KidsHealth.org - Health Site Guide

www.kidshealth.org

The home page on KidsHealth.org doesn’t waste any time in getting the visitor where they want to go – it contains three clickable links, one each for parents, kids and teens. Created by the Nemours Foundation's Center for Children's Health Media, this award-winning site provides families with current, jargon-free health information they can use, and claims to be the largest and most-visited site on the Web providing doctor-approved health information about children from before birth through adolescence.

Created in 1995, KidsHealth has been visited by about 300,000,000 people, logging about 350,000 visitors on a typical weekday. All information is reviewed by a health expert prior to posting, and reviewed again every 12-36 months to ensure the data is current.

The Parents section includes a search tool, a Featured Article, a daily Q&A, and a valuable link to a page containing advice on what to do if your child is home alone (including 10 easy recipes for just such a situation). The menu on the Parents page contains a dozen links: General Health, Infections, Emotions & Behavior, Growth & Development, Nutrition & Fitness, Pregnancy & Newborns, Medical Problems, Positive Parenting, First Aid & Safety, Doctors & Hospitals, In the News, and En Espanol. Clicking any of those links takes the visitor to a page containing dozens of articles on the topic. In addition, each article has another tabbed bar on the right, allowing visitors to find “Related Articles” and “Additional Resources” on the topic with a single click.

The Teens page is designed with a younger audience in mind, intentionally targeting this more youthful demographic with its fresh layout and hipper imagery. It contains a search box, a “Did You Know” section containing health-related factoids, a quiz, a Featured article (such as “Getting Over a Breakup”), a half-dozen or so “Hot Topics” such as Peer Pressure and Binge Drinking, and a Category Menu. Like the Parents page, the menu contains a dozen links of greater interest to a teenaged audience (Your Body, Your Mind, Sexual Health, etc.). Also like the Parents page, each link takes the visitor to a subpage packed with a number of articles on the chosen topic, complete with the “More Articles Like This” and “Resources” tabs for more information.

The Kids page follows the same basic format, with a color scheme and design that caters to the youngsters. It features interactive games and quizzes, kid-oriented features, and a “Big Questions” link (Are You Scared of Dogs?). The menu contains 14 links, including well-thought-out sections for young minds: “People, Places and Things that Help Me,” “The Game Closet,” and “Health Problems of Grown-Ups.” The links and layout are the same as the Parents and Teens pages, but considerable thought went into the Kids page – it clearly wasn’t given short shrift because it’s dealing with children. The “Health Problems of Grown-Ups” is especially clever, addressing kids’ questions about not just about adult ailments, but other such alien concepts as dentures, wrinkles and varicose veins.

The site also offers a free weekly email newsletter, customized by Parents, Teens or Kids (or any combination of the three).