The CDC’s first-ever hybrid meeting saved money on employee travel costs while expanding the U.S. agency’s educational reach.
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upport for a U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) virtual-meeting pilot
project — the first hybrid meeting to be fully produced by a federal agency
— came straight from the top. Last November, President Obama signed an executive order urging federal agencies to reduce spending by finding alterna- tives to travel, including the use of videoconferencing. At the CDC, Adam Arthur, a health communications specialist, had been working on a hybrid-meeting pilot — the 2011 Public Health Informatics (PHI) conference — since 2009. The CDC’s motivation for the project was identical to President Obama’s: to spend money more efficiently. Due to budget cuts, “we’ve had to slash [the number of] in-person events in half,” Arthur said. Meetings that once were held annually are now biannual, and biannual meetings are now held every three to four years. “And, unfortunately, we are still requiring our state and local people to continue to give us the same output,” Arthur said. “[Employees] need the information that they normally would come to our events to get. So there is an imbalance.” Virtual initiatives, he said, “are what is being looked at as the potential answer.”
‘We’ve had to slash [the number of] in-person events in half. Virtual initiatives are being looked at as the potential answer.’
32 PCMA CONVENE MAY 2012
LOTS OF PAPERWORK The federal government runs on paper- work, and PHI 2011 — a joint project between the CDC and the National Association of County and City Health Officials for government employees working in health-related information systems — was no exception. But the 43-page project-charter document that Arthur created for the event, which was held at the Hyatt Regency Atlanta last Aug. 21–24, not only was not a burden, he said, but in fact was one of the keys to PHI’s success. The document outlined exactly how
adding a virtual meeting component would help meet the CDC’s operational goals, as well as objectives including sus- tainability, accessibility, and security. In order for the virtual-meeting initiative to have a chance at succeeding, he said, it had to do more than just save money; it had to make CDC processes more effi- cient overall. The project plan was trans- parent about multiple issues, including projected risks and demands that would be made for equipment and staff. Even if detailed documentation isn’t
required, Arthur recommends that meeting professionals who are planning a virtual component for the first time create their own version of a charter document. By outlining everything up front, “you are showing that your vision has been well thought out,” Arthur said.
“You instantly win over the individuals that would usually be your naysayers, because you’ve covered your bases.” Plus, he added, “anyone who over- promises by saying there are no issues coming — they are fooling themselves.” For PHI, security was a particular
concern, because of the tight regula- tion of federal data in general and of
CDC data in particular. Many confer- ence attendees were scientists and specialists in charge of the information systems that carry health-related mes- sages, including patient records and infectious-disease surveillance. Arthur knew that one of the first questions would be, “How safe is the data?” So while the project was still in the con- cept phase, he invited his managers along with security officials from the CDC director’s office to be part of the decision-making process. “It’s no longer my idea at that point,”
Arthur said. “[The stakeholders] are actually like a board of directors.”
A FAITHFUL RENDERING Arthur positioned PHI’s digital itera- tion as a genuine alternative to attend- ing the conference in person, not a pale imitation; every session presented dur- ing the three-day meeting was available to online attendees. Three morning plenary sessions and the closing gen- eral session were live-streamed, and the virtual conference website offered 101 live concurrent webinar sessions, with PowerPoint and audio of the in-person, on-site speakers. Arthur tried to bridge the gap
between the digital and face-to-face experience by making the virtual meeting feel as personal as possible. In addition to creating a faithful facsimile of the meeting environment, the con- ference included 17 virtual hosts, who helped welcome attendees to the ses- sions and acted as online moderators. Another key objective was to make
the cost-saving digital alternative avail- able without cutting too deeply into the face-to-face event, which historically had approximately 1,500 attendees.