Health 99 Education Resource- Introduction

The website Health 99 Education Resource was constructed in October, 1998 and is intended to serve as a platform for the Department of Health (DOH) to provide health information to the public through the Internet. The Bureau of Health Promotion (BHP) was established in 2001, and the Health Education Center (HEC) of the BHP is responsible for website maintenance. The website is positioned by the DOH as a portal for providing health information and is intended to provide the public and health educators with accurate, real-time information and knowledge for health education. It also offers physical logistics service in addition to online viewing and downloading of health education materials and viewing of video/audio materials. The overall revision of the website in 2006 marks the addition of new features including Assessing and Commenting on Teaching Materials (TM), Sharing and Forwarding TM, Receiving and Following-up TM, Member Center, Downloading Zone, FAQ etc.

Health 99 Education Resource has, since its construction, collected nearly 2,800 sets of teaching material for health education. There are now a total of approx. 950 sets of online materials available, and the total number of visitors has exceeded 8 million. The average number of visitors per day since the revision is 5,600. The number of members has attained 8,000, and that of the e-newsletter subscribers is 9,200. The website was rated Excellent Website for Health Information for 2005 and 2006. Public and health educators alike can look for, and find their required teaching materials for health education simply by accessing to the Internet and searching by selecting or entering type of materials, age group, type of media, receiving and viewing, keyword, publisher, or full text search. It is also possible to receive such materials through the physical logistics service.

The teaching material available in the website is divided into the 14 categories by theme and content, namely, tobacco prevention, mental health promotion, health and fitness, cancer prevention, chronic disease prevention, genetic disease prevention, infectious disease prevention, substance abuse prevention, safety protection, proper drug use, food and nutrition, Chinese medicine, patient safety and other preventative health care. These are divided into 5 categories of media type, i.e. leaflets, handbooks, posters, multimedia, and others, and grouped into 6 categories of age, i.e. children, teenagers, women, middle-aged, seniors and the public.

The material for health education collected by the website has been reviewed by experts in the related fields to ensure accuracy and readability. In the Zone of Health Educators of the newly revised website, the Blog for Elites of the Health Education Community has been created. This offers a place where advanced members can create and share and features work journal sharing, e-album, lesson plan exchange, online message and exchange etc. This is intended to enable integrated health education teams to be more closely connected through the sharing of teaching resources.

Health 99 Education Resource also provides all-encompassing health information outlined as below besides teaching materials for health education.

The purpose of Health 99 Education Resource is to allow users easily obtain necessary health information through the Internet with its convenient, real-time and ubiquitous characteristics, and to let the public think of this website whenever they have need for health information. The contents are not developed solely by governmental agencies but include health education information collected from hospitals and clinics, health authorities and non-governmental organizations and further categorized and compiled. The interaction between users and the website is enhanced through the publication of e-newsletters and the employment of a virtual staff. We hope that the website can become the most credible source of information in the health information network for the purpose of promoting public health.