly SMS over a 10-week intervention period. Pre- and post-online demographic and risk behaviour surveys were used to assess changes in knowledge.

Public Health Quality Improvement Exchange: A Tool to Support Advancements in Public Health Practice.

Objectives: The Public Health Quality Improvement Exchange(PHQIX) is a free, openly available online community that supports public health practitioners in the rapidly evolving landscape of public health quality improvement (QI). This article's objective is to describe the user-centered development of PHQIX and its current content and examine how elements of a QI initiative may vary by an organization's characteristics or QI experience.

Methods: PHQIX was developed by taking a user-centered iterative design approach, seeking early and continued input from users to gather requirements for the website.

Synonym-Based Word Frequency Analysis to Support the Development and Presentation of a Public Health Quality Improvement Taxonomy.

Context: Researchers and analysts have not completely examined word frequency analysis as an approach to creating a public health quality improvement taxonomy.

Objective: To develop a taxonomy of public health quality improvement concepts for an online exchange of quality improvement work.

Design: We analyzed documents, conducted an expert review, and employed a user-centered design along with a faceted search approach to make online entries searchable for users.

Evaluation of a Quality Improvement Resource for Public Health Practitioners.

Objectives: Quality improvement is a critical mechanism to manage public health agency performance and to strengthen accountability for public funds. The objective of this study was to evaluate a relatively new quality improvement resource, the Public Health Quality Improvement Exchange (PHQIX), a free online communication platform dedicated to making public health quality improvement information accessible to practitioners.

Methods: We conducted an internet-based survey of registered PHQIX users (n = 536 respondents) in 2013 and key informant interviews with PHQIX frequent users (n = 21) in 2014, in the United States.

Use of mobile technology in a community mental health setting.

Introduction: mHealth holds promise in transforming care for people with serious mental illness (SMI) and other disadvantaged populations. However, information about the rates of smartphone ownership and usage of mobile health apps among people with SMI is limited. The objective of this research is to examine the current ownership, usage patterns, and existing barriers to mobile health interventions for people with SMI treated in a public sector community mental health setting and to compare the findings with national usage patterns from the general population.

What's Past is Prologue: A Scoping Review of Recent Public Health and Global Health Informatics Literature.

Objective: To categorize and describe the public health informatics (PHI) and global health informatics (GHI) literature between 2012 and 2014.

Methods: We conducted a semi-systematic review of articles published between January 2012 and September 2014 where information and communications technologies (ICT) was a primary subject of the study or a main component of the study methodology. Additional inclusion and exclusion criteria were used to filter PHI and GHI articles from the larger biomedical informatics domain.

Synonym-based word frequency analysis to support the development and presentation of a public health quality improvement taxonomy in an online exchange.

Word frequency analysis has not been fully explored as an input to public health taxonomy development. We used document analysis, expert review, and user-centered design to develop a taxonomy of public health quality improvement concepts for an online exchange of quality improvement work (www.phqix.

Building the foundations of an informatics agenda for global health - 2011 workshop report.

Strengthening the capacity of public health systems to protect and promote the health of the global population continues to be essential in an increasingly connected world. Informatics practices and principles can play an important role for improving global health response capacity. A critical step is to develop an informatics agenda for global health so that efforts can be prioritized and important global health issues addressed.

Reusable design: a proposed approach to Public Health Informatics system design.

Background: Since it was first defined in 1995, Public Health Informatics (PHI) has become a recognized discipline, with a research agenda, defined domain-specific competencies and a specialized corpus of technical knowledge. Information systems form a cornerstone of PHI research and implementation, representing significant progress for the nascent field. However, PHI does not advocate or incorporate standard, domain-appropriate design methods for implementing public health information systems.

Task analysis in action: the role of information systems in communicable disease reporting.

In order to improve the design of information systems for notifiable conditions reporting, it is essential to understand the role of such systems in public health practice. Using qualitative techniques, we performed a task analysis of the activities associated with notifiable conditions reporting at a large urban health department. We identified seventeen primary tasks associated with the use of the department's information system.

Using participant observation for organizational discovery and systems analysis: global AIDS program Uganda.

Recent scaling up of HIV/AIDS treatment at one of the Global AIDS Program's (GAP) major partner organizations required the CDC's informatics team in Uganda to develop a clinical information system during a time of significant growth and change within the organization. Analysis of system utilization revealed numerous discrepancies between system functionality and the workflow of the clinic it was designed for. Participant observation was an effective data collection method for documenting the impact of the clinical information system on the organization, and for assessing the suitability of the system for the intended clinic.