Creating a Virtual Community to Move Cancer Control Research Into Practice: The Cancer Control P.L.A.N.E.T. Step 2 Experience

Background:    The Cancer Control P.L.A.N.E.T. (Plan, Link, Act, Network with Evidence-based Tools) portal uses a five step approach that provides access to data and resources that can help planners, program staff, and researchers to design, implement, adapt, and evaluate evidence-based cancer control programs.  Based on evaluation feedback, users have not utilized Step 2 (formerly "Identify Potential Partners"), and have reccomended that we create a more dynamic and engaging communication platform by implementing a virtual community of practice on Step 2.     

Program background: By providing access to Web-based resources, P.L.A.N.E.T. users can assess the cancer and/or risk factor burden within a given state; identify potential partner organizations that may already be working with high-risk populations; understand the current research findings and recommendations; access and download evidence-based programs and products and find guidelines for planning and evaluation.  In order to expand the capacity of P.L.A.N.E.T. to engage researchers and cancer control practitioners, the National Cancer Institute undertook a multi-phase approach to build a community of practice while engaging the potential community around a series of “cyber-seminars” designed to address areas of interest and initiate interactions between researchers and practitioners.   This presentation will provide an overview on using virtual communities of practice as a method of public health practice, present the revised Cancer Control P.L.A.N.E.T. Step 2, discuss user testing findings, evaluation outcomes and dissemination efforts, and raise awareness about the educational resources that are available through NCI.  

Evaluation Methods and Results:  A qualitative meeting survey is currently in place to evaluate each cyber-seminar.  To date, we have received positive feedback from participants and some excellent suggestions for future direction/topics.  In addition, we are currently conducting user testing to evaluate features for the virtual community of practice, such as blogs, discussion boards, user profiles, videos, etc.  We Results of this user testing will be available to share at the conference.   

Conclusions:  In order to build a virtual community of practice you first need to engage your audience and build trust.  We are using the cyber-seminar series as a first step towards building this community and will then test several feature with our community/target audience.  

Implications for research and/or practice:  Many federal agencies and organization are trying harness the power of social networking to create communities with shared interests and goals.  This project will allow us to share our experience developing, implementing, and evaluating a virtual community of practice with others working on similar projects.