Information needs of public health practitioners: a review of the literature by Jennifer Ford and Helena Korjonen.
Abstract:
Objective
To review published literature covering the information needs of public health practitioners and papers highlighting gaps and potential solutions in order to summarise what is already known about this population and models tested to support them.
Methods
The search strategy included bibliographic databases LISTA, LISA, PubMed and Web of Knowledge. The results of this literature review were used to create two tables displaying published literature.
Findings
The literature highlighted that some research has taken place into different public health subgroups with consistent findings. Gaps in information provision have also been identified by looking at the information services provided.
Conclusion
There is a need for further research into information needs in subgroups of public health practitioners as this group is diverse, has different needs and needs varying information. Models of informatics that can support public health must be developed and published so that the public health information community can share experiences and solutions and begin to build an evidence-base to produce superior information systems for the goal of a healthier society.
One of the key points for topic map advocates:
The need for improved indexing of public health information was highlighted by Alpi, discussing the role of expert searching in public health information retrieval.2 Existing taxonomies such as the MeSH system used by PubMed/Medline are perceived as inadequate for indexing the breadth of public health literature and are seen to be too clinically focussed.2 There is also concern at the lack of systematic indexing of grey literature.2 Given that more than one study has highlighted the high level of use of grey literature by public health practitioners, this lack of indexing should be of real concern to public health information specialists and practitioners. LaPelle also found that participants in her research had experienced difficulties with search terms for public health which is indicative of the current inadequacy of public health indexing.1
Other opportunities for topic maps are apparent in the literature review but inadequate indexing should be topic maps bread and butter.