In 2017, the Latin American and Caribbean Center on Health Sciences Information (BIREME) will celebrate its 50th anniversary and continue to make joint efforts to officially formalize its institutionality as a Specialized Center of the Pan American Health Organization/World Health Organization (PAHO/WHO) in Brazil. BIREME works in cooperation with all countries in the Region with the support of its institutional partners and information users.
BIREME developed a self-learning distance course on access and use of health information in Spanish, targeted at professionals, researchers, managers and students searching for information and scientific evidence to subsidize their practice and decision-making process in health.
In the past three years, BIREME/PAHO/WHO has been working to update the Web systems used in the publication of the Virtual Health Library (VHL) portals, as well as those aimed at managing the bibliographic databases that comprise its network of information sources. Such updates aim to improve the processes of production and publication of contents, as well as to facilitate access and use of information and scientific evidence in health at the local, national, and regional levels
Aiming to contribute to encourage publication of research results by professionals, researchers, graduate students and managers in the health area, BIREME has been developing and improving courses on scholarly communication in health. Since 2014, BIREME has trained more than 500 professionals from teaching and research institutions, government bodies, and international agencies.
The Ministry of Health, through the General Coordination of Documentation and Information (CGDI) has created – through technical cooperation with BIREME/PAHO/WHO – a panel that hallmarks and informs about the main products, services, events and initiatives to disseminate health information in Brazil. The efforts were carried out by the CGDI and its institutional partners, including the instances of the Virtual Health Library (VHL) at the national and thematic levels.
Season of Appreciation is part of the PAHO Respectful Workplace policy, promoted by the Office of the Ombudsman, whose mission is to foster a healthy, respectful, inclusive, fair, and collaborative work environment that values diversity. BIREME included this initiative in the celebration of 2016 results, when the Director and collaborators acknowledged the individual and collective efforts.
On November 24-25, 2016, in Geneva, in the global meeting of WHO Regional Office Libraries, including PAHO/WHO, BIREME established a new phase of collaboration focused on the Global Index Medicus (GIM): the leadership of the project to strengthen GIM and renew its website, promoting dissemination of scientific and technical output from the low- and mid-income countries. The global actions with WHO will be focused in 2017.
The Evidence-Based Health Portal (PSBE) is an initiative of the Secretaria de Gestão do Trabalho e da Educação na Saúde of the Brazilian Ministry of Health aimed at incorporating practice based on evidence in the work process of health professionals and scholars. With the objective to strengthening the Portal, BIREME developed an efficient metasearch engine to search and retrieve information registered in databases.
The Caribbean Public Health Agency – CARPHA, jointly with BIREME/PAHO/WHO, and the Faculty of Medical Sciences at the University of the West Indies developed the CARPHA EvIDeNCe Portal in order to make published literature and grey literature readily available and accessible to support decision-making in the Caribbean Region.
Research has been considered one of the six basic activities of PAHO/WHO, and its use has been crucial to fulfill the Organization roles, as an essential component to aim at equity and health. BIREME’s actions at PAHO/WHO Health Research Policy are aligned with the Center’s primary mission to contribute with the Region to democratize the access, publication and use of information, knowledge and scientific evidence. Moreover, they are one of the pillars to achieve the Agenda 2030 and the Sustainable Development Goals.