Past projects

The Obesity Learning Centre (OLC) - awebsite supporting those working towards a healthy weight and reducing obesitylevels

Online Journal of Public Health Informatics, 2011; 3(1) (Open access)

Objectives: Develop a website, the OLC, which supports those people who work on promoting a healthy weight and tackling obesity. Research shows that original networks where sharing of information and peer interaction take place create solutions to current public health challenges.

Methods: Considerations that are relevant when building a new information service as well as the technical set up and information needs of users were taken into account prior to building the OLC and during continuous development and maintenance.

Results: The OLC provides global news, resources and tools and link out to other networks, websites and organisations providing similar useful information. The OLC also uses social networking tools to highlight new and important information.

Discussion: Networks contribute to a stronger community that can respond to emerging challenges in public health. The OLC improves connections of people and services from different backgrounds and organisations. Some challenges exist in the technical set up and also because of other aspects, e.g. public health information and differing information needs.

Conclusion: Public health work programmes should include networking opportunities where public policy can be disseminated. The provision of necessary tools and resources can lead to better decision-making, save time and money and lead to improved public health outcomes.

Based on our information needs analysis of obesity professionals accessing the Obesity Learning Centre, Sep - Oct 2010 (download below).

User needs assessment Obesity Learning Centre 2011

Objectives: Two year on survey. To establish information needs and how well the OLC meets those needs. To set development priorities for the coming year.

Methods: SurveyMonkey questionnaire online, circulated to all OLC users.

Results: 73 responses of which 96% respondents were from the UK, 54% of the respondents work in health roles and the remainder in other sector roles. We had positive responses to the content and functionality of the site: The OLC continues to meet the needs of its users with 87% reporting they find exactly what they want or related material; 66% of respondents report that the OLC is ‘very useful ‐ essential’ to their work.

Conclusion: The survey results reaffirm that the OLC is seen as a useful and central resource to work taking place in obesity.

Download the full report below.

Understanding the information needs of public health practitioners in physical activity and nutrition: a qualitative study to inform design of a new online network 2010

Background: Establish the information needs of physical activity and nutrition practitioners globally and analyse existing online networks that provide information in these topics.

Objectives: A literature review and survey to establish the information needs of this public health group in order to inform the design of a new global network, PANacea, providing information and expertise in physical activity and nutrition.

Methods: Three steps undertaken in this research; literature review, analysis of existing websites and an online survey into information needs.

Results: We found 11 websites that provide some information in physical activity and nutrition but do not provide the functionality we were planning for PANacea. We had 125 responses to the survey from 35 countries. Respondents need reliable and relevant information, expert opinion, tools and resources to help with advocacy.

Conclusions: Our research findings supported our decision to build PANacea, initially to support the physical activity and nutrition community with their information needs and ultimately address global health challenges. The network went live in August 2011.

In March 2012 we will do a one year follow on information needs survey of physical activity, nutrition and alcohol practitioners.

Download a summary of the report below.  This paper is currently being reviewed for publication.