One of the 'products' of the CLICK4HP health promotion listserv, has been
the Ontario Health Promotion Email Bulletin (OHPE), a weekly digest of news,
events, job postings and feature articles and resources sent by email to a
growing list of subscribers across the province of Ontario and around the
world.
Last Friday, May 3rd. the OHPE Bulletin editor sent out a celebratory 5th
anniversary issue to the more than 2100 subscribers. It appears that not
everyone received the issue, as we experimented with using some minimal
formatting and use of Rich Text Format. For the Click4HP readers who are
interested - please see the OHPE Bulletin website and index to view issue
#257. Below is an abbreviated version of the 'feature', highlighting some
of background of the OHPE Bulletin.
Of our five years producing the OHPE Bulletin, we could say that everything
has changed and not much has changed and we would not be contradicting
ourselves. In this issue, we celebrate this anniversary with a look at what
we said we would do, a brief summary of what actually happened and some
thoughtful reflections from three members of the very first editorial team.
On May 2, 1997, we sent out the very first OHPE Bulletin with an explanation
of why we thought it was a good idea: "Each of our organizations receives
notices about interesting conferences, new projects, health promotion
issues, position postings, reports, and so forth. Rather than have everyone
read everything, we thought this might be a bridge to the wealth of
information without overloading personal time and 'space.' This is an
experiment. We will monitor contributions and response. You define its
value, its content, and its reach. New approaches and information sharing
technologies emerge continually on the Internet. We invite your exploration
of the possibilities."
On our first anniversary, we celebrated the fact that the experiment was
working: "We have grown from a simple idea of how to share information
across the province, beginning with 110 subscribers, to having 430 members
on this list as of May 1, 1998! .... When we started we were not sure that
there was enough information for a weekly bulletin (nor enough energy).
However, every week it is an effort to keep the OHPE Bulletin to 3
reasonable length messages (the 1st anniversary issue has 4). The structure
and the content of the Bulletin has evolved into a wealth of material,
ideas, news and the introduction of a popular aspect -- job postings. OHPE
Bulletin has a home-page, accessible archives and a contents list
<http://www.opc.on.ca/ohpe/ohpeflyr.htm> And there has been a spin-off of
another weekly list of OHPE-Contents [only] for people who access the news
on the Internet. Big changes we did not anticipate a year ago!"
And we haven't rested on our laurels -- the OHPE continues to grow and
change. Here's a summary of key moments in our five year history:
* 1997: OHPE debuted; produced 'in-house' by OPC staff with some assistance
from THCU
* 1998: formalized the partnership between OPC and THCU; conducted our first
evaluation; debuted an online archive;
* 1999: created the editor position; developed the Health Promotion Subject
Matrix [http://ohpe.ca/ebulletin/mtxintro.html#smintro
<http://ohpe.ca/ebulletin/mtxintro.html>]; designed an online database; had
our second evaluation
* 2000: lauched a searchable online database; expanded the content of
features; implemented a new automated subscription list
* 2001: launched our website <http://www.ohpe.ca>; conducted our third
evaluation; switched to a new list management system with website.
* 2002: hit the 2000 subscribers mark; our feature articles, job postings
and events are contributed by external organizations and reflecting the wide
diversity of health promotion in Ontario.
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