Public Health Desktop and Health Knowledge Websites

From the ever-resourceful Salim Vohra:

Some of you may have already heard of these. I have looked through and registered on both sites and they are very useful both from a HIA and a broader public health perspective.

Public Health Desktop www.ic.nhs.uk (anyone can register, generates a public health or other speciality feed like Google Reader/Netvibes etc)

Part of the work of The Information Centre (for health and social care). The feed I like the most aside from those pointing out datasets is the health news RSS 'Behind the Headlines'. The news articles are framed with these seven themes: the story, where did the story come from, what kind of research was this, what did the research involve, what were the basic results, how did the researchers interpret the results, conclusion (discussion of the quality of the research and the implications of the findings if any). An example is a recent piece about windfarms 'Wind turbine sound 'needs research''

http://www.nhs.uk/news/2010/01january/pages/wind-turbine-sound-and-health.aspx

Health Knowledge www.healthknowledge.org.uk (anyone can register - registration allows access to additional Faculty of Public Health exam resources and tutor notes for the slides and workbooks on the site)

Developed by PHAST (Public Health Action Support Team) and Department of Health. This site has a developing free Public Health Textbook and a set of interactive e-learning and interactive learning modules as well as some teaching resources on HIA and wider public health issues. There is an additional separate login procedure for the interactive learning modules (the site recommends using the same login for the main website and the interactive modules).

An example I found a really nice diagram in a presentation on Wider Determinants of Health and Wellbeing that I'll borrow for my teaching work (Slide 26, a person with the wider determinants like hair around their head walking along and being affected by the environment, psycho-social and biological influences and time to lead to health outcomes at http://www.healthknowledge.org.uk/teaching/index_healthbiz.asp )