Case-Based Learning in Public Health Informatics

Abstract

The public health landscape is undergoing profound changes, including rapid advances in technology, increasing use of electronic health records, and health reform. Improving population health requires knowledge and skills in managing and working within the adaptive complexity of underlying societal structures and functions. These advances in technology, and profound changes within these structures and functions, introduce enormous opportunities for creating efficiencies and economies of scale, not simply for improving public health practice, but for learning as well. Finding informatics solutions to cross-cutting information needs, while solving complex health problems, requires cross-disciplinary education, research, and practice. Approaches to overcoming these challenges should address the complexity of problems within both the work and learning environments. These problem-based approachevs build skills in collaborative problem solving, critical thinking, systems thinking and lifelong learning. This chapter discusses case-based learning (CBL) as one of the methods for problem-based learning (PBL) and is aimed at the student of public health informatics (PHI) exploring this topic for the first time. The chapter concludes with a student exercise developed for fellows in the CDC Public Health Informatics Fellowship Program.