BackgroundVirtual Communities of Practice (CoPs) are flexible communication and knowledge management tools enabling collaboration, sharing of best practice and professional development. There have been few studies that have looked at the use and usefulness of virtual CoPs in public health.MethodsThis project sought to gather the evidence and develop recommendations for the value of virtual CoPs in public health through a literature review, and through piloting two CoPs in obesity. The research aimed to find out how useful CoPs are in obesity prevention, what makes a CoP successful and what evaluation methods are appropriate.ResultsCoPs are composed of observers, passive and active contributors with a small group of 'super-users'. All users learn through reading and listening, even if they do not post. The CoPs had higher levels of reading activity as opposed to low levels of posting activity. Longer existence of CoPs usually means more active membership. There are complex reasons why users fail to engage in knowledge sharing. Success of a CoP is creating an online environment where users feel comfortable. CoPs need administrative support and facilitation. Champions play a vital role.ConclusionsEvidence shows some encouraging results about the value of CoPs in enabling collaboration and information sharing. Despite low membership numbers of the obesity CoPs piloted, members see value and suggest improvements. Findings suggest that success comes from leadership, champions, and larger networks with more posting activity. Mixed methods of quantitative and qualitative research are appropriate in measuring the use and impact of CoPs.

Objective: To review published literature covering the information needs of public health practitioners and papers highlighting gaps and potential solutions in order to summarise what is already known about this population and models tested to support them. Methods: The search strategy included bibliographic databases LISTA, LISA, PubMed and Web of Knowledge. The results of this literature review were used to create two tables displaying published literature. Findings: The literature highlighted that some research has taken place into different public health subgroups with consistent findings. Gaps in information provision have also been identified by looking at the information services provided. Conclusion: There is a need for further research into information needs in subgroups of public health practitioners as this group is diverse, has different needs and needs varying information. Models of informatics that can support public health must be developed and published so that the public health information community can share experiences and solutions and begin to build an evidence-base to produce superior information systems for the goal of a healthier society.Keywords: access to information, information literacy, information management, information networks, information systems, information-seeking behaviour, medical informatics, public health Key Messages• Information specialists working to support public health practitioners must promote the use of, and enable access to, all types of public health information including evidence and grey literature.• The lack of searchable databases for public health grey literature is a barrier to accessing this literature by public health practitioners. Public health information specialists should work to create a central repository of grey literature.• Information specialists should work together to develop a recognised system of classification for public health which can be widely used to index both research and unpublished literature.• Information specialists need to continue efforts to provide information literacy and search skills education for public health practitioners, to help these practitioners to recognise their information needs and provide them with the skills to act on those needs.

BackgroundImproving mechanisms for knowledge translation (KT) and connecting decision-makers to each other and the information and evidence they consider relevant to their work remains a priority for public health. Virtual communities of practices (CoPs) potentially offer an affordable and flexible means of encouraging connection and sharing of evidence, information and learning among the public health community in ways that transgress traditional geographical, professional, institutional and time boundaries. The suitability of online CoPs in public health, however, has rarely been tested. This paper explores the reasons why particular online CoP for alcohol harm reduction hosted by the UK Health Forum failed to generate sufficient interest from the group of public health professionals at which it was aimed.MethodsThe study utilises online web-metrics demonstrating a lack of online activity on the CoP. One hundred and twenty seven responses to an online questionnaire were used to explore whether the lack of activity could be explained by the target audience’s existing information and evidence practices and needs. Qualitative interviews with 10 members describe in more detail the factors that shape and inhibit use of the virtual CoP by those at which it was targeted.ResultsQuantitative and qualitative data confirm that the target audience had an interest in the kind of information and evidence the CoP was set up to share and generate discussion about, but also that participants considered themselves to already have relatively good access to the information and evidence they needed to inform their work. Qualitative data revealed that the main barriers to using the CoP were a proliferation of information sources meaning that participants preferred to utilise trusted sources that were already established within their daily routines and a lack of time to engage with new online tools that required any significant commitment.ConclusionsSpecialist online CoPs are competing for space in an already crowded market. A target audience that regards itself as busy and over-supplied is unlikely to commit to a new service without the assurance that the service will provide unique and valuable well-summarised information, which would reduce the need to spend time accessing competing resources.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s13012-017-0622-8) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.