The goal of this website is to assist community-based organizations that wish
to teach people in their communities about finding quality health information
on the Internet. The website has been developed by the Department of Biomedical
Informatics at Columbia University and the New York Academy of Medicine with
funding from the National Library of Medicine.
The project was started because the Internet is becoming more and more
important as a way to find information about health. The healthcare system is
becoming more complicated and consumers and patients need to become responsible
for making choices that will affect their health. They need to think about different
treatment options if they are sick, they need to understand how to take their medicines,
and how to understand the instructions they receive from their doctor or other
healthcare professional. As procedures become more complicated, they can create
major problems if they are not understood. The Internet is a powerful resource
for finding health information, but there is a lot of questionable information on the
Internet as well, so it is important to be able to know what websites have reliable
information.
Therefore this program has two goals.
1. The first goal is to teach consumers and patients how to find websites that have
information about a particular health problem or issue.
2. The second goal is to teach consumers and patients how to know whether the
information on a particular website is trustworthy.
This is a "train-the-trainer" program. The idea is to teach staff and volunteers who
work in various programs in community-based organizations how to teach the people
with whom they work every day how to find quality health information. There are
thousands of programs around the country for which this might be a useful addition,
including after-school programs, programs for seniors, programs for immigrants, and
so on.
The materials on this website are intended to be used in classes. Although they
might be useful for people who are learning on their own, we have found that the classes
themselves are useful because students can help each other. Many of the materials on
the website are intended to be seen or shown in class to be followed by class discussion.