Experiences and challenges of a public health association IT network

Knowledge Management for Public Health (KM4PH) is a global knowledge-sharing network for public health led by the World Health Organization (WHO) in close collaboration with the World Federation of Public Health Associations (WFPHA) and other key international, regional and national public health partners, including the International Association of National Public Health Institutes (IANPHI).  The Canadian Public Health Association (CPHA), through its Strengthening of Public Health Associations (SOPHA) Program, has been using the KM4PH network as a means of linking public health associations in Latin America and the Caribbean and Africa. 

The purpose of this concurrent session will be to share the experiences and lessons learned from the KM4PH, as a means of demonstrating it as a vehicle to contribute to building public health capacity locally, nationally and globally, its effectiveness as a tool to strengthen the WFPHA and address some of the practical challenges of using web-based real-time IT. Furthermore, this session will also present a broader discussion on Information and Communication Technologies for Development (ICT4D) through The International Development Research Centre’s (IDRC) experiences, with particular emphasis on health information systems for low resource environments.