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. NLP techniques were used to create informative document summaries for an extensive collection of grey literature on PH topics. The system was evaluated with PH workers using the critical incident technique in a two stage field evaluation to assess effectiveness in comparison with Google. Document summaries were found to be both helpful and accurate. Increased document collection size and enhanced result rankings improved search effectiveness from 28% to 55%. PHIS would work best in conjunction with Google or another broad coverage Web search engine when searching for documents and reports as opposed to local health data and primary disease information. PHIS could enhance both the quality and quantity of PH search results.

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%). Accuracy (46%), reputable source (30%), and currency of information (19%) were considered most critical for assessing information quality. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (80%) and state health department (60%) sites were used most commonly. These findings can be used to improve public health Web sites and support decision making in practice.

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. This paper summarizes the development of a model for representing gray literature documents concerning PH interventions. METHODS: The authors established a model-based approach for automatically analyzing and representing the PH gray literature through the evaluation of a corpus of PH gray literature from seven PH Websites. Input from fifteen PH professionals assisted in the development of the model and prioritization of elements for NLP extraction. RESULTS: Of 365 documents collected, 320 documents were used for analysis to develop a model of key text elements of gray literature documents relating to PH interventions. Survey input from a group of potential users directed the selection of key elements to include in the document summaries. CONCLUSIONS: A model of key elements relating to PH interventions in the gray literature can be developed from the ground up through document analysis and input from members of the PH workforce. The model provides a framework for developing a method to identify and store key elements from documents (metadata) as document surrogates that can be used for indexing, abstracting, and determining the shape of the PH gray literature.

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.