The Wellness Community

I just perused another great site. This one creates a community for cancer patients and their caregivers. It's called the Wellness Community. I've never heard of them before. This is the scoop from their website: "Founded in 1982, The Wellness Community is an international non-profit organization dedicated to providing free support, education and hope to people with cancer and their loved ones." They have both on-line and physical support groups with professional staff.

They have public discussion boards - free and easy to join - that are very similar to most social networking discussion boards. They also have on-line support groups that meet via phone and chat for 90 minutes/week. Trained facilitators lead these groups of 8-10 people. Other great features include a relaxation meditation that you can download, cooking and nutrition information, and a spanish version of the site.

Navigation on the site is fairly intuitive. The only warning I have is that the social media and on-line support "join" button is only available from the home page. I'm sure they will re-design the site so that if you look at the "about" page you will be able to jump back to the on-line community and join but for now, don't panic, just click on the logo in the upper left corner of the page. That takes you home where you can sign in.

Web 2.0 Directory

Go2Web20.net is a collection of Web 2.o web sites. So far they have about 2,500 sites listed. Go2Web2.0 has a visually appealing, simple design and makes an interesting sound (today I am easily amused). To explore the site, I recommend using the "Select Tag" feature at the top of the page. A beautiful green cloud of tags appears. If you choose "health", you'll get about 25 results. More than enough to keep you busy this summer.

They also have a search box which is less useful. When I type in "health", I get one result - a site called revolutionhealth.com. Typing in "heal" gets me an additional site called healia.com.

Wouldn't it be great if the tags were indexed?

Other than that it's a really nice set up.

National Library of Medicine Search Widget

I just added a search widget for the National Library of Medicine to the side of the page. It was created by Guus van den Brekel based on some whining I posted here and then a request I made for him to modify one of his widgets from his NLM Toolbars blog.

As background you might want to know that the National Library of Medicine has over 100 databases. I think that's alot for one organization but maybe not. They have so many database that some of them have retired.

You'll be happy to know, however, that the NLM has recognized that this could be a bit overwhelming and they have created the NLM gateway. This is a search interface that will look at 16 of their most popular databases all at once and then give you the results from each database. They even break down the results into "Bibliographic Resources" which apparently means it's used more for research purposes; "Consumer Health Resources" which is where most of us will want to go first; and "Other Information Resources".

To check it out just type in what you are searching for (e.g. "acne") and click on the search button. Thanks Guus!

[NOTE: I removed the whining post because it was irrelevant and made me look silly after Guus created another widget so quickly. Some of the comments refer to the other post.]

Treatment Options

If you have health issues or even life issues you will most likely benefit (and benefit others) through participation in dailystrength.org. This is social networking at its best. People form communities around health topics that interest them, answer questions for each other and share information about treatments. The treatments section is especially well done.

For example, at the Acne Support Group page you will find Top Treatments on the lower right side of the page. This is an unscientific - and I think extremely helpful - feature of the site. The top treatments are listed in order of how many people are using them. In the Acne Support Group, 213 members are using washing which makes it the most used. Each person then ranks how they think washing is working for them. Washing is deemed 70% effective by the 213 people in the Acne Support Group who say they use washing.

Notice, I'm using careful language here. As I mentioned before this is not a scientific study and it will not replace your doctor or other medical/health practitioner. I like it because it's an opportunity for people to compare notes on what they have tried and what has worked.

I also like the functionality of this feature. It's good database design with a good user interface.

DailyStrength

An outstanding idea with the execution to match - DailyStrength.org is a social networking site designed to support people with any health issue you can think of. It's free and anonymous.

Sign up is simple and the site is well designed. They have support groups already started for just about any disease or condition you can think of from allergies to women's health. If you don't find what you are looking for, however, you have two options. You can suggest a new support group or you can start a member group and invite others to it.

I just signed up today. I'll post more after I've used it a couple times.

Photoshare

Photoshare is an excellent photo sharing site for anyone in public health or health education. They have over 15,000 photographs in categories from "abortion" to "youth programs". There is no fee for non-commercial use. If you would like to add to their collection of documentary style photos, they will make sure you get the photo credit. There is also the Photoshare Blog which has acticles about interesting public health projects, their photo contest and points to interesting articles.

I found this via a non-web 2.0 source called AVERT.org which is the most comprehensive website on AIDS/HIV that I've ever seen.

Power to the People

I think I am now addicted to Rollyo. That's OK though, because I just created a customized search on alternative health. It's called Health and Wellness. I'll just type in "addiction" and I have all of the information I need to safely and effectively overcome my new life challenge.

These Rollyo searches are easy to edit too. If you know of a website I missed that should be included in this list, send me a note.