NC Health Info Kicks Off Its Services for 2003
News & Views, UNC Health Sciences Library
Spring 2003
NC Health Info, an Internet portal to librarian-researched, health-related Internet sites, opened its services to the public in December 2002. The site contributes to the UNC mission of service to citizens throughout the state and addresses the service role of the public library in the community.
NC Health Info was funded by the National Library of Medicine (NLM) to create a local extension of MedlinePlus. NC Health Info takes users a step beyond the health information they find on MedlinePlus by linking them to their local health services web sites so that they and their families can make healthy choices and take healthy actions close to home.
For example, if your grandmother has Alzheimer's and you want to take care of her, NC Health Info leads you to information about caregivers and support groups in your community. It also links to authoritative information about the disease on MedlinePlus. Conversely, if you started searching for information about Alzheimer's on MedlinePlus and then wanted to find out about local services, a "Go Local" button on every page of MedlinePlus gives you that option.
A team of librarians at the UNC Health Sciences Library and the School of Information and Library Science prepared the site for its January opening for nearly two years, garnering Internet information on core health resources from across the state. They initially focused on major health centers such as UNC, Duke, Wake Forest, ECU, and hospitals, as well as resources such as county public health departments, nursing homes, support groups, health screening providers, individual medical practitioners, and complementary medical practitioners. Currently the site contains over 1,800 resources.
In order to provide comprehensive information , the site offers health directories for users to browse as well. The NC Health Info team is hoping the community it serves will help to help build the database. The team encourages users and practitioners to send NC Health Info nominations to help the library create an effective portal of health resources.
NLM funded this project as a national model, hoping other states will follow suit and create similar portals to their health services, linked to MedlinePlus.
The complete Spring 2003 issue of News & Views (PDF version) is available online from the UNC Health Sciences Library.
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