General introduction to the health information access project
Christine Wilson, January 5, 2002


The National Library of Medicine’s Minority Consumer Health Outreach Program is funding our project “Accessing Online Information for Immigrant and Refugee Health” to achieve the primary purpose of improving information access for health consumers, with an emphasis on providing information  - or access to health or medical information - in a way that is meaningful to the target community.  

“Accessing Online Information for Immigrant and Refugee Health” is a partnership project collaborated upon by:  The National Library of Medicine, Harborview Medical Center, UW Health Sciences Libraries, and the City of Seattle Department of Information Technology.  Members of the seven refugee and immigrant communities that are represented by Harborview’s Community House Calls Program are participating in the project.  These seven are Cambodian, Vietnamese, Oromo, Somali, Ethiopian, Tigrean, and Latino.  

Our project will work with members of the seven communities on three activities:

1) A training the trainer program that teaches how to navigate the internet to find health information
2) Translation of health information about cancer, diabetes and tuberculosis into seven languages, and publishing these patient education materials on the website ethnomed.org*
3) Developing culturally informative “provider education” materials and publishing them on ethnomed.org

The training the trainer program is the first activity on the project agenda and is planned for January through April 2002.  Participants in the training program are asked to keep in mind that developing patient and provider education materials are future project activities that could benefit from lessons learned during the training program.    

*EthnoMed.org is an online communication and information tool for health care providers and the immigrant and refugees who are patients here in the Seattle area.  The website provides information about culture, history, demographics, traditions, and other topics that are relevant to the health and health care of the profiled groups, plus some translated patient education materials.