International Open Access Week – October 19th – 25th 2015

Open Access is the immediate, online, free availability of research outputs without restrictions on use commonly imposed by publisher copyright agreements. 

Open Access Week is a global event that provides an opportunity to learn more about the benefits of Open Access.  The Institute of Public Health in Ireland (IPH) in collaboration with RIAN, the portal to Irish research publications, will host an event in Dublin this Thursday 22nd October entitled, ‘Open Access Resources for Public Health’.  There will be many other events taking place globally, just follow the links below for more information.  The theme for 2015 Open Access Week is ‘Open for collaboration’, highlighting the ways in which collaboration both inspires and advances the Open Access movement.

For more on the IPH Open Access Event this year in collaboration with RIAN, click here

Study highlights long-standing child health issues

A new study shows that nearly 16%, or 11,000 three-year-olds, in Ireland have at least one serious long-standing health condition.

The report from the Institute of Public Health in Ireland identified five common serious conditions that were reported by carers.

These conditions were diagnosed asthma or asthma symptoms, diagnosed eczema or skin allergy, a sight problem that required correction and hearing problems that required correction.

Boys are 50% more likely than girls to have these conditions but the reason for this is unclear.

Children in the lowest social-economic households are 50% more likely than those in other households to have such a condition.

Children born with low birth weight are 70% more likely than other children to have sight problems.

Professor Kevin Balanda, Director of Research at the institute, said children with these conditions can have a poorer quality of life, poorer social and emotional development and poorer educational achievement.

He said knowing the characteristics of children with these conditions helps towards the development of policies and plans for services for children and their families.

View Press release here

Health Well Website

Introducing the Health Well website and its interactive tools

The Health Well website (www.thehealthwell.info) managed by the Institute of Public Health in Ireland (IPH) is a unique all-island heath information website that promotes health and wellbeing by supporting evidence-informed policy and practice.  The Health Well provides access to health information with a focus on data at local level to effectively inform local policy and practice. Information resources on the Health Well are grouped into structured catalogues such as Interventions, Policy, and Evidence. You can also keep up-to-date with latest developments in your area via the News section on the Health Well and our Twitter account (@TheHealthWell).

The Health Well also provides a range of online interactive tools to help people understand and use the information effectively which we believe may be of benefit to your organisation and its users. In addition, we can provide computer based training on the Health Well and its tools.

Some of the tools available on the Health Well include:

• Public Health Information System (PHIS) Tables – a collection of health-related tables produced by the Department of Health
• If you are interested in how healthy your area is, use our Community Profiles Tool to develop local health profiles. 
• You can explore how chronic conditions prevalence may change in your local area with the Chronic Conditions Prevalence Tool.
• You can see how obesity is being tackled in your local area with the Physical Activity & Nutrition Intervention (PANI) Tool.
• Finally, if you wish to carry out more complex analysis on the data, our Data Visualiser Tool can be used to create detailed tables, maps and charts ready to download to your computer.