Developing a Public Health Vocabulary Community of Practice: Lessons Learned

Recognizing the need for new strategies to develop and adopt public health vocabulary standards, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) staff created a Public Health Vocabulary Community of Practice (PHVCoP). The PHVCoP was originally organized around the following goals for the Agency:  identify vocabulary development activities throughout the organization; openly share vocabulary work, educate members about the breadth of biomedical vocabulary standards; and coalesce around collaboration points and encourage standards adoption.  In opening up the Community to CDC's public health partners, goals were expanded to include sharing across US public health entities and exploring collaborations nationally. We describe the organizational process used, PHVCoP members, formalized interactions, ongoing support measures, first and second year results, community products and key lessons learned.  Based on this experience, we provide preparation and implementation steps for CoPs and describe organizational and personal benefits of CoP implementation. This presentation will demonstrate that the CoP model is another useful methodology in the standards development and adoption area.