PH/HA Caucus Celebrates 50 Years

Submitted by: Courtney Pyche

In the 2024-2025 year, the Public Health/Health Administration caucus officially celebrated our 50th anniversary. The planning for the celebration began in 2023-2024, thanks to the investigative skills and leadership of Shenita Peterson. During her year as chair, the 50th Anniversary Committee was formed. Over the past two years, the committee has included: Marlowe Bogino, James Gilbreath, Margaret Henderson, Rachel Hinrichs, Layal Hneiny, Shanda Hunt, Anita Kuiken, Jennifer Lege-Matsuura, Shenita Peterson, Courtney Pyche, and Cayla Robinson.

As part of the 50th celebration, the committee designed and ordered commemorative pins, hosted a panel discussion to celebrate the history of the Sewell Award, hosted an event on Thursday, May 1, 2025, during the 2025 Medical Library Association Conference in Pittsburgh, PA, and this brief article in MLA Connect about the celebration to commemorate the efforts. The committee also extends a special thank you to Tomi Gunn, Kate Corcoran, and the MLA Finance Committee for supporting and making this commemoration possible.

From what we could find, our caucus was officially founded by Arthur Carrol, who we believe to have worked for the Parklawn Medical Library, and Wanita Tesar, who we believe worked at the Johns Hopkins Medical Library. They were co-chairs until 1975. Wanita chaired one more year until 1976. The group first convened in San Antonio, TX, in 1974. The group became a Special Interest Group of MLA in 1975 and was given section status in 1980. Our 50th anniversary acknowledges the “Special Interest Group” year as the year of official establishment. Their established goals were: to bring together representatives of libraries specializing in public health and health administration; to provide contacts and a forum for planned discussions of common goals and problems; to promote an active interchange of ideas, methods, and materials in this rapidly growing and socially important field; and to develop within the Medical Library Association liaise with other health sciences libraries.

The group was responsible for two continuing education courses. Their activities grew over twenty years and included topics and projects such as: AIDs programs, suicide, grey or “fugitive” literature, international cooperation, a PH/HA news newsletter, and, of course, journals lists. This history takes us through about 1998.

In 1998, the Centennial of MLA prompted sections to complete goals. The goals that this caucus set for MLA’s centennial in 1998, summarized by Winifred Sewell and Stephanie Normann were:

• Work actively with major organizations such as those of hospital associations, state health agencies, and schools of public health to bring their information personnel into our ranks.

• Use our home page and possibly a listserv to make exploring of these issues [violence, AIDS, suicide and other topics that confront the health of civilization] possible between meetings, as well as continuing their discussion at meetings. Create PH/HA news online as well as continuing in print for present. Create responsible committees with the PH/HA section to bring links of such resources to our home page, as well as to evaluate their quality and create additional resources where needs are found. Create liaison relationships with resource personnel in responsible organizations.
• Encourage PH/HA membership by designated librarians within health sciences libraries that serve schools of public health.
• Initiate and sponsor continuing education programs within MLA in these areas of concern [socioeconomics, race, gender, poverty, hunger, war, all things which can impact the status of health, defined by the World Health Organization as “a state of complete well-being, physical, social and mental.”]
• Work with the MLA to lobby for legislation of concern to public health and health administration.
• Establish committee to insure that we use the best feasible technologies to reach public health/health administration librarians and information specialists and all other concerned public health professionals. Focus on specific details such as improvement in PubMed, its related sources and terminologic structure to provide finding of most relevant materials in our areas of interest.

In 1999, our name became the Public Health/Health Administration Section. Still, our caucus continues to live out many of these goals today, though some parts may be outdated with our new structures.

As part of our caucus history, I’d like to highlight some of our projects. The Sewell Stipend to Attend the American Public Health Association’s Annual Meeting was first awarded in 2001. This award was supported by the late Dr. Winifred Sewell, who worked with many professional associations during her years as a pharmacy and medical librarian. She established the Grace and Harold Sewell Memorial Fund to fund opportunities for librarians and information professionals to attend the annual meetings of the American Public Health Association and the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy. It was first awarded in 2001. 

Based on the history of our caucus, the lists of journals are one of our legacies. Though the 1980s and 1990s saw us create lists, the core journals project that many are familiar with began in 2001. In its prime, the list aimed to identify the core public health journals that should be in all libraries serving public health organizations. In the most recent few years, we have stepped away from this work. In a time of uncertainty around publicly available databases, it may be time to revive it. 

Our caucus has also had a long tradition of supporting public engagement with the Healthy People 2030 objectives through creating structured evidence queries to be used within PubMed. Though this history is also fuzzy, and our committee tried to piece it together, it does seem that we have been doing this since at least the 90s. It is a joy to be able to continue that work for our caucus. 

As the caucus moves to the next 50 years, we will likely continue the same path. We asked members to respond to “What future CE courses or initiatives we should do within the next five years?” and we got the below responses:

• “If we weren’t currently doing a survey of PH librarians I would have recommended we undertake one. While at APHA in 2024, there were many mentions of misinformation/disinformation so maybe it would be good if we as a caucus revisited the issue and had a panel of librarians talk about how they are addressing it within their instruction programs. Here is a link to an article about one of the APHA conference sessions – https://www.apha.org/publications/public-health-newswire/articles/2024/10/28/misinformation_session_2024.”
• “I’m thinking about intersections between data services and public health–maybe something there?
  Form collab with CAPHIS to create public-facing Top 100 Consumer Health/Public health websites – we can partner with addtl caucuses as well – Cancer Librarians, Pediatric Librarians, etc.
  publishing a search hedge for public health?”
• “GOAL: Place Sewell reports into an appropriate repository so that they can be found. Webinar: rural health and public health, farming. I have someone from NE who can speak about climate change and farms.”
• “Have a shop talk on public health librarianship.”
• “Exploring public health librarians’ roles as interprofessional team members? Highlight the Healthy People 2030 project?”
• “Have presentation by research award winners.”
• “Public health is for all med/health sci librarians.”
• “Connect with APHA leadership to offer support during this time.”
• “Maybe developing resources around grey lit searching in public health?”
• “Infodemiology: Mis/dis information , a joint conversation with public librarians.”
• “Updates highlighting new and evolving PH resources.”

With these ideas in mind, we look forward to continuing our mission in the years to come.

You can view additional photos from our MLA event here.