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The purpose of this paper is to show how the Turning Point Initiative to improve the health of populations by improving the USA public health system has many lessons on collaboration for governance systems.

The article synthesizes published literature outlining the results of a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation/W.K. Kellogg Foundation grant program to 21 USA states and 43 communities and relationships to administrative practice.

Turning Point's creation of a formalized network of public health partners across the USA has led to innovations in collaboration, increased system capacity, and alternative structures for improving health.

Turning Point's efficacy in community health system improvement can be mirrored in clinical governance. A major potential for improvement in clinical delivery systems is available by re‐thinking key partners, organizational structures, and system administrative capacity.

An analysis of community health, its history, successes and failures, depends on an understanding of its scope, but there is little consensus as to precisely what the discipline entails. Some view it as a strict scientific discipline, others see it as a social movement, and still others conceive of it as a conglomerate of various disciplines. It is useful initially to identify the medical components of community health, and then to approach its interdisciplinary aspects. Community health, strictly defined, includes such fields as disease control, environmental sanitation, maternal and child care, dental health, nutrition, school health, geriatrics, occupational health, and the treatment of drug and alcohol abuse. This limited definition, though accurate, does not differentiate the field from the much older area of public health. Within community health, the disease focus of traditional public health epidemiology, the total health focus of community medicine, and the outcome focus of health services research are interconnected. Community health combines the public health concern for health issues of defined populations with the preventive therapeutic approach of clinical medicine. An emphasis on personal health care is the result of this combination. Robert Kane describes the field accurately and succinctly: “We envision community medicine as a general organizational framework which draws upon a number of disciplines for its tools. In this sense, it is an applied discipline which adopts the knowledge and skills of other areas in its effort to solve community health problems. The tools described here include community diagnosis (which draws upon such diverse fields as sociology, political science, economics, biostatistics, and epidemiology), epidemiology itself, and health services research (the application of epidemiologic techniques on analyzing the effects of medical care on health).”

This case study paper aims to explore the complexities and challenges of epidemic response and public health surveillance in Native American and Indigenous American communities in the United States and find viable solutions. This paper explores these topics through the emergence and impact of the hantavirus pulmonary syndrome (HPS) within the Navajo Nation in the United States using critical incident analysis and best practices.

This project is a case study paper based on a topical review of the literature. A topical review of the literature is a comprehensive exploration of the current body of knowledge within a particular research field. It is an important tool used by scholars and practitioners to further the development of existing knowledge as well as to identify potential directions for future research (Fourie, 2020). Such a paper can provide a useful insight into the various aspects of the process that the researcher may have overlooked, as well as highlighting potential areas of improvement (Gall et al., 2020). It can also provide a useful source of ideas and inspiration for the researcher as it can provide an overview of the various approaches used by other researchers in the field (Göpferich, 2009). Case study papers using a topical review of the literature have been used to help frame and inform research topics, problems and best practices for some time. They are typically used to explore a topic in greater depth and to provide an overview of the literature to improve the world of practice to provide a foundation for future comprehensive empirical research. Case study papers can provide research value by helping to identify gaps in the literature and by providing a general direction for further research. They can also be used to provide a starting point for research questions and hypotheses and to help identify potential areas of inquiry.

This study explores best practices in public health surveillance and epidemic response that can help strengthen public health infrastructure by informing the development of effective surveillance systems and emergency response plans, as well as improving data collection and analysis capabilities within Native American and Indigenous American communities in the United States that also have the option to include new technologies like artificial intelligence (AI) with similar outbreaks in the future.

The literature review did not include any primary data collection, so the existing available research may have limited the findings. The scope of the study was limited to published literature, which may not have reported all relevant findings. For example, unpublished studies, field studies and industry reports may have provided additional insights not included in the literature review. This research has significant value based on the limited amount of studies on how infectious diseases can severely impact Native American communities in the United States, leading to unnecessary and preventable suffering and death. As a result, research on viable best practices is needed on the best practices in public health surveillance and epidemic response in Native American and Indigenous American communities through historical events and critical incident analysis.

Research on public health surveillance and epidemic response in Native American communities can provide insights into the challenges faced by these communities and help identify potential solutions to improve their capacity to detect, respond to and prevent infectious diseases using innovative approaches and new technologies like AI.

More research on public health surveillance and epidemic response can inform policies and interventions to improve access to healthcare for Native American populations, such as increasing availability of healthcare services, providing culturally appropriate health education and improving communication between providers and patients. By providing better public health surveillance and response capacity, research can help reduce the burden of infectious diseases in Native American communities and ultimately lead to improved public health outcomes.

What does the intersection of food gardening and public librarianship look like? This chapter examines the question through a close analysis of three case studies that represent the spread of this phenomenon in the United States and Canada. This is a first step toward identifying areas for further research that will contribute to a more comprehensive understanding of how food gardening in and around public libraries addresses community-level health disparities. Although it is the case that food gardens and related programming are no strangers to public libraries, this topic has not received sustained attention in the LIS research literature. Public libraries have long been framed as key institutions in increasing consumer health literacy, but a more recent trend has seen them also framed as key institutions in promoting public and community health, particularly through the use of the public library space. This chapter examines food gardens at public libraries with this more expansive understanding of how public libraries address health disparities, by considering how this work occurs through novel partnerships and programs focused on transforming physical space in local communities. At the same time, public interest in food gardens parallels increased awareness of food in society; food and diet as key aspects of health; food justice activism; and a long history of community empowerment in the face of the proliferation of food deserts through myriad activities, including community food gardens. The authors consider how food gardening in public libraries parallels these trends.

Public libraries are vibrant and trusted community hubs that provide services, support, and resources in a variety of ways that impact the well-being of their communities. The Network of the National Library of Medicine (NNLM) partnered with the National Institute of Health (NIH) All of Us Research Program (All of Us) to support libraries to serve as health information resources for their patrons and provide All of Us awareness through community engagement. The NNLM All of Us National Program provides infrastructure and resources to public libraries, such as free training for library staff, health information outreach funding, connections with other organizations, and free programming tools to expand health programming beyond fitness to boost digital and health literacy in their communities.

Population, community, and public health notions are addressed separately in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA), have different foci and stakeholders, build on different frameworks to achieve their aims, and apply different measures to determine the long-term impact of interventions. This paper attempts to clarify each concept and proposes a method of evaluating each of these sets of health-related activities based on the benefits that accrue to the respective stakeholders.

In addition to indicating how to affect change and improvements in health, the ecological model of health also provides insight into how the benefits from health-related activities may or may not flow back to the entities sponsoring health interventions. By clearly defining each of the concepts and examining the methods and metrics being used to select activities and measure benefits, a valuation model is developed that measures the financial impact on the targeted population as well as the sponsoring institution.

Defining, measuring, and evaluating are important to bring clarity to how individual organizations can contribute to the overall health of the population, as well as the limits of any single organization in doing so. Collective and upstream action will be required to improve the population’s health, but identifying and justifying the role of each participating organization is a challenge that still lacks an overarching vision that can be explained and measured to the satisfaction of all stakeholders.

Decision makers must justify how resources are committed in an era of scarcity and limited financial means. Moreover, methods must be in place to measure the impact of potential collaborations. The proposed valuation framework lays out the natural incentives, the responses to those incentives, and how to select initiatives that maximize value from the perspective of the various stakeholders.

The Affordable Care Act is transforming health care practice nationwide through emphasis on population health and prevention. Health care organizations are increasingly required to address population health needs. However, they may be ill equipped to answer that call.

This study identified ways that health care organizations might better integrate public and population health efforts to better respond to this new emphasis on population health. Employing semi-structured key informant interviews, barriers to and facilitators of integration were explored and implications for health care and public health leaders were developed.

Participants (n = 17) – including senior hospital executives, group practice administrators, and health department officials – identified strategies for health care and public health leaders to more effectively integrate in order to achieve better performance and population health gains. These strategies and their implications are discussed.

The results of this study provide important value to health care administrators leading efforts to integrate population and public health.

Public libraries are respected local institutions that connect community members to credible information and services, and support lifelong learning. The nature of these libraries means that they are open to all, including individuals who may be experiencing a physical or mental health crisis. A critical way that libraries in the United States are now supporting their communities is by leveraging their assets and their mission to respond to the opioid crisis. These responses have ranged from providing access to information and resources on addiction, prevention, treatment, and recovery support, to training staff and the public to use the drug naloxone to help reverse overdoses. Public libraries have found allies in this work in community organizations including nonprofits and public health departments, and are often working together with these partners toward common goals to bring about collective impact.

Through their programming efforts in response to the opioid crisis, public libraries are also demonstrating the ability to support the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) identified by the United Nations (UN) as a call to action for the global community. These goals include ensuring healthy lives, equitable education and lifelong learning, and decent work and economic growth. Public libraries are actively supporting people in their efforts to improve their lives and the lives of those around them. It is important and valuable work, and truly necessary for a functioning society.

Public libraries are incubators for collective action in the knowledge economy. As three case studies from the United States and Singapore demonstrate, public libraries can serve as influential champions that garner financial resources, communicate an urgent need for change, and respond to the unmet information and economic needs of marginalized individuals and communities. In the Raise Up Radio (RUR) case, public librarians engaged schools, museums, youth, and families in rural communities to develop and deliver STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) content over local radio stations. In collaboration with organizational partners, RUR librarians created a model for library-community-radio projects for the rural United States. In the What Health Looks Like (WHLL) case, public librarians engaged senior citizens in discussions of health and the creation of health comics. In partnership with an interdisciplinary health research team, WHLL librarians developed a pilot for library-community-public health projects aimed at information dissemination and health narrative generation. In the Singapore shopping mall libraries case, the National Library Board (NLB) created public libraries in commercial spaces serving working families, senior citizens, and the Chinese community. The NLB developed an exportable model for locating information centers in convenient, popular, and useful business spaces. These case studies demonstrate how libraries are nodes in the knowledge economy, providing vital services such as preservation of cultural heritage, technology education, community outreach, information access, and services to working families, small- and medium-size businesses, and other patrons. In the years to come, public libraries will be called upon to respond to shifting social norms, inequitable opportunities, emergencies and disasters, and information asymmetries. As the cases of RUR, WHLL, and the shopping mall libraries show, public librarians have the vision and capacities to serve as influential champions for collective action to solve complex problems and foster sustainable development and equitable participation in the knowledge economy.

Health science librarians occupy a unique place in librarianship, guiding healthcare professionals and the public to quality sources of medical research and consumer health information in order to improve patient outcomes and quality of life. A broader impact of health sciences librarianship is its advocacy for improvements in public health. In recent years, health science librarians have been actively involved in advocating for adequate, responsive, and culturally competent health care for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ+) individuals. Health sciences librarians have advocated for LGBTQ+ individuals through a variety of specialized outreach projects to address health disparities found in the LGBTQ+ community such as HIV/AIDS, women’s health, or substance abuse, have collaborated with public health agencies and community-based organizations to identify health disparities and needs, and have implemented outreach to address these needs.

This chapter maps the landscape of health sciences librarian outreach to LGBTQ+ people. The authors develop this theme through case studies of health science librarians providing health information to the LGBTQ+ community and healthcare professionals. Following an overview of advocacy for LGBTQ+ health by the US National Network of Libraries of Medicine and professional information organizations, they conclude the chapter by discussing the “pioneering” nature of these projects and the common threads uniting them, and by identifying the next steps for continued successful outreach through the development of an evidence base and tailoring of outreach and resources to address other demographic aspects of the members of the LGBTQ+ community.