Resource Centers Bring Information to Health Workers Where They Work

This submission describes a knowledge management (KM) intervention designed to help the Palestinian Health Capacity Project (PHCP) begin to address an urgent, longstanding, and worsening problem that has been weakening the health system serving the West Bank. That problem consists of a lack of readily available information resources to support evidence-based decision-making in clinical settings. The result of this problem has been a rapidly increasing tendency for primary clinicians to refer their patients to specialists, who typically practice outside the West Bank, which places significant burdens on the patients as they must spend money to travel and navigate the often difficult border crossings in the region. 

In order to try and decrease this number, the Palestine Ministry of Health and PHCP invested in the creation of online resource centers, located in several West Bank hospitals, which can serve as quick-access libraries of health information. IntraHealth International developed a KM solution to this problem by developing training for the resource center facilitators. E-learning courses were also developed as part of this project to provide training on various health topics, including ethics and infection prevention and control. The training was successful and one of the e-learning courses is now a requirement for doctors during their 1-year internship. 

This case study was submitted as part of USAID's CLA Case Competition, held in August 2015. Taken together, this collection of submissions illustrates the diversity of ways collaborating, learning, and adapting approaches are being operationalized in the field. Stringent judging criteria was used to determine official CLA Case Competition winners, so not all submissions should be considered an official USAID endorsement of best practice. To view all entries, visit the CLA Case Competition page.