HSLIC News

Organizations that deal with patient care celebrate health literacy month every October as they recognize that health literacy is an important part of the care they provide to patients.  For instance, if a patient does not know how to take their medication correctly, they can end up back in their doctor’s office or the hospital.  Patient outcomes suffer and the cost of medical care rises.  The goal of health literacy is to help individuals make informed health decisions by improving their ability to access, understand, and effectively use health information.  It is important to emphasize to busy patient care providers that health literacy matters and the annual October celebration serves as a wonderful reminder of this often-overlooked aspect of good medical care. 

The Health Sciences Library & Informatics Center offers workshops on Health Literacy every year.  In addition, the University of New Mexico Hospital (UNMH) is one of the few hospitals in the country that has an Health Literacy Office.  UNMH’s Health Literacy Office provides workshops on teach-back and plain language methods of communication.  In addition, they will review forms, policies and handouts for UNMH departments to make sure the documents meet suggested health literacy standards:  https://unmhealth.org/diversity-equity-inclusion/health-literacy.html

If you would like to learn more about health literacy, there are many excellent websites on the Internet for you to browse.  Here are a few:

National Institutes of Health:  https://www.nih.gov/institutes-nih/nih-office-director/office-communications-public-liaison/clear-communication/health-literacy

CDC:  https://www.cdc.gov/healthliteracy/index.html

Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion:  https://health.gov/news/202010/october-health-literacy-month

All of Us Tech Days Presentation

Lori Sloane and Deborah Rhue from HSLIC joined Todd Quinn and Karl Benedict from CULLS to present a talk about the All of Us Research Program at the annual University of New Mexico’s Tech Days on Friday, April 26, 2024.  The talk, entitled “All of Us: Using Big Data to Study Factors Affecting Health and Health Impacts,” was well- and enthusiastically received. 

Deborah, Lori, Todd and Karl have been working to promote awareness and enrollment in the NIH-sponsored All of Research Program since 2023 when the University of New Mexico became one of the Program’s officially enrolled research participants. 

The All of Us Research Program is an effort funded by the National Institutes of Health to gather health data from one million or more people in the United States.  The All of Us Research Program encourages individuals from communities historically left out of biomedical research studies to enroll and share their health data and make that data available to researchers through the All of Us Research Program platform.

   "All of Us: Using Big Data to Study Factors Affecting Health and Health Impacts":  Tech Days Slide Presentation

    For more information about the All of Us Research Program:  All of Us Research Program 

The purpose of National Minority Health Month is to "raise awareness about the importance of improving the health of racial and ethnic minority communities and reducing health disparities."

This year's theme is Be the Source for Better Health, which fits right in with HSLIC's mission to advance health and health equity as New Mexico’s only publicly accessible health sciences library. HSLIC is a source for better health information, which we believe can lead to better health.

Health disparities are a significant problem, and the library provides resources about them. The OMHRC Knowledge Center Online Catalog (Office of Minority Health Resource Center) gives access to 75,000 documents, books journal articles, and media related to the health status of racial and ethnic minority populations. PubMed searchers will find the MeSH terms Minority Health and Health Status Disparities, which were introduced in 2008. Note that there are other terms available to search the concepts prior to 2008.

Datasets are increasingly important and available to researchers. The National Neighborhood Data Archive (NaNDA) contains physical, economic, demographic, and social information at the census tract, ZIP code, and county level. This dataset was used in a recent publication about the devaluation of assets in Black neighborhoods. As a minority majority state (with less than half the people being non-Hispanic whites), and home to 23 American Indian tribes, as well as Black and Asian people, minority health issues are important to New Mexico researchers, health care providers, and community leaders. The New Mexico Community Data Collaborative maps local health conditions and behaviors, as well as provides data about special populations, such as health care providers and rural vs urban designations.

Image from World Bank CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 DEED

National Public Health Week 2024 celebrates collaboration, cooperation, and partnerships in public health. The theme is “Protecting, Connecting and Thriving: We Are All Public Health.”

At HSLIC, we make resources available that support research in the broad field of public health, and collaborate with faculty and educate students in the College of Population Health.  Ours is a strong partnership. These past two years, as part of a grant from the college to develop an Academic Health Department, HSLIC librarians extended services to New Mexico Department of Health (NM DOH) practitioners. Academic Health Departments are partnerships between an academic institution and a health department. A goal is to strengthen the links between practice and academia, with opportunities for joint education, research and practice.

Librarians developed training modules in the process of evidence-based public health practice. We regularly teach these skills throughout the health sciences professional programs' curricula. A team of librarians, some with public health degrees, customized training to the context of public health and created four modules, following the steps of the process. These included:

• • Module 1: Developing Searchable Questions
  • Module 2: Searching for Evidence
  • Modules 3: A Toolkit for Evaluating Evidence
  • Module 4:  A Toolkit for Applying Evidence

Modules 1 and 2 were offered synchronously online to NM DOH personnel last spring, and all modules are now available to anyone through the UNM Digital Repository at: https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/er/

In addition, HSLIC became the partner library for NM DOH's Public Health Digital Library, a project of the Network of the National Library of Medicine. This means that New Mexico public health personnel have access not only to the hundreds of books, journals, and databases in that library but, if an item is not available, HSLIC will provide it from our collection or from another library. This greatly extends the scope of information sources available to practitioners.

At HSLIC we recognize and support the valuable work of public health practitioners. We are all public health!

In honor of November being National Diabetes Month, I wanted to share some historical sources about diabetes in HSLIC Special Collections.

• Oral histories with Dr. Bruce Tempest and A. Paul Ortega about diabetes in New Mexico.
• Monographs include Strong in Body and Spirit (University of New Mexico School of Medicine’s Native American Diabetes Project); Navajo Food Practices, Customs, and Holidays; Directory of Diabetes Education Services in New Mexico; Diabetic Coma; and Racial and Ethnic Patterns of Mortality in New Mexico.
• American Diabetes Association, New Mexico Affiliate collection.
• R. Philip Eaton papers. Dr. Eaton, along with Dr. David S. Schade (Chief, Division of Endocrinology Distinguished and Regents Professor, Department of Internal Medicine) of the UNM School of Medicine and Sandia Laboratories, successfully implanted the second (first more programmable) insulin pump in a human in 1981. This pump helped maintain glycemic control in a patient with type I diabetes.
• New Mexico Insulin Pump photograph collection. This collection contains photographs (circa 1981) of Dr. R. Philip Eaton treating patients and in the laboratory, the programmable insulin pump developed by New Mexico scientists, and the first patient, Monte Patterson, to receive the pump.  

New Mexico insulin pump, New Mexico Insulin Pump photograph collection, PH 226

Monte Patterson, the first patient to receive the New Mexico insulin pump, New Mexico Insulin Pump photograph collection, PH 226

Dr. R. Philip Eaton in the laboratory, New Mexico Insulin Pump photograph collection, PH 226

On Tuesday, October 3rd the library and a collaborative team (principally from the UNM-HSC Clinical & Translational Science Center and its Community Engagement & Research Core - CERC) held a Community Engagement Studio (CES) to learn about the unique needs of users accessing the library's Native Health Database.

What is a Community Engagement Studio, you might ask?

The Community Engagement Studio is a community-engaged consultative model developed in 2009 by the Meharry-Vanderbilt Community Engaged Research Core at the Vanderbilt Institute for Clinical and Translational Research. A CES is a one-time consultative session with a researcher’s population of interest. Studios consist of a panel of community stakeholders (called experts), whose characteristics are defined by the researcher, to provide feedback to enhance the planning, design, implementation, translation, or dissemination of research.  -Courtesy of UNM-HSC CTSC

Over the course of two hours via Zoom, assembled community experts met to tackle a key purpose: understand how users interact with the Native Health Database (NHD) and what they anticipate finding there. To grapple with this broad purpose, a few key questions were posed to the group:

• What were their experiences using the NHD? What was good and what could be improved?
• What were some of the reasons they came to the NHD? 
• What types of resources would they anticipate finding? What does a trustworthy resource look like? 
• How is the concept of Indigenous Data Sovereignty embedded into the user experience? 

The CERC team functioned as both facilitator and notetaker for this important discussion. They deftly navigated from one question into the next, prompting each of the assembled experts to respond from their unique perspective as users of the database. Among the feedback received and suggestions made:

• Integrate tools for transparency around decision-making with resource selection
• Improve citation export functionality, particularly for users engaged in scoping/systematic reviews
• Include datasets, though with strictures in place to prevent unintended access to culturally sensitive information
• Enhance the look/feel of the home page and other top-level navigation options
• Offer more unique materials, such as oral histories and grey literature

The CERC team provided HSLIC with a much larger report that can be used for strategic planning purposes, including funding requests to help implement suggestions in a nimble, sustainable manner. The report will also be shared with the Native Health Database Advisory Council in that group's oversight (with HSLIC) of the resource. 

Our deep appreciation to this project's funder, the Network of the National Library of Medicine's Region 4 (located at the University of Utah's Spencer S. Eccles Health Sciences Library, Cooperative Agreement Number UG4LM013732). Our continued thanks as well to the team at UNM-HSC CTSC's Community Engagement & Research Core, specifically Heidi Rishel Brakey, Lexie Roesch, Julia Martinez, and Donna Sedillo.  

On Friday, September 8, HSLIC was thrilled to welcome participants of New Mexico State Library’s Tribal Libraries Program to the library for an all-day event. The Tribal Libraries Program provides library development services to tribal communities throughout the state, including support for library management, collection development, funding navigation, staff continuing education, and advocacy. The purpose of the field trip to HSLIC was to connect tribal librarians with health information resources and UNM programs as well as develop fresh relationships with libraries serving Indigenous people.

Executive Director Melissa Rethlefsen kicked off the day with a warm greeting and UNM’s Indigenous Peoples’ Land and Territory Acknowledgement. Participants then had a special tour of HSLIC led by Specialist III Amy Weig-Pickering, including a peek at items from the library’s Special Collections with Archivist Abbie Weiser and a walkthrough with Specialist III Rachel Howarth of some of the technology available to students and the public. HSLIC Clinical Services Librarian Deborah Rhue and Burrell College of Osteopathic Medicine Library Director Norice Lee introduced PubMed and MedlinePlus, respectively. Participants had the opportunity to view the Native Health Database with Jonathan Pringle, Scholarly Communications and Digital Librarian. Emily Roberts, the Library Services Coordinator at the Center for Development and Disability, provided an in-depth review of CDD’s resources. Carla Sakiestewa introduced the Office of Community Health’s Health Extension Regional Office, which she is a part of as an Affiliate Agent, and Norman Cooeyate, the Tribal Relations Liaison for the Center for Native American Health, rounded out the presentations on UNM programs. Ingrid Hendrix, Division Head, Research, Education, and Clinical Information Services, ended the day by leading a conversation and Q and A session. 

HSLIC is New Mexico’s only publicly accessible health sciences library.  As such, it strives to provide health information access and training to all New Mexicans. Engaging with libraries throughout the state provides HSLIC with the opportunity to reach diverse local communities in the places they call home. We look forward to continuing to expand and improve health information learning opportunities throughout the state. 

At long last we are excited to formally announce that HSLIC is the recipient of $41,029 in funds from the Network of the National Library of Medicine's (NNLM) Region 4 (based out of the University of Utah's Spencer S. Eccles Health Sciences Library) to conduct a series of Community Engagement Studios to better understand how the Native Health Database (NHD) can best facilitate collaborations between its key stakeholders.

A summary of the project as submitted in late 2022:

To meet the needs of multiple stakeholders, the NHD has necessarily evolved numerous times since its initial creation in the early 1990s. Just before New Mexico's move from NNLM Region 3 to Region 4 in May 2021, HSLIC was the successful recipient of Region 3 funding that supported migrating its former platform to one now served through Mukurtu CMS. This unique content management system provides numerous pathways for content creators, Indigenous communities, users, and providers to collaboratively—and respectfully—exchange information. To ensure it continues meeting the needs of its myriad stakeholders, this Region 4-supported project will engage the services of UNM’s Clinical and Translational Science Center (CTSC) and their Community Engagement Studios to understand how best to leverage the outreach tools housed in the new NHD that will be most beneficial for each group. We will invite equal representation from content creators, community members, users/learners, and providers (I.e., clinicians) to participate as community experts. The purpose of each studio is to provide critical feedback about strengths and areas of opportunities of/for the resource. This is especially well-timed as HSLIC—in concert with the Native Health Database Advisory Council—prepares to deploy a robust and wide-reaching outreach and engagement program for the NHD in 2023.

Our first Community Engagement Studio is anticipated to be held this Summer (as early as July), with the final Studio wrapping up in early 2024. Stay tuned as we work with our CTSC on the coordination of each Studio, and any subsequent information we learn from each one. 

We wish to thank our NNLM champions, both from Region 3 and Region 4, who have supported the Native Health Database in its goals to help improve health outcomes among our Indigenous populations here in New Mexico and across North America. In particular, we extend gratitude to our new colleagues in Region 4 for this incredible recent support. We look forward to future collaborations with NNLM as it pertains to our NHD and other programs offered through HSLIC. 

Today is National Library Outreach Day. We congratulate all the faculty and staff at the Health Sciences Library & Informatics Center (HSLIC), past and present, for helping us achieve HSLIC's mission to advance health and health equity as New Mexico's only publicly accessible health sciences library. This is a commitment we take very seriously, and we continue to invest in our outreach efforts. Today, we are delighted to announce the new Patricia V. Bradley Native American Health Research Award.

Patricia Vickie Bradley was born October 9, 1950, at Travis Airforce Base in Fairfield, CA, into the Bit’ahnii (Folded Arms People Clan), born for Kinyaa’áanii (Towering House Clan). Pat was a proud member of the Diné (Navajo) Nation. She received a Master of Library Science (MLS) from the University of Arizona. Pat's career in medical librarianship spanned more than 40 years in places that included the Navajo Health Authority in Shiprock and the Gallup Indian Medical Center (Indian Health Service) as a Medical Librarian. She then served as the Native and Distance Services Librarian at the Health Sciences Library and Informatics Center (HSLIC) for 15 years. Her positive impact was honored in 2014 when she received the Michael E. DeBakey Library Services Outreach Award, which was established by Friends of the National Library of Medicine to honor outstanding service and contributions to rural and underserved communities. Pat passed away in 2019 after a brief illness.

To honor her legacy in outreach to the Indigenous communities of the Southwest, HSLIC has begun the Patricia V. Bradley Native American Health Research Award. This Award will be given annually to a member of the UNM community who is conducting research in the area of Native American health using resources at HSLIC, which may include the Native Health Database, the largest collection of information related to the health of Indigenous North Americans.

An anonymous donor has generously offered to match donations received with the goal of endowing this fund in perpetuity.

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You are invited to join us on Thursday, April 6th, from 10 A.M - 11 A.M. for a virtual seminar by Lewis Worley, BE, and Robyn Gleasner, MLIS.

Topic: HSC Citation Analysis Project

Description: The HSC Citation Analysis Project set out to answer the following questions: where are faculty at the HSC publishing, does HSLIC/UNM provide access to these journals, what journals are the authors citing, and does HSLIC/UNM provide access to those journals. The answers to the questions would assist in the evaluation of HSLIC’s journal collection and determine potential gaps.  This session will show how we went about attempting to answer these questions from pulling data from Web of Science, analyzing it, and wrangling and parsing it using a number of programs and scripts including excel, open refine, SQL, and python. 

Learning Objectives: 

We will discuss: 

• What citation analysis is and why it is beneficial for collection evaluation 
• Our process of pulling, cleaning, wrangling, and parsing the data to meet our needs 
• Next steps to analyze the data and how to apply the analysis to future collection development decisions 

Please email BLCarroll@salud.unm.edu to request Zoom info.