Knowledge Management Framework for Emerging Infectious Diseases Preparedness and Response: Design and Development of Public Health Document Ontology

Knowledge exchange in crisis settings: A scoping review

BACKGROUND

Public health practice and efforts to improve the social determinants of health operate within a climate characterised by multiple and intersecting crises. This includes the Covid-19 pandemic as well as more protracted crises such as climate change and persistent social inequalities that impact health. We sought to understand and compare how knowledge exchange (KE) processes occur across different crises, and how knowledge on improving social determinants of health can be utilised at times of crisis to reduce health inequalities and strengthen public systems.

METHODS

We conducted a scoping review to understand how KE on improving social determinants of health can occur across different types of crises (e.g. environmental, pandemics, humanitarian). Relevant studies were identified through electronic searching of Medline, EMBASE, Global Health, Scopus and Web of Science databases.

RESULTS

We identified 86 studies for inclusion in the review. Most studies concerned pandemic or environmental crises. Fewer studies explored KE during technical (e.g. nuclear), terror-related or humanitarian crises. This may reflect a limitation of the searches. Few studies assessed KE as part of longer-term responses to social and economic impacts of crises, with studies more likely to focus on immediate response or early recovery stages. Exchange of research evidence or data with policy or practice contextual knowledge was common but there was variation in the extent that lay (public) knowledge was included as part of KE processes.

CONCLUSION

As ongoing crises continue with significant public health implications, KE processes should appropriately reflect the complexity inherent in crises and foreground health inequalities. Doing so could include the utilisation of systems or complexity-informed methods to support planning and evaluation of KE, a greater focus on KE to support action to address social determinants of health, and the inclusion of a plurality of knowledge-including lived experience-in planning and responding to crises.

What Drives Knowledge Seeking, Sharing, and Use Among Family Planning Professionals? Behavioral Evidence From Africa, Asia, and the United States

OBJECTIVE

To contribute to strengthening family planning and reproductive health (FP/RH) programs by identifying behavioral factors that influence FP/RH professionals' knowledge management (KM) behaviors.

METHODS

We conducted an online survey, in-depth interviews, and cocreation workshops between July 2019 and June 2020 with a convenience sample of FP/RH professionals in Africa, Asia, and the United States to explore their KM behaviors. We used descriptive statistics to analyze the survey data and inductive thematic analysis for the interviews, and we synthesized participant inputs from selected cocreation activities.

RESULTS

The samples consisted of 273 survey respondents, 23 interviewees, and 69 cocreation workshop participants. There were no significant differences in how professionals seek and share information by gender, role, or geographic region, except related to language barriers among Francophone professionals. FP/RH professionals reported using both digital sources and their professional networks to seek and share information. Choice overload and cognitive overload (when people are presented with too much information and in a way that is hard to understand, respectively) act as barriers as they seek and use information. Too many information sources lead to frustration and inaction and best practices are often not contextualized or specific enough for application. Positive KM organizational cultures help facilitate effective information sharing, but reluctance to share information persists due to fear of losing comparative advantage. FP/RH professionals noted that such barriers result in duplication of effort and lack of advancement in FP/RH programs.

CONCLUSION

To improve overall program impact, KM interventions in FP/RH and global health should reduce cognitive and choice overload, especially by curating and sharing practical, actionable information with essential details on context and how programs are implemented so that others can apply or adapt the learnings. Programs should use incentives to foster motivation to share this type of information.

A generic metamodel for data extraction and generic ontology population

As the next step in the development of intelligent computing systems is the addition of human expertise and knowledge, it is a priority to build strong computable and well-documented knowledge bases. Ontologies partially respond to this challenge by providing formalisms for knowledge representation. However, one major remaining task is the population of these ontologies with concrete application. Based on Model-Driven Engineering principles, a generic metamodel for the extraction of heterogeneous data is presented in this article. The metamodel has been designed with two objectives, namely (1) the need of genericity regarding the source of collected pieces of knowledge and (2) the intent to stick to a structure close to an ontological structure. As well, an example of instantiation of the metamodel for textual data in chemistry domain and an insight of how this metamodel could be integrated in a larger automated domain independent ontology population framework are given.