Greetings,

For some time I've been watching and participating in some of the discussion
on the uses of Internet and computer communications for health promotion
work.  At the Ontario Prevention Clearinghouse, we are fairly 'web-centric',
using the electronic medium in many ways:
* for e-mail & on-line conferences internally and externally;
* for providing resources through posting documents on-line and links to
relevant resources;
* for describing our services and providing links to our partners,
collaborators and related organizations;
* for searching for information and sharing tools that we find; and
* for training and supporting others in the uses of the medium.

As a result, I tend to be enthusiastic about the potential for using the
Internet as one means to do health promotion work.  I've been trying to find
ways to help other organizations and individuals in the field increase their
access to and diversify their uses of the Internet, looking forward to a
time when we can easily share our  information, resources and work
collaboratively on-line across huge distances.

Recently, several proposals have been discussed among health promotion
organizations in Ontario and across Canada for how to network more
effectively using the electronic forum. The possibilities have ranged from
developing e-mail distribution lists to contact each other regularly; to
setting up Intranets between defined organizations to create a virtual
organization where work, resources and discussion occurs in a virtual space.
 No matter how complex the activity, we still have to start slowly, with an
exchange of information and ways of keeping in touch and sharing resources.

It seems that getting web-sites up and running is a significant challenge
for most of us - it takes resources, skills and experience that few of us
have, and a web-site makes public what we're doing (or not doing!), with
possible implications of having to constantly update and respond to requests
for more information. And we have to determine how much information and what
links to have to where...

I've just had a small revelation when talking with a colleague about keeping
up to date on health promotion resources on-line, that simply posting our
current linkages and bookmarks that we use to each other could help each of
sort out what we would want on our web-sites, who to link to, what we like
and don't like, and maybe model how to set up a web-site.  So I've taken the
available 'home-page' that I have as a Web Networks subscriber to put up my
bookmark file related to health promotion and healthy, sustainable
communities.

 I invite you to visit this semi-public web-site and let me know what you
think should be there, what's useful and what isn't.
     http://www.web.net/~stirling/
Be forewarned - it is 'under construction' , still being organized and
hopefully reduced in bulk!

It is a large set of bookmarks organized with several headings and
sub-headings:
Health Promotion - Canadian, Ontario, International
Ontario Communities - 'mapping municipalities and community health programs'
Healthy Communities
Sustainability

Looking forward to your comments to me directly, or to the list.

Alison Stirling,  <[log in to unmask]>
co-facilitator, CLICK4HP health promotion on-line discussion
health promotion consultant, Ontario Prevention Clearinghouse
http://www.opc.on.ca     http://www.web.net/~stirling/