BIREME/PAHO/WHO celebrates its 55th anniversary in 2022 and, to mark this important date, which coincides with the year in which PAHO/WHO turns 120, a combined commemorative stamp was created, which is being applied to the graphic materials that will be used by BIREME throughout 2022 in official agendas and correspondence, PowerPoint presentations, email signatures and virtual meeting backgrounds.
The meeting between the BIREME team, which was attended by the Director of the EIH Department of PAHO/WHO and the Interim Director of BIREME, Sebastián Garcia Saisó, and the General Coordinator of Documentation and Information (CGDI), Shirlei Rodrigues, and Sandra Cristina Teixeira, responsible for the Dissemination of Technical-Scientific Information in Health, both linked to the Undersecretariat for Administrative Affairs of the Executive Secretariat of the Ministry of Health (MS in its Brazilian acronym) of Brazil, aimed to report and validate the results programmed and achieved by the Center in the second semester of 2021, in the context of the 6th Adjustment Term to Cooperation Term 95 (TA6/TC95) and to progress activities of the Annual Work Plan (PTA) of the 9th Amendment to the TC95 (TA9/TC95).
Health Information Networks are essential to strengthen and extend the work carried out by BIREME in favor of the VHL, LILACS, DeCS, and all information sources that contribute to the democratization of access and visibility of scientific knowledge in health in the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean (LA&C). These networks bring together information science professionals from cooperating institutions from all LA&C countries, the United States, Spain, Portugal, Mozambique, and other countries. BIREME, as the regional coordinator of this great Network of Networks, launched on March 9th the 2022 Network Calendar of Meetings.
In order to meet regional needs for indexing and retrieving scientific and technical literature from Latin America and the Caribbean, the DeCS/MeSH thesaurus was created in 1986 as a Portuguese and Spanish version of the terms and thematic categories of the Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) thesaurus and expanded with four unique categories: Public Health, Homeopathy, Science and Health, and Health Surveillance. More recently, it is necessary to include a new specific category in the DeCS thesaurus, Traditional, Complementary and Integrative Medicine (TCIM).
In the context of the technical cooperation agreement that marks phase III of the partnership between the Municipal Health Department of São Paulo (SMS – São Paulo) and BIREME/PAHO/WHO, the course on Access and Use of Scientific Information in Health took place in a virtual environment on February 23rd. With a workload of 2h, targeting health and information science professionals from SMS-São Paulo, the course was attended by over 130 professionals.
World Kidney Day 2022 was celebrated on March 10th under the theme “Kidney Health for All”. The campaign encourages research on chronic kidney disease, as the continuous and persistent lack of knowledge about this disease is demonstrable at all levels of health care. In order to make an increasing number of people aware of the disease, PAHO/WHO publishes a guide for the implementation of HEARTS in the Americas. HEARTS was recently recognized with the World Heart Awards by the World Heart Federation in the “Promotion of Cardiovascular Health” category.
In March 2022, the year in which the Pan American Health Organization celebrates 120 years of its foundation, BIREME completes 55 years as a specialized center of PAHO/WHO, whose mission is to democratize access and publication of information, knowledge, and evidence for the continuous improvement of research, education, and health systems in LA&C countries. The celebration of 55 years of BIREME and 120 years of PAHO/WHO are both focused on stimulating efforts in favor of pro-equity strategies for access and universal health coverage. PAHO/WHO, through the fight against diseases and promotion of physical and mental health, leaving no one behind, and BIREME, promoting the democratization of access to information and evidence to guide the decision-making process in health.
The new web page of the Scholarly Communication in Health VHL has just been updated to follow the relevant changes that have occurred in recent years in this area. The new portal was designed to contemplate scientific journal editors, journal editorial teams, authors, peer reviewers, librarians, information science professionals and students, and all those who seek to know more about the specialized process of writing and publishing scientific research outcomes in health sciences.
BIREME collaborates with the development of the Regional Database of Health Technology Assessment Reports of the Americas (BRISA), coordinated by the MT/HSS unit of PAHO/WHO. The reports included in the BRISA database are produced by national institutions, members of the Health Technology Assessment Network of the Americas (Red de Evaluación de Tecnologías en Salud de las Américas, RedETSA). To better serve the Network’s user community, the RedETSA portal was renovated, added to new functionalities, and integrated with the BRISA database.
The technical cooperation project between PAHO/WHO, through BIREME, and the Ministry of Health of Brazil, through the General Coordination of Food and Nutrition, aims to contribute to increasing the visibility, access to, and use of scientific and technical information related to the Decade of Action on Nutrition. In February 2022, three new products were launched resulting from this cooperation: the Evidence Map on the management and treatment of Malnutrition in the context of Primary Health Care, the Widow of Knowledge Food and Nutrition in Public Health, and an infometric study of international scientific production.