Monday, October 18, 2004 - 10:35 AM
1

All Kids Count Connections : A Community of Practice for State and Local Health Departments Integrating Child Health Information Systems

BACKGROUND:
All Kids Count Connections is a community of practice funded by The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Comprised of members representing 11 state and local health departments integrating immunization registries with other child health information systems, AKC Connections supports knowledge sharing, peer-to-peer learning, and collaborative problem solving among public health professionals across the country.

OBJECTIVE:
Facilitate a community of practice to bring together geographically distributed health departments working on similar integration projects in an environment of mutual trust, support and collaboration. Enable special projects to demonstrate and document “best practices”, advancing national progress of child health information systems integration.

METHOD:
Apply the concept of community of practice, long used in industry and other sectors, to public health information systems development. Combine face-to-face meetings, site visits, conference calls, and virtual communication allowing members to better understand each other’s integration projects and strategies, learn from each other’s successes and failures, and work collaboratively on solutions to integration-specific problems.

RESULT:
Members of AKC Connections valued the community of practice for accelerating the progress of their integration efforts, enabling networking, gaining in-depth knowledge of other integration projects through site visits, and supporting the research and products published in the community’s Creating a Road Map: Sharing Knowledge About Integrating Child Health Information Systems , Volumes One and Two.

CONCLUSION:
AKC Connections demonstrated that communities of practice are a good solution to help geographically distributed public health agencies navigate the technical and non-technical challenges faced by information systems integration projects.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES:
Understand how a community of practice can be a valuable asset to advancing the progress of public health information systems projects. Gain knowledge of findings from AKC Connections special projects.


Web Page: www.phii.org

  Recorded presentation

See more of Connections: Experiences from All Kids Count's Communities of Practice
See more of The 2004 Immunization Registry Conference