The 13th World Conference on Tobacco OR Health

Objective: Tobacco control efforts are carried out by knowledge-intensive organizations (Hurley and Green) such as NGOs. These groups often develop programs and policy alone, building a storehouse of knowledge not systematically shared outside the organization. This is an inefficient use of the limited resources available for tobacco control: resources better utilized developing existing stores of knowledge. Online communities of practice (CoPs) facilitate conversation, an essential part of tacit knowledge exchange (Sharratt and Usoro), between users who may be geographically dispersed or come from disparate backgrounds. This exchange breaks down organizational silos of information and encourages people to share ideas across boundaries with the goal of improving tobacco control worldwide.

Methods: The Canadian Council for Tobacco Control will be launching a private site (by March 31st, 2006) that aims to bring together and strengthen ties amongst tobacco control organizations in Canada. Each CoP will focus on a clearly stated purpose or goal. Users will be able to post comments to threaded discussions; participate in real-time chats with their group(s) or invited experts; post working documents for group revision; keep up to date on their specified topics of interest; store a personal library of links and documents.

Results: Based on preliminary discussions with interested groups, we believe that the above system will promote knowledge exchange in Canada. We will also be developing the private site in accordance with published heuristics for online communities of practice (Notess and Plaskoff). A summary of feedback on the site will be presented at the conference.