The Regional Meeting on the use of Evidence for Policies was held on October 16-18, in Santiago, Chile, with the main purpose of strengthening the Network of Evidence-Informed Policies (EVIPNet) in the Americas and increasing the exchange of experiences and capacities among the different countries with strategies that promote the use of evidence in decision making for health policies.
BIREME/PAHO/WHO and the Brazilian Ministry of Health joined to participate in the XXVIII Congresso Brasileiro de Biblioteconomia e Documentação – CBBD 2019 in Vitória-ES, Brazil, and to promote the products and services of Brazil VHL, through a program of presentations congruent with the interest of participants at the event.
Within the framework of the Plan for strengthening the Virtual Health Library on Public Health of Paraguay (VHL), with the presence of Sueli Suga, BIREME Supervisor for Referential Sources, and with the objective of diffusing/giving visibility and access to the scientific and technical production of the country through LILACS and the VHL, a series of strategic meetings were held on October 1-3, along with the indexation course for librarians and editors, according to the LILACS Methodology.
As a contribution to facilitate the access to available evidence, as well as to identify knowledge gaps, BIREME, in collaboration with the Brazilian Academic Consortium on Integrative Health, held the first workshop on evidence maps on Integrative and Traditional Health Practices (Práticas Integrativas e Complementares em Saúde, PICS), on October 14 in São Paulo, Brazil. The workshop was financed by the Brazilian Ministry of Health and was attended by 39 participants from nine states of the different regions of the country.
The Instituto Lauro de Souza Lima, coordinating institution for the VHL Hansen’s disease, gathered its Consulting Committee for the 10° Simpósio Brasileiro de Hansenologia in Recife – PE, Brazil, with the objective of strengthening the thematic VHL and defining cooperation strategies for its reactivation, supported by BIREME.
With the objective of strengthening the International Nursing Virtual Health Library (VHL) and of outlining cooperation strategies for creating and strengthening its sources of information in Latin America, the XIII International Meeting of the Nursing VHL Network was held on September 24, in Panama City, Panama. BIREME’s participation was noteworthy and was focused on the contribution to the LILACS database and the strengthening of the Nursing VHL Brazil.
Since Nicaragua is one of the PAHO/WHO key countries, it also constitutes a priority for BIREME, and in this occasion the country received a visit from the Director of the specialized Center on Health Sciences Information, Dr. Diego González, who held strategic meetings with national counterparts related to the scientific and technical information component, as well as with the technical team of the PAHO/WHO office in the country. The reactivation of the Virtual Health Library and the adoption of tools for strengthening information systems and scientific communication were the objectives of the work undertaken.
With the objective of offering scientific editors, researchers, health professionals and post-graduate students the most important elements to keep in mind while writing scientific articles, PAHO Paraguay, through its Knowledge Management team, in collaboration with the Instituto Nacional de Salud of the Ministry of Health and BIREME/PAHO/WHO, organized a Workshop on Scholarly communication in Health. Dr. Lilian Calò, BIREME Scholarly Communication Coordinator, oversaw the activity, which took place on September 17-19.
Collaborators from the Administration and Planning Management (GA) of BIREME participated at the Regional Training on Operational Excellence in Procurement, in September 2019, which contributed to the development of collective and individual competences, thus collaborating with the efficiency of the management and administration activities, as well as with the Center’s operations for the effective implementation of its technical cooperation program in the Region.
A delegation from the Medical School of the Universidade Lueji A’Nkonde, from Malanje, Angola (ULAN), visited BIREME on September 6th, in order to identify joint actions to strengthen the School’s scientific and technical information management, as well as that of North Luanda and Angola. Visitors were presented to the lines of work of the Center and discussed ways of supporting ULAN to strengthen its capacities in health information and scientific communication.