How do I pass a string value from one js viewmodel to another

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Javascript

jQuery

Knockout.js

I have a site that gets company related data back from the Data Base. E.g.Finance, IT and so forth.

there were separate tables for each department. I then realized that the tables have the same data fields so I created one table to hold all the data and within this table I created a pageIdentifier field which I use to identify what page I’m on and data relating to that page.

The code had different View Models for each page.(had an ITViewModel , FinanceViewModel) I then created a pageIdentifier variable in each View Model which I send back to the stored proc so I know what data I want returned. E.g.
self.pageIdentifier = ko.observable("IT"); //this will load the IT data I have in the DB

I had duplicate View Models with duplicate code. I now created just one View Model to get rid of the duplicate code. So I just have a masterViewModel(where I load the other view models in) and my genericDataViewModel.

Does anyone know how to pass a string value from one view Model to another view Model? I want to pass a string from my MasterViewModel to my genericViewModel.

hope this makes sense.

What I have tried:

I tried creating variables in my MasterView Model:
in this example I tried to create a IT string to pass to my genericView model.

self.navigateToGenericData = function () {
     masterVM.error("");
     masterVM.info("");
     self.identifierString = "IT";
     $('#content').hide();
     ko.cleanNode($("#content")[0]);
     $('#content').load("App/GenericData/Browse.html", function () {
         startProgress();
         $("#progressbar").show();
         ko.applyBindings(self.genericDataViewModel, $('#content')[0]);
         //self.genericDataViewModel.retrieveIdentifier('IT');
         self.genericDataViewModel.retrieveGenericDataList();
         self.genericDataViewModel.retrieveClassification();
         self.genericDataViewModel.retrieveLocationLookup();
         self.genericDataViewModel.retrieveDocumentStatus();
         completeProgress();

     });
     $('#content').show({ effect: "drop", direction: "up" });
 };

My genericViewModel

function GenericDataViewModel() {
    var self = this;

    self.identifier = ko.observable("IT");
    self.classification = ko.observable();
    self.location = ko.observable();
    self.documentStatus = ko.observable();

in place of self.identifier = ko.observable("IT") i want to get the value from my MasterView model.

I tried doing something like self.identifier = $parent.IdentifierString, but not working.