Today marks 5 months since my return to the health information field as a public health librarian after a bit over 5 years away as a continuing education coordinator for public health workforce development and training.
You know things are bad since I'm blogging again, although they were & are not bad with either of my jobs since 2019. It's very clear to me I've been called to help in both for the past 6 years of unprecedented times. Now it's also time to move from shock to storytelling to start documenting them.
On November 15 last year I had a horrible and quite visceral gut feeling about the direction we were headed in. Sure enough it's manifested into reality, just a few examples from last week include RFK Jr. sent Congress 'medical disinformation' to defend COVID change and having to honestly ask Can you still trust the US government’s vaccine recommendations?
I stand in solidarity with National Institutes of Health (NIH) staff and last week's Bethesda Declaration and may have accidentally signed it twice. Please take the time to read the gut-wrenching Shattered Science: The Research Lost as Trump Targets NIH Funding.
As of today the entire NIH-grant funded Network of the National Library of Medicine (NNLM) hasn't received FY25 funding (source), which should have begun on May 1. I'm thankful for the Alt NNLM YouTube channel and will watch for more alt resources - especially equity resources like the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion guide.
The health information field is fortunate to have Hilda Bastian asking hard questions like What if We Can't Rely on PubMed? early (February 14). It was thanks to her thoughtful coverage last month of Germany's Plan for an Open and Independent PubMed Safety Net that I went to their English webinar last week, and encourage checking out ZB MED's Open Life Science Publication (OLSPub) database project information.
I still have hope for both NNLM and my previous job's Public Health Training Center Network, which is Health Resources & Services Administration (HRSA)-grant funded, as their FY25 begins July 1. I have to hope. The consequences of losing these colleagues and the vast amount of work they've done for decades creating resources to support continuing education in their respective fields is unfathomable to me.
No comments:
Post a Comment