PHIN Communities of Practice

Resource Kit

Glossary

The Glossary provides an explanation of terms specifically related to CoPs and those associated with the PHIN Communities of Practice.

Blog — Website, with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video.

Chat Room — Online-based, sometimes moderated communications taking place in real time.

CoCHIS — CDC’s Coordinating Center for Health Information Services; NCPHI is one of the 3 Centers within CoCHIS.

Communications and Alerting Community of Practice (CA CoP) — The Communications and Alerting Community of Practice (CA CoP) brings together former Health Alert Network coordinators as well as others in public health involved in the informatics aspects of managing health alerts. The Health Alerting and Communications CoP seeks to share knowledge and best practices as well as develop innovations around: communication technologies, alerting methodologies, PHIN Messaging System ( PHIN MS) and PHIN certification.

Laboratory Messaging Community of Practice (LM CoP) — The Laboratory Messaging Community of Practice brings together PHIN stakeholders nationwide involved in defining, implementing, maintaining, evaluating, and evolving electronic lab messaging. This community collaboratively develops knowledge, innovation, and best practices through discussion of current obstacles in lab messaging and sharing lessons learned to facilitate the modernization of public health surveillance.

Community — Group of people who come together to interact, discuss, share ideas, and collaborate.

Community of Practice — Group of people who share a concern, a set of problems, or a passion about a topic, and who deepen their knowledge and expertise by interacting on an ongoing basis.

Communities of Practice Program (CoPP) — Group comprised of CDC/NCPHI federal employees and contractors charged with supporting and guiding the activities of the PHIN Community and PHIN CoPs.

Domain — Shared interest that provides the incentive and passion for the community to come together.

Enterprise Architecture Community of Practice (EA CoP) — The EA CoP brings together enterprise architects to work collaboratively with the programmatic, informatics, and IT communities to share ideas, find solutions, and build upon the foundation of enterprise architecture. This EA CoP seeks to increase the use of enterprise architecture in the decision making processes within PHIN while facilitating the introduction of best practices.

Governance Document — Document that will outline the processes, procedures, accountability, and responsibilities of the PHIN Communities of Practice Council (CoPC), each Community of Practice, the PHIN Community and the Communities of Practice Program. It is a working document, meant to change over time, and is currently in development by members of the CoPC. Once the governance document is established, there will be a standard practice for updating and modifying it to suit the PHIN CoPs needs.

Information Links Collaborative Project (InfoLinks CoP) — The InfoLinks CoP builds, improves, and promotes Health Information Exchanges (HIEs) within public health systems. The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) funded community of practice is supported by CDC and the Public Health Informatics Institute (PHII) and has over 21 state, local, territorial, and other public health members.

Laboratory Messaging Community of Practice (LM CoP) — The LM CoP brings together PHIN stakeholders nationwide involved in defining, implementing, maintaining, evaluating, and evolving lab reporting. This community collaboratively develops knowledge, innovation, and best practices through discussion of current obstacles in LM and sharing lessons learned to facilitate the modernization of public health surveillance. Additional areas to be considered for inclusion in the scope of the CoP include messaging for lab orders and specimen tracking.

Message Board — Internet forum for holding discussions and posting user-generated content.

NCPHI — CDC’s National Center for Public Health Informatics.

PHIN Communities of Practice Council (CoPC) — Structured group comprised of members from the PHIN Community and members from each of the PHIN CoPs, the CoPP leader and CoPP members. This group functions in an advisory and guidance capacity, and is responsible for: suggesting priorities, funding amounts /mechanisms, and programmatic improvements to the CoPP, as well as identifying cross collaborations among communities.

Podcast — Multimedia file (audio or video) developed to be played back on a digital media player (an MP3 player) or a personal computer.

Practice — Community’s mission that involves the development and shared practice of new technology, best practices, and gaining knowledge to address recurring problems.

Public Health Information Network (PHIN) — People, processes, and tools to strengthen public health's capability to exchange information electronically. For more information, visit http://www.cdc.gov/phin/.

Public Health Information Network Community (PHIN Community) — Community comprised of persons working to improve and strengthen PHIN.

Public Health Vocabulary Community of Practice (PHV CoP) — the PHV CoP is the predecessor of the PHIN Vocabulary and Messaging CoP. From December 2005 until August 2008, this community facilitated dialogue and problem solving around vocabulary development, standards usage, and distribution within public health.

SMART Objective — SMART objective is one that is specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time bound.

Vocabulary and Messaging — The Vocabulary and Messaging Community of Practice (VM CoP) facilitates dialogue and problem solving around standard vocabulary and message development, usage, and distribution within public health. VM COP members come together to share ideas, identify collaborative efforts, and work to develop solutions to common public health vocabulary and messaging challenges.

Wiki — Collection of web pages designed to enable anyone who accesses it to contribute or modify content, using a simplified markup language like HTML.

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