Teaching Consumer Health Informatics and

Health Justice within UMD iSchool’s New

Undergraduate Specialization in Health
Informatics
Fiona Jardine, Doctoral Candidate Informatics Education 2020
Gagan Jindal, Doctoral Candidate Austin, TX
Beth St. Jean, Associate Professor March 3, 2020
Agenda

• Designing the new undergraduate Health Informatics

Specialization
• The five courses
• INST 408A: Consumer Health Informatics
• Next steps….
Designing the new undergraduate
Health Informatics Specialization
• Reviewed AMIA’s
(2017) Health
Informatics Core
Competencies for
CAHIIM
Designing the New Specialization:
TIGER Competencies (Nursing)
• Reviewed the TIGER • Basic Computer Competencies
Initiative’s Informatics • Information Literacy Competencies
Competencies for Practicing• Information Management Competencies
Nurses • Communication
• Documentation
• Information & knowledge management in patient care
• Data analytics
• Leadership
• …..
Designing the New Specialization:
Review of Existing Health Informatics Courses
• North American iSchools (https://ischools.org/):
• Undergraduate level courses related to health informatics
• Graduate level courses related to health informatics

• CAHIIM-accredited (https://www.cahiim.org/):
• Health informatics-related courses in undergraduate majors, minors,
and certificate programs
Designing the New Specialization:
Investigation of Employment Opportunities
• Hired external research firm to investigate employment
opportunities focused on:
• Washington DC metropolitan area
• New graduates with a Bachelor’s degree in Health Informatics
Designing the New Specialization:
Example of a Local Job Posting
Required Experience,
Job Title Employer Required Education
Skills, and Credentials
Healthcare ASRC Federal Bachelor’s degree in Two to three years of
Business Holding Healthcare Administration professional work
Analyst Company or health-related field or experience with an
Computer Science; understanding of areas
Master’s in Healthcare such as Medicare and
field a plus Medicaid
Designing the New Specialization:
The Five Courses
• Introduction to Health Informatics (Fall 2019)
• Consumer Health Informatics (Fall 2019)
• Designing Patient-Centered Technology (Spring 2020)
• Health Data Analytics (Spring 2020)
• Clinical Informatics (TBD)
INST 408B: Introduction to Health
Informatics: Course Description
• Creating, storing, and using medical data, information and knowledge.
• Clinical, public health, research, administrative, patient-oriented, and other
health information systems.
• Stakeholder roles in delivering high-quality information.
• Roles and positions available for information technologists.
• Current and future trends in health information systems and services:
decision support, health information exchanges, and data analytics.
Taught in Fall 2019 by Dr. Nancy Roderer – 14 students
INST 408B: Introduction to Health
Informatics: Student Learning Outcomes
• Describe stakeholders and major information systems involved in health care.
• Understand major trends in health care and impact of health care legislation on
health technology.
• Classify major information resources/systems available to health practitioners,
patients, and consumers.
• Recognize development and use of health information technology for clinical care.
• Discuss the role of IT and vocabulary standards in creating and accessing health
care information.
• Describe major trends in health care informatics such as health information
exchanges, data analytics and decision support.
Designing the New Specialization:
The Five Courses
• Introduction to Health Informatics (Fall 2019)
• Consumer Health Informatics (Fall 2019)
• Designing Patient-Centered Technology (Spring 2020)
• Health Data Analytics (Spring 2020)
• Clinical Informatics (TBD)
INST 408D: Designing Patient-Centered
Technology: Course Description
• Digital health technologies to support personal health and wellness.
• Limitations of existing apps and other technologies to understanding
people’s health and wellness needs and/or potential ethical issues.
• Designing improved technologies that meet people’s needs and
expectations.
• Unique challenges of studying people’s health and wellness needs
and designing and evaluating technologies to meet those needs.
Taught in Spring 2020 by Dr. Eun Kyoung Choe – 28 students
INST 408D: Designing Patient-Centered
Technology: Student Learning Outcomes
• Understand the unique challenges of understanding and designing for patient-
centered technologies;
• Understand types of digital health technologies currently available or being
researched;
• Understand key methodological approaches to design patient-centered
technologies;
• Design patient-centered digital health technologies that address people’s
needs;
• Evaluate digital health technologies.
Designing the New Specialization:
The Five Courses
• Introduction to Health Informatics (Fall 2019)
• Consumer Health Informatics (Fall 2019)
• Designing Patient-Centered Technology (Spring 2020)
• Health Data Analytics (Spring 2020)
• Clinical Informatics (TBD)
INST 408F: Health Data Analytics:
Course Description
• Extrapolation of actionable insights from patient data, using data sources such
as electronic health records (EHRs), claims data, surveillance data, and surveys.
• Using various analytical methods to translate complex health data (that is often
incomplete), both structured or unstructured, into insights to improve decision-
making from both the patient and provider perspectives.
• Foundational topics in data analytics focused on health data.
• Apply this knowledge to real health datasets through hands-on labs integrated
into the lectures.
Taught in Spring 2020 by Nikki Sigalo – 33 students
INST 408F: Health Data Analytics:
Student Learning Outcomes
• Develop a systematic working understanding of R, and an introductory understanding of several
packages useful in analyzing health data.
• Define the challenges of working with health data.
• Describe the features of a health-related question that makes it important and answerable,
including data sources that can be leveraged to address it.
• Create data visualizations to identify data quality issues and describe important relationships
between health features and outcomes.
• Securely load and clean a health data set, including dealing with missing values and outliers,
and reshaping and sub-setting the data to meet analytic needs.
• Perform descriptive, preliminary analyses on healthcare data.
• Apply statistical and machine learning methods to build prediction models and evaluate the
performance of these models.
Designing the New Specialization:
The Five Courses
• Introduction to Health Informatics (Fall 2019)
• Consumer Health Informatics (Fall 2019)
• Designing Patient-Centered Technology (Spring 2020)
• Health Data Analytics (Spring 2020)
• Clinical Informatics (TBD)
Clinical Informatics (TBD)
• Clinical Informatics is the application of informatics and information
technology to deliver healthcare services. It is also referred to as applied
clinical informatics and operational informatics.
• AMIA considers informatics when used for healthcare delivery to be
essentially the same regardless of the health professional group involved.
• Clinical Informatics is concerned with information use in health care by
clinicians.
• Clinical informatics includes a wide range of topics ranging from clinical
decision support to visual images; from clinical documentation to provider
order entry systems; and from system design to system implementation and
adoption issues.
Designing the New Specialization:
The Five Courses
• Introduction to Health Informatics (Fall 2019)
• Consumer Health Informatics (Fall 2019)
• Designing Patient-Centered Technology (Spring 2020)
• Health Data Analytics (Spring 2020)
• Clinical Informatics (TBD)
INST 408A: Consumer Health Informatics:
Course Description
• Intersection of Consumer Health Informatics and Information Behavior –
Consumer Health Information Behavior.
• People’s health-related information needs.
• Information avoidance, health behaviors, health literacy, doctor-patient
communication, and patient-to-patient communication.
• Health justice, especially populations that frequently experience social injustice.
• Information-related causes and broader consequences of health inequity.
• Facilitation of health-related information seeking and promotion of health
justice.
Taught in Fall 2019 by Dr. Beth St. Jean and Fiona Jardine – 15 students
INST 408A: Consumer Health Informatics:
Students will learn… (1)
• Fields of consumer health informatics and information behavior, and their intersection,
consumer health information behavior.
• Health-related information behavior of consumers, including whether, how, and why people
do or do not seek out and use health information and the types of health information they find
useful.
• Major factors influencing health-related information behaviors.
• Interrelationships between a person’s health-related information behaviors and their health
behaviors.
• Holistic, integrated approach to investigating both types of behaviors.
• Information communication issues between patients, and between patients and healthcare
professionals.
INST 408A: Consumer Health Informatics:
Students will learn… (2)
• Major models of information behavior and consumer health information
behavior.
• Applicability and usefulness of information behavior and health behavior
models working with different patient populations.
• Concept of health justice and its importance.
• Types, causes, and consequences of the health inequities faced by different
types of disadvantaged populations.
• Apply findings from previous empirical studies to envisage future research
investigations and/or potential solutions to improve health justice.
INST 408A: Consumer Health Informatics:
Students Learning Outcomes (1)
• Describe dimensions and aspects of Consumer Health Informatics.
• Explain roles that consumers may play in their own and others’ health and
illness journeys.
• Differentiate health-related information needs, preferences, and
information-seeking strategies of consumers.
• Describe models and theories of consumers’ health-related information
behavior.
• Master techniques for conducting studies of consumers’ health-related
information behaviors, as well as ethical challenges that may arise during the
conduct of such research, whether carried out online or off.
 INST 408A: Consumer Health Informatics:
Student Learning Outcomes (2)
• Describe the state of health justice in the U.S. and the information-related
causes and consequences of health disparities.
• Explain the role of health literacy (including digital health literacy) in
influencing health outcomes.
• Evaluate factors, such as social support and the doctor-patient
relationship, that can influence people’s health-related information
behaviors, as well as their ultimate health outcomes.
• Formulate strategies to facilitate consumer health information seeking
and to promote health justice.
Weekly Topics
• Introduction to Consumer Health • Ethics of Online Research
Informatics • Introduction to Health Justice
• Introduction to Information Behavior • Cultural Competence
• Information Needs • Health Literacy
• Introduction to Health-Related • Digital Health Literacy
Information Seeking
• Impact of the Internet on the Doctor-
• Health-related Information Seeking: Patient Relationship
Strategies, Channel Selection &
• Social Networks & Social Support
Usage
• Facilitating Health-Related
• Information Avoidance
Information Seeking and Promoting
• Introduction to Models of Health Justice
Information Behavior and
Information Seeking
• Introduction to Health Behavior; HB
Theories and Models
• Research Design, Methodology, and
Learning Assessments

• Course Participation (10%)

• Papers and Presentations (50%)
• Health Information Seeking Account (10%)
• Final Project (40% total)
• Midterm Exam (20%)
• Final Exam (20%)
Learning Assessments: Final Project
Part 1: Proposal
• Select a particular population that often experiences social injustice
• Investigate the health-related information behaviors of your
population and the health inequities that they face.
• Propose some type of information-related process, resource,
service, system, etc. that can help to address these health inequities.
• Submit a 1-page proposal:
• Describe the population you have selected.
• Motivation for selecting this population.
• Any specific hypotheses and/or questions you would like to focus on.
Learning Assessments: Final Project
Part 2: Annotated Bibliography
• Find at least three peer-reviewed journal articles that describe results from
recent empirical studies focused on the health-related information behaviors
of your selected population.
• Prepare an annotated bibliography.
• Provide an introduction, including your motivations and goals for
undertaking the project.
• Then, for each article provide:
• a citation in APA style;
• a brief summary;
• a critical appraisal.
• Explain how each article is relevant to your final project.
Learning Assessments: Final Project
Part 3: Presentation or Poster and Final Paper
• Prepare to give
• 7-minute presentation OR
• 3-minute conference style poster
• Lead a 3-minute class discussion/Q&A
• Write a 2,000 to 2,500-word paper
• Both presentation/poster and paper need to include the following
sections/content: …
Learning Assessments: Final Project
Part 3: Presentation or Poster and Final Paper
Introduction:
• Which population did you decide to focus on?
• Why?
• What will you be discussing in the remainder of your
paper/presentation?
Learning Assessments: Final Project
Part 3: Presentation or Poster and Final Paper
Literature Review (for each of the three studies, summarize):
• The authors’ research question(s);
• Methods (including recruitment, data collection, and data analysis
methods);
• Findings;
• What did you learn from these studies about the health-related
information behavior of your selected population and about the
health inequities they face?
Learning Assessments: Final Project
Part 3: Presentation or Poster and Final Paper
Discussion:
• How do the findings from these three studies relate to one
another?;
• Why are their findings important?;
• Do there appear to be any relationships between the health-related
information behaviors of your population and the health
inequities they tend to face?
Learning Assessments: Final Project
Part 3: Presentation or Poster and Final Paper
Conclusion:
• Propose some potential solutions to the health inequities faced by your
population.
• These solutions might include:
• Ideas for future research;
• Proposed information-related processes, tools, or systems;
• Suggestions for resources, programs, and/or services that might be helpful for
your population;
• Recommendations regarding new or amended policies, laws, etc.;
• All proposed solutions should be informed by what is known about the health-
related information behavior of your population and the nature, causes, and
consequences of the health inequities they face.
Next Steps

• Piloting specialization to gauge student interest.

• Seeking external instructor to teach Clinical Informatics.
• Initiate process for official approval by the University and add to
program offerings.
Contact Information

• Beth St. Jean, PhD, Associate Professor

bstjean@umd.edu
• Fiona Jardine, MLS, LLM, Doctoral Candidate
fjardine@umd.edu
• Gagan Jindal, MPH, Doctoral Candidate
gjindal@termpmail.umd.edu