Poison Center Community of Practice: Collaboration Between Poison Centers and Health Departments

Law, Royal

Key Objectives:

To provide an overview of activities and accomplishments of the Poison Center Community of Practice over the last year

To discuss the results of a national survey to poison centers and health departments identifying the major obstacles to collaboration

To discuss ways to overcome identified barriers, which include familiarity with poison center data and data sharing impediments

Brief Summary:
The Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists (CSTE) identified data collected by the nation’s poison centers (PCs) as an important tool for all-hazards exposure and illness surveillance. CSTE and American Association of Poison Control Center (AAPCC) members were interested in building a community of practice (CoP) to share experiences, identify best practices, and facilitate relationships among federal, state and local health departments (HDs) and PCs. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) held an initial roundtable discussion at the CSTE meeting in June 2010, and included participants from federal, state, and local agencies and HDs, and PCs. Since then, the CoP has garnered over 250 members that are interested in this collaboration. The CoP membership initiated a project to characterize the state of collaboration among PCs and HDs and identify obstacles towards optimal collaboration. Two surveys were created by CoP leadership customized for either a poison center managing director or a state epidemiologist. The surveys included questions about infrastructure, current data sharing capabilities and capacities, funding, scope of existing collaboration, impediments, and willingness to bolster collaboration. This roundtable discussion will build upon previous sessions by briefly describing 2014 accomplishments and planned improvements to the CoP, followed by a discussion of the results of the surveys conducted by AAPCC and CSTE. We will consider the following questions: -What is the current capability/capacity of collaboration between PCs and HDs? -Are there logistic factors that hinder or facilitate collaboration? -Collectively, what are the barriers to collaboration between PCs and HDs? -What are the possible solutions to address these identified barriers to strengthen PC and HD collaboration? The membership hopes to have tangible next steps in addressing identified barriers, and this roundtable discussion will be used in guiding the next steps for the CoP.