NPIN Community is an interactive online forum used to connect, share, and collaborate with other public health professionals, partners, and CDC stakeholders. This forum allows for active discussion on best practices, resources, and challenges related to HIV, sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), viral hepatitis, tuberculosis (TB) and Adolescent and School Health). The NPIN Community consists of groups of like-minded professionals looking to stay at the forefront of their field by accessing the information and resources made available within the Community.

As a member, you can:

	Connect Through the Community, those in the field of public health discuss and collaborate with each other to enhance their work and professional development.
	Share The Community’s private and secure online setting provides members with an ideal platform to share resources, reports, case studies, assets, and tools together as a hub to facilitate project completion.
	Collaborate Grant recipients, health care administrators, health communicators/health advocacy groups, and others have a space for project work. Whether it’s a grant or communications campaign, working groups can work collaboratively on a single document.
	Learn By joining, members can access innovative ideas and best practices in their field.

Who can join NPIN Community?
NPIN Community is open to anyone interested in engaging with other professionals within HIV, STDs, Viral Hepatitis, TB, and Adolescent and School Health. Unlike other collaborative forums, CDC access and credentials are not required to be a part of the Community. Professionals outside of CDC are welcome and can access NPIN Community.

How do you join?
To join NPIN Community, go to the right hand column of this page and click on “Create an Account.” Be sure to fill out all the required information and submit your access request.

Note: When signing up for NPIN Community, CDC prefers that you use work email addresses or email addresses from your educational institution or professional organization. Please do not use gmail, yahoo or similar domains common to personal email addresses. These domains are not as secure as those from professional or educational organizations. If you do not have a work, education, or other professional organization email, please let us know and we will do our best to work with you for access.

What are the different types of groups?
Within NPIN Community there are two different types of groups:

Public groups are open to all NPIN Community members to share, connect, collaborate, and communicate with one another. These public groups are HIV/AIDS, viral hepatitis, STDs, TB, and NPIN Community User Group. These public groups are used to disseminate key resources, research, and information that comes through CDC regarding these specific disease areas.

Private groups are developed and customized by CDC professionals for some of their grant awardees, stakeholders, and other partners. These groups are used to share information among colleagues who have similar program goals and objectives.

What is an example of a public group and how it would benefit me?
One example is the viral hepatitis group. Here, CDC experts in the field share a range of information and resources for people involved in viral hepatitis prevention, treatment, care, epidemiology, and more. This information includes current surveillance data, updated hepatitis B vaccination recommendations and access to the latest resources. Other opportunities include providing comments in the Federal Registry in observance of Hepatitis Awareness Month and Hepatitis Testing Day. All members of the NPIN Community members can review the posts and engage in the dialogue.

What is an example of a private group and how it would benefit me?
An example of a private group is one that is made up of awardees of a cooperative agreement that provide programs and prevention services at the state, territory, and local levels. The group is moderated by the CDC division leads or a designated representative, but open for all group members to share.

They often use this space to collaborate on strategic planning documents. This private group is an effective way for members to keep track of what each other are doing, as well as help members achieve their collective goals. Individuals need to be invited to participate in a private group.

To start a private group, please contact the NPIN Community administrator at NPIN-Support@cdc.gov.