Framing Public Health and Pharmacy

This chapter incorporates a number of global perspectives of pharmacy and public health, including international perspectives (e.g., World Health Organization, macro-level), regional perspectives (e.g., European Union, meso-level), and national (e.g., country, micro-level) perspectives. This chapter provides a broader understanding of how issues in pharmacy and public health are framed and reframed as the field moves from a national understanding of pharmacy and public health to broader regional and global understandings. It also shows show there are significant commonalities and differences in the practice, education, and research in the disciplines and careers of pharmacy and public health. Topics covered include integrated delivery of health care, preventive health services, public–private sector partnerships, global health, public health engagement, public health surveillance, public health practice, and public health systems research.

Participatory public health systems research: Value of community involvement in a study series in mental health emergency preparedness

Background: Concerns have arisen over recent years about the absence of empirically derived evidence on which to base policy and practice in the public health system, in general, and to meet the challenge of public health emergency preparedness, in particular. Related issues include the challenge of disaster-caused, behavioral health surge, and the frequent exclusion of populations from studies that the research is meant to aid.Objective: To characterize the contributions of nonacademic collaborators to a series of projects validating a set of interventions to enhance capacity and competency of public mental health preparedness planning and response.Methods: Setting(s): Urban, suburban, and rural communities of the state of Maryland and rural communities of the state of Iowa. Participants: Study partners and participants (both of this project and the studies examined) were representatives of academic health centers (AHCs), local health departments (LHDs), and faith-based organizations (FBOs) and their communities. Procedures: A multiple-project, case study analysis was conducted, that is, four research projects implemented by the authors from 2005 through 2011 to determine the types and impact of contributions made by nonacademic collaborators to those projects. The analysis involved reviewing research records, conceptualizing contributions (and providing examples) for government, faith, and (nonacademic) institutional collaborators.Results: Ten areas were identified where partners made valuable contributions to the study series; these “value-areas” were as follows: 1) leadership and management of the projects; 2) formulation and refinement of research topics, aims, etc; 3) recruitment and retention of participants; 4) design and enhancement of interventions; 5) delivery of interventions; 6) collection, analysis, and interpretation of data; 7) dissemination of findings; 8) ensuring sustainability of faith/government preparedness planning relationships; 9) optimizing scalability and portability of the model; and 10) facilitating translational impact of study findings.Conclusions: Systems-based partnerships among academic, faith, and government entities offer an especially promising infrastructure for conducting participatory public health systems research in domestic emergency preparedness and response.

How Can We Strengthen the Evidence Base in Public Health Preparedness?

ABSTRACTThe lack of frequent real-world opportunities to study preparedness for large-scale public health emergencies has hindered the development of an evidence base to support best practices, performance measures, standards, and other tools needed to assess and improve the nation’s multibillion dollar investment in public health preparedness. In this article, we argue that initial funding priorities for public health systems research on preparedness should focus on using engineering-style methods to identify core preparedness processes, developing novel data sources and measures based on smaller-scale proxy events, and developing performance improvement approaches to support the translation of research into practice within the wide variety of public health systems found in the nation. (Disaster Med Public Health Preparedness. 2008;2:247–250)

Public health systems research: the state of the field

Public health infrastructure provides the building blocks required for the system to achieve public health goals. A systems approach to public health has been suggested as a means to tackle persistent and emerging problems. Systems and infrastructure are attracting increased research attention. A review of the Australian and international literature suggests an absence of empirical evidence about how the system and its component parts does, or should, work and highlights some of the difficulties associated with generating such evidence. It also indicates there is significant scope for further research.