Launch of new All Ireland Public Health Resource

The Institute of Public Health in Ireland (IPH) launched a new online resource, The All Ireland Public Health Repository, at its annual seminar Open Access Resources for Public Health (Thursday 22 October 2015). The seminar which was hosted in collaboration with RIAN, Pathways to Irish Research, explored ways in which an Open Access approach to health data and information can be used to support work in the areas of population health and well being across the Island of Ireland.

The All Ireland Public Health Repository was developed by the IPH and is part of its The HealthWell website. The new repository offers public health workers and those working in the voluntary and community organisations free and easy to use tools to access online public health information.

By opening up access to a network of Open Access portals including RIAN and the European portal OpenAire it allows anyone with an internet connection who is interested in public health to get a wider range of up-to-date health data and contextual publications on public health issues including obesity, chronic conditions and mental health and well-being.   

Professor Kevin Balanda, Research Director, IPH, said, “This new resource is part of the Institute’s work in improving everyone’s access to sources of health information. It has been carefully developed with the needs of users in mind and provides free access and easy to use search tools to help anyone engaged in the area of public health to get  up-to-date data and information from a huge range of sources. By making this data and information easier to access we hope to help those engaged in health and community work but also to stimulate public debate on how we can tackle health inequalities and build a healthier society”.

The fully searchable online resource currently contains over 2,000 tagged resources from a wide range of partner websites such as IPH, Department of Health, Social Services and Public Safety (NI), Department of Health (ROI), Public Health Agency (NI), safefood and Public Health England. It also allows users to search for information on RIAN (Open Access Irish research publications) and the EU’s OpenAire database.

The new resource was launched as part of Open Access Week (19-25 October 2015) which provides a great opportunity to learn more about the benefits of open access to information.

More information

The All Ireland Public Health Repository is part of The HealthWell website (www.thehealthwell.info) an online resource managed by the Institute of Public Health in Ireland (IPH) in collaboration with the HRB Centre for Health and Diet Research at University College Cork (UCC) and University College Dublin (UCD), and the UKCRC Centre of Excellence for Public Health (NI) at Queen’s University Belfast (QUB). Find out more here: http://www.thehealthwell.info/ and http://repository.thehealthwell.info/