Communities of Practice Approach for PHIN: Update

At last year’s PHIN Conference, attendees were introduced to the Communities of Practice (CoP) approach for PHIN by hearing from experts in the field, participating in a CoP workshop, and participating in kickoff sessions of communities focused on domain areas key to electronic information exchange across the public health and clinical care sectors. Since then, some of these PHIN CoPs have hit the ground running, some have first struggled and then evolved into effective collaborative communities, one has not taken root, and others have organically emerged as new PHIN CoPs and immediately become productive.  The PHIN Communities of Practice Council has brought together leaders from these CoPs to identify and begin synergistic work across Communities and to take on the challenge of communicating CoP work with the PHIN Community and the larger public health informatics arena. 
Nurturing and supporting all of this work, the Communities of Practice Program (CoPP) at CDC located within the National Center for Public Health Informatics has provided the leadership and resources to facilitate, communicate, educate, train, and evaluate these communities of practice efforts for PHIN.  To monitor Program objectives and mitigate risks, respond to PHIN Community stakeholder needs, and efficiently and effectively utilize all resources, the CoPP has continued to explore collaborative models across government and within the private sector. The CoPP has identified CoP good practices relevant for implementation within the PHIN Community to ensure that this investment in public health informatics is robust, inclusive, accessible, and sustainable. In this session, attendees will hear about the specific strategies being implemented in year 2 of the program, including the implementation of social collaboration tools and the expansion and solidification of the communities network within PHIN and across the broader public health informatics landscape.