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Grace and Harold Sewell Memorial Fund
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The goal of The Grace and Harold Sewell Memorial Fund, Inc. (the Fund) is to increase librarians’ identification with medical and health care professionals. Medicine for the 21st Century underlines the key role of information resources in raising the quality of health care.(1) Librarians experienced in managing knowledge and teaching informatics can supply quality information by becoming ongoing members of the health care team. Immersion in the health care environment is necessary for librarians to understand how health care professionals solve problems individually and through consensus.
Learning Partnerships Successfully Completed!!!! Group Health Community Foundation and Public Health - Seattle/King County in association with University of Washington Health Sciences Libraries, were chosen to host Sewell Fund Learning Partnerships during 2005/2006 by Sewell Fund Trustees. These organizations teamed with librarians Carol Cahill and Ann Madhavan, respectively, to pursue projects benefiting the host organization. The purpose of the Learning Partnerships is to place experienced librarians within leading health care organizations in order for both partners to gain a better understanding of how best information sciences can be effectively applied in each environment. The Fund believes that this experience will facilitate a bridging of cultures resulting in a more creative and effective application of information science in the health care arena. Keep reading for an update on the Learning Partnerships! ==================================== Carol Cahill, information services manager for the City of Port Townsend Library, joined a Group Health team to develop a methodology to identify, track and communicate about community benefit activities performed by Group Health Cooperative, a large membership-based HMO headquartered in Seattle. Ms. Cahill, in addition to general librarian work has also served as a research analyst and librarian for the former Puget Sound Health Systems Agency and received her MLS in 1977 from the University of Washington. Carol Cahill’s fellowship at Group Health Community Foundation focused on the Community Benefit program for Group Health Cooperative. To maintain tax-exempt status, nonprofit health care organizations must show how they benefit the communities they serve, including promoting health and extending care to vulnerable populations. Carol did extensive research about health services, looking at published literature in health care, philanthropy, law, tax policy and sociology. She developed a framework for reporting on Group Health’s 2005 Community Benefit activities, and designed a database to facilitate tracking and reporting information in the future. One of the goals of the project was to contribute to strategic planning for community benefit, and Carol provided background information as well as reviews of the literature and a position paper on Community Benefit planning. She also set up a cooperative-wide staff intranet site for Community Benefit. Over the Learning Partnership, Carol has come to deeply appreciate the vision of Winifred Sewell in establishing this Learning Partnership, and is very grateful for the opportunity to become a colleague of the evaluators and program planners at the Group Health Community Foundation. ==================================== Ann Madhavan, a 2004 graduate of Drexel University with a MSLIS, worked with a large public health agency serving Washington State's most populous county and the University of Washington's Health Sciences Libraries to connect its information resources to the knowledge needs of health department workers. Ms. Madhavan had been working as a technical information specialist for ECRI, a non profit health services research organization in Pennsylvania and has worked in other health related fields and as an occupational therapist. Ann Madhavan has completed her fellowship with Public Health Seattle & King County in association with the University of Washington Health Sciences Libraries. She planned and implemented a digital library for the public health department workforce.
The online library, which includes access to both free and fee-based
resources, was launched in June 2006 and can be viewed at:
http://www.metrokc.gov/health/library/
Visitors to the digital library, which resides on PHSKC’s Internet website, are able to explore a variety of resources geared to public health, including bibliographic databases, topic oriented websites, links to evidence-based public health, and guidelines/best practices websites. The library also provides staff with information regarding how to access restricted electronic journals, document delivery services, and library services specific to the department. Ann anticipates that digital library and document delivery user statistics will help her to determine how to better meet the information needs of health jurisdictions across Washington State. She has obtained funding to remain at PHSKC post-fellowship and is very thankful for the wonderful opportunity the Sewell Learning Partnership has given her to expand her horizons and contribute to the field. ==================================== The Sewell Fund support covered salary and incidental expenses for these twelve-month Learning Partnership fellowships. The Fund hopes to present their findings from this inaugural year of Learning Partnerships to both health sciences audiences as well as to library and information sciences practitioners. The Grace & Harold Sewell Memorial Fund was established in 2001 by Winifred Sewell in honor of her parents for whom the Fund is named. Win spent her career as a pharmaceutical/medical librarian and was devoted to advancing the field of health sciences librarianship. She created the Fund to expand the connection and effectiveness of working relationships between health sciences librarians and the medical, pharmaceutical, health care and public health professionals they serve.
Two eminent health organizations, based in Seattle, were selected for the 2005 inauguration of Sewell Learning Partnerships. These host organizations are leaders respectively in health-related research, direct care, and public health programming. Not only do they provide a dynamic, cutting edge environment in which to learn and contribute, but they also each will benefit significantly from the placement of a skilled and well-educated librarian. Note that additional detailed information from the host's proposal is available by clicking on the link at the end of each description below. For additional information about each host, go to each organization’s website. 1. Group
Health Cooperative (GHC),
www.ghc.org and its Group Health Community
Foundation (GHCF),
www.ghcfoundation.org. GHC is a
consumer-governed, not-for-profit health care system serving more than 540,000
members in Washington and Idaho. GHCF is GHC’s philanthropic arm and shares
GHC’s commitment to improving health and well-being in the entire community.
Through the Learning Partnership project, GHC/GHCF developed a
mechanism to improve the design, implementation, and evaluation of the
strategies it uses to benefit the broader community.
Project objectives included understanding
benchmarks used by other health care organizations to guide and assess their
community benefit plans; review of GHC’s current and past community benefit
activities; assessment of the intersection of community needs and GHC
capacities; and, development of a monitoring system to improve GHCF’s ability to
evaluate and report on the progress and success of its community benefit
activities. 2. Public Health-Seattle & King County, www.metrokc.gov and University of Washington Health Sciences Library, http://healthlinks.washington.edu This Learning Partnership project was a joint effort between these allied organizations focusing on improving PHSKC’s access to and use of scientific information in the planning and implementation of public health programs. PHSKC is a department of King County government, serving the greater Seattle metropolitan area within Washington State. Their mission is to achieve and sustain healthy people and healthy communities throughout King County by providing public health services that promote health and prevent disease. PHSKC consists of seven divisions and maintains twenty-five operating sites, offering a broad range of clinical and prevention oriented services. The UW Health Sciences Libraries consist of the Health Sciences Library and Information Center at the UW Health Sciences Center and two branch libraries – one at Harborview Medical Center and one at the School of Social Work. The Health Sciences Libraries support faculty, staff, and students in the schools of dentistry, medicine, nursing, pharmacy, public health, and social work, and affiliated centers and programs throughout the state and region. The UW HSL is the major health sciences library in the northwest. Anticipated Outcomes from our Learning Partnerships
(1) Institute of Medicine. Crossing the quality chasm: a new health system for the 21st century. [Web document]. Washington, DC; National Academy Press, 2001. http://www.nap.edu/books/0309072808/html/). (2) Davidoff E, Florance V. The informationist: a new health profession? [editorial] Ann Int Med 2000 Jun 20;132(12):996-8. (3) Rankin JA, Grefsheim SF, Canto, CC. The emerging informationist specialty: a systematic review of the literature. J Med Libr Assoc 2008 Jul;96(3):194-206. |
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