Key Objectives:
- Provide an overview of activities and accomplishments of the Poison Center and Public Health Collaboration Community of Practice
- Discuss results of a national survey that identified barriers to poison center and health department collaboration
- Discuss ways to overcome key barriers identified by the survey
Brief Summary:
Data collected by the nation’s 55 poison centers (PCs) are an important tool for all-hazards exposure and illness surveillance. Leveraging PC data for public health surveillance requires close collaboration and open communication amongst local, state, and federal public health partners and PCs. The Community of Practice (CoP) workgroup model is a mechanism for people who share a common concern or goal to work together in reaching that goal. In 2010, the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists (CSTE), the American Association of Poison Control Centers (AAPCC) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Health Studies Branch spearheaded the creation of the Poison Center and Public Health Collaboration CoP to bolster collaboration between federal, state, and local health agencies and PCs through sharing best practices and facilitating networking. To date, a steering committee of representatives from these organizations leads the CoP whose current membership is greater than 200. Since 2010, the CoP has conducted 14 national webinars sharing best practices for collaboration, held six roundtable discussions, and conducted special projects focused on supporting partnerships between health departments (HDs) and PCs. In 2012, the steering committee led a project that characterized the degree of collaboration between PCs and HDs using an online survey. It identified several barriers to collaboration, including an overall lack of familiarity of PC data among HD staff, information technology limitations, and interagency communication barriers. In this roundtable session, we will discuss these challenges and solicit feedback on strategies to address them. Roundtable moderators will include PC and HD representatives in order to provide firsthand stakeholder perspectives. The expected outcome of this roundtable session will be a list of strategies on how to overcome key barriers, as well as develop a list of next steps for this CoP.