11 Building a Community of Practice
The long-term vision for the Automation Clinic extends beyond individual problem-solving. Each submission and solution contributes to a growing, shared resource for the public health workforce.
11.1 The Pattern Library
Every automation problem submitted to the clinic reveals a pattern: a type of task, a category of data, a workflow structure that recurs across teams, agencies, and jurisdictions. Over time, these patterns form a library that makes it faster to develop solutions for new submissions and easier for professionals to find existing solutions that match their needs.
11.2 Contributing Solutions
Public health professionals who have solved their own automation challenges are encouraged to share those solutions. The clinic is not a one-way service; it is a community resource. If you have written a script that saves your team time, consider contributing it to the library so others facing the same problem can benefit.
11.3 The Public GitHub Repository
While this is currently a one-person effort, the plan is to make the solution library available as a public GitHub repository. This will allow others to:
- Browse and download existing solutions
- Submit improvements or bug fixes to published solutions
- Contribute entirely new solutions
- Request features or report issues through GitHub Issues
The goal is for the repository to become a shared, community-maintained resource for public health automation, growing beyond what any single person could produce.
11.4 Workforce Development
Each published solution serves a dual purpose: it solves an immediate problem, and it demonstrates what is possible with accessible tools. For professionals who have never seen automation applied to their workflows, a single working example can shift their understanding of what R, Python, and open source tools can do.
This chapter will be expanded with contribution guidelines, community governance plans, and examples of successful public health open source collaborations as the initiative matures.