Adapting the AMIA-OHSU 10x10 Course For a Public Health Informatics Audience

The American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA) 10x10 Program is designed to provide a broad introduction to biomedical informatics for those in health-related professions so they can participate knowledgeably in informatics initiatives that improve individual health, health care, and public health. The initial offerings of the 10x10 course have been focused toward clinical informatics, with the 10x10 moniker standing for the goal of training 10,000 clinicians, i.e., one physician and one nurse in each hospital, in biomedical informatics by the year 2010. Our offering is an augmentation of an introductory graduate-level course in biomedical informatics. The course uses teaching modalities are all asynchronous and include reading assignments, voice-over-Powerpoint lectures, threaded discussions, and self-assessment quizzes. Besides creating the multimedia lectures, the faculty participate in the threaded discussions. An in-person session at the end of the course brings together all participants for additional learning as well as socialization with their new colleagues.

In 2007, AMIA received funding from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to adapt existing clinical informatics-oriented 10x10 courses to public health professionals. A first cohort of individuals enrolled in early 2008. For this initial course, the primary instructor (WH) recruited three public health informaticians (JR, JAM, RG) to orient the course content toward a public health professional audience. The major changes made to the course included modifying the on-line discussion questions from the existing units to focus more on public health topics and perspectives and adding a unit specifically focused on public health informatics.

In this presentation, we will describe our experience in adapting the clinical informatics-oriented course for a public health professional audience. We will describe the specific changes and additions made to the curriculum as well as student and faculty perceptions of its quality, impact, and usability.