Stakeholder driven indicators for eHealth performance management

The goal of the present article is to compile a corpus of indicators of eHealth development evaluation that would essentially reflect stakeholder approaches and complement technical indicators of assessment of an eHealth system. Consequently, the assessment of the development of an eHealth system would reflect stakeholder approaches and become an innovative solution in attempting to improve productivity of IT projects in the field of health care. The compiled minimum set of indicators will be designed to monitor implementation of the national eHealth information system. To ensure reliability of the quality research, the respondents were grouped in accordance to the geographical distribution and diversity of the levels and types of the represented jobs and institutions. The applied analysis implies several managerial insights on the hierarchy of eHealth indicators. These insights may be helpful in recommending priority activities in implementation of an eHealth data system on the national or international level. The research is practically useful as it is the first to deal with the topic in Lithuania and its theoretical and practical aspect are particularly relevant in implementation of an eHealth data system in Lithuania. The eHealth assessment indicators presented in the article may be practically useful in two aspects: (1) as key implementation guidelines facilitating the general course of eHealth system development and (2) as a means to evaluate eHealth outcomes.     

A framework for evaluating eHealth research

Health care is in the midst of a consumer-oriented technology explosion. Individuals of all ages and backgrounds have discovered eHealth. But the challenges of implementing and evaluating eHealth are just beginning to surface, and, as technology changes, new challenges emerge. Evaluation is critical to the future of eHealth. This article addresses four dimensions of eHealth evaluation: (1) design and methodology issues; (2) challenges related to the technology itself; (3) environmental issues that are not specific to eHealth but pose special problems for eHealth researchers; and (4) logistic or administrative concerns of the evaluation methodology selected. We suggest that these four dimensions must be integrated to provide a holistic framework for designing and implementing eHealth research projects, as well as for understanding the totality of the eHealth intervention. The framework must be flexible enough to adapt to a variety of end users, regardless of whether the end user is a healthcare organization, a for-profit business, a community organization, or an individual. The framework is depicted as a puzzle with four interlocking pieces.     

Multidisciplinary eHealth survey evaluation methods

This paper describes the development process of an evaluation framework for describing and comparing web survey tools. We believe that this approach will help shape the design, development, deployment, and evaluation of population-based health interventions. A conceptual framework for describing and evaluating web survey systems will enable the developers of health interventions to identify, select, and use the most appropriate and relevant survey tools. The primary contributors included survey methodologists, computer scientists, informaticians, technical communications specialists, educators, evaluators, clinical practitioners, and health services researchers, who together developed a comprehensive ontology to describe the electronic survey domain. This paper will describe the survey ontology development process and detail lessons learned in the creation of the web survey system evaluation framework.     

The intersection of home study assessments and child specific recruitment: the performance of home studies in practice

Child specific recruitment efforts are designed to facilitate permanent placements for children in foster care by finding them potential adoptive families among people already known to the child. This process relies heavily on gathering thorough and accurate information about prospective families, and much of this information is often contained in families’ home study assessments. Yet, little is known in the research literature about the way that home studies operate in conjunction with the recruitment of adoptive families. The purpose of this study is to explore how home studies are perceived and used in the context of child specific recruitment. Findings suggest that home studies perform best in gathering general family information, but poorly in capturing sensitive information, which may be one of the most critical dimensions to capture. These findings highlight important practice changes needed in current adoption practice.     

AIDS Prevention via Computer-Based Intervention

The dangers posed by AIDS and the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) are well known. Government, media, and medical organizations have provided extensive information on AIDS and on how to protect oneself against infection. Nevertheless, this fatal and irreversible disease continues to claim new victims. Clearly, there is an urgent need to develop new methods of educating the public about AIDS prevention. This paper reviews a new, interactive microcomputer approach to educating at-risk adolescents about AIDS. Emphasizing culturally sensitive and interactive approaches to prevention, the authors describe, illustrate, and assess interactive strategies and computer-based content for reducing the risks of AIDS and HIV among Black and Hispanic youth.     

African-American students’ perceptions of public relations education and practice: Implications for minority recruitment

In-depth interviews were conducted with African-American public relations students to explore their perceptions of public relations and the role race may play in their career success. The motivations for pursuing public relations and perceptions of the field are not different than those of other groups of students found in previous studies. However, the findings provide insights that are helpful in recruiting African-American students, and also in retaining them in the major. Central themes that emerged from the data are that it is important to have African-American role models, and that students’ view race as a fact of life that can be both a barrier and an asset.     

Obesity-related behaviors in adolescent friendship networks

This study examines obesity-related behaviors within adolescent friendship networks, because adolescent peers have been identified as being important determinants of many health behaviors. We applied ERGM selection models for single network observations to determine if close adolescent friends engage in similar behaviors and to explore associations between behavior and popularity. Same-sex friends were found to be similar on measures of organized physical activity in two out of three school-based friendship networks. Female friends were found to engage in similar screen-based behaviors, and male friends tended to be similar in their consumption of high-calorie foods. Popularity (receiving ties) was also associated with some behaviors, although these effects were gender specific and differed across networks.