...and PHQIX is Live!!!

Today is the official public launch of the Public Health Quality Improvement Exchange! 

Whether or not you're here with us at APHA, please check out the site and let us know what you think. 

We won't be posting any new activity here, so bookmark or favorite the new site www.phqix.org!

PHQIX Update

Over the past few months, the PHQIX Team has been busy preparing initial content for the PHQIX site, which launches  during the APHA conference in late October! Leading up to the launch, we are working with our user groups to refine the site and make sure that it meets all of their expectations. Their input has been an essential part of our design process.

One exciting aspect of the site will be video profiles of public health QI initiatives. We will highlight a new initiative every six months or so.  The first video, which was filmed this week, highlights a local initiative to expedite STD reporting to facilitate treatment and interrupt disease transmission.

Meanwhile, we are preparing for APHA in late October, where we will set up our conference booth for the first time!  We’ll have some fun freebies and activities to engage participants, both in-person and via social media.  Hopefully you will join us there and/or stay tuned on twitter.

Our twitter account is @PublicHealthQIX and the hashtag we use when we talk about the project is #PHQIX.  Please follow us on twitter!

The first meeting of the PHQIX Expert Panel!

In order to ensure that the exchange is a huge success, PHQIX has our very own Expert Panel (EP)! That’s right- we have 11 of the leading quality improvement (QI) experts guiding every step of the way.  The responsibility of the EP is to provide advice and counsel to the project team on key activities to be undertaken by the project, to help engage the Public Health Community in participating in the Practice Exchange, and to review QI submissions for posting on the Practice Exchange.  The EP is made up of representatives of entities, government, non-government, and academia with in-depth knowledge of QI in public health.  The EP include the following QI experts: Les Beitsch, Chris Bujak, Jim Butler, Cindan Gizzi, Grace Gorenflo, Louise Kent,  Joe Kyle, Kusuma Madamala, Joyce Marshall, Marni Mason, and Jack Moran.

Our Expert Panel met for the first time in Portland, OR at the NNPHI Open Forum Meeting.  The meeting gave us a chance to connect in person and discuss various topics related to the project. First we briefed the Expert Panel on the project vision, structure, activities, the user centered design approach, and the design concept for the PHQIX website.   The bulk of the meeting was spent working in small groups discussing the submission workflow and submission fields for the site.  One of the group activities was determining the process for submitting a QI initiative for posting on PHQIX.  We worked through the process from the time a submitter logs on to the site to the time their initiative is approved and posted on PHQIX.  The other EP group discussed the submission template, which is essentially the form which one will complete to submit a QI initiative for approval. In this breakout session, the Expert Panel taught us about QI and provided us with invaluable feedback on the data elements which are necessary to collect to ensure that PHQIX is useful for the public health community.  Among their many helpful suggestions, the EP members stressed the importance of collecting metrics. They also gave us ideas about how they would like to be able to tag parts of submissions with keywords.

We are so grateful that the EP members have agreed to assist us on this important project and are looking forward to working with this dynamic group for the next two years!

Our User Group Convenes In-Person for the First Time!

To develop the PHQIX website, we are executing a user-centered design process. This means we involve potential users throughout every stage of our software design work. This way, we include user perspectives right from the beginning of the design process, and the end results reflects their preferences, work habits, and values.  We selected users from state, local, and tribal public health organizations to form our “User Group,” (UG) which convened for the first time in Portland, OR at the NNPHI Open Forum Meeting last month.

Mark Koyanagi presenting at the User Group meeting.

The day’s activities included discussions and group activities focused on the use of PHQIX, and how the design of the online tool could support the exchange’s goals and bolster QI efforts in public health. We presented the group with storyboards explaining the exchange’s feature and the group offered feedback to help us refine our ideas.

We identified several new design concepts during the UG meeting. This would be a very long post if we included them all! The recommendations generally fell into a few large categories, including:

• New items to add to our search taxonomy (which organizes the search strategy of the site)
• New communication features that will improve connectivity amongst users
•  Lots of recommendations for the submission process, which site participants will go through when they want to submit one of their QI projects.

Marisa McLaughlin, Julie Sharp, Brian Johnson and Ty Kane at the User Group session.

We’d like to thank our UG members for their enthusiasm and feedback at the meeting, and we look forward to our future work together!

Public Health Vs. Voodoo Doughnuts

We had a great trip to Oregon this week to meet with the PHQIX User Group and Expert Panel.  With an eye for individual and public health, we supplemented healthy meals with Portland’s infamous Voodoo Doughnuts.

Arguably, we magnified the negative effects of the doughnuts by spending a few hours sitting down with each group talking about PHQIX, but we’re pretty sure the sugar contributed to the interesting conversations and great feedback we received on how to build the exchange.

The following day, at the NNPHI Open Forum Meeting, Pam Russo from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (doughnut PHQIX funder) talked about the history leading up to what we now know as PHQIX.  Even though the doughnuts were long gone, Pam was able to inspire the meeting participants to chant PHQIX (pronounced “P” “H” “kicks”) a few times.  Jamie Pina, the PHQIX Project Director, followed with an overview of what the project aims to accomplish.

We’ll follow up with a more serious post next week, but meanwhile, feel free to check out our photo album.  You’ll find our meeting participants in action, both at the meetings and out and about in Portland!

NNPHI Open Forum Meeting

We are getting ready for the Open Forum Meeting next week in Portland, Oregon.  We hope you’ll say hello if you spot us there!

We’re arriving a day early to host the first PHQIX Expert Panel and User Group meetings the day before the NNPHI meeting starts. 

The Expert Panel will offer insight and guidance for the initial design of the practice exchange website, particularly with developing the taxonomy of quality improvement elements to be collected. Ultimately, they will review incoming submissions and be available to provide their expertise to the PHQIX community.

The User Group (we sometimes refer to it as the User Panel) is the core of our user-centered design process.  User Group members will provide input to the initial design of the PHQIX website, including identifying desired website features.

We hope to see you on Tuesday (if not before!) at the NNPHI Open Forum Meeting!

Announcing the Public Health Quality Improvement Exchange!

We’ve been deliberating over names for this effort and finally found something that sticks: the Public Health Quality Improvement Exchange.  The acronym is PHQIX (with the QIX pronounced ‘kicks’).  Now we’re playing around with branding: logos, tag lines, and that kind of thing.  For example, will it be PH QIX, PHQIX, or phQIX?

Let us know if you have ideas!  Meanwhile, we’ll forge ahead and post updates as we have them.

See You in Omaha?

By the way, if you will be in Omaha, Nebraska next week for the CSTE Conference, we’d love to meet you!  Jamie Pina (PHQIX Project Director), Kelley Chester (PHQIX Community Engagement Lead ), and I will be there.  I’ve included our pictures so you have a shot at recognizing us in person.  It would be great to meet you!

Name Me!

Thanks to Sherry Reynolds (@cascadia) and Margalit Gur-Arie (@margalitgurarie) for getting us started as we rename the ‘Quality Improvement in Public Health Practice Exchange,’ alternately known as the ‘Public Health Quality Improvement Practice Exchange’!  Either way, the name is quite a mouthful!

Here is what we have come up with so far:

·          HealthWorks

·          PublicHealthWorks

·          Public Health Improvement Exchange (PHIE)

·          Public Health Improvement Network (PHIN)

What do you think of the possibilities we have so far?  What names would you add to this list?  For more information about the project, click here.

Quality Improvement Strategies in Public Health

We recently began the process of building a “practice exchange,” a place for public health practitioners to find best practices related to quality improvement in public health. We’ll be employing user-centered design principles as we build the exchange, so we welcome your ideas and feedback throughout this process.

Our team will be in Portland, Oregon next month for the Open Forum Meeting for Quality Improvement in Public Health. This is the first time the meeting is open to the public and the registration fee is modest. If you are planning on attending, or if this is the first time you’ve heard about it and are thinking about it, we’d love to meet you while we’re in Portland!

Get Involved!

The full name of the Practice Exchange, Quality Improvement in Public Health Practice Exchange, is quite a mouthful, so we are crowdsourcing the name of the Practice Exchange.  This means you can help name it!  For more information visit http://qiexchangesandbox.blogspot.com/ or email Cindy Throop at cthroop@rti.org.