America On the Move

Because the US is the most overweight nation in the world, America On the Move is dedicated to helping individuals and communities across the nation make positive changes to improve health and quality of life.

AOM offers free group programs to healthcare providers, employers, schools, and families. If a group wants to participate, they can get started by registering online. Group administrators have access to downloadable promotion materials and group participants can check individual and the entire group’s progress online.

State affiliates coordinate statewide activities, programs, and events. You can find out what is happening in your area through each affiliate’s link on the AOM site. For more information, go to americaonthemove.org. The site is also available in Spanish at http://www.americaonthemove.org/Espanol/Default.asp.

Stanford’s Free Chronic Disease Evaluation Tools

If you are thinking of developing self-administered evaluation tools for patients with chronic diseases, there’s no need to reinvent the wheel. The Stanford University School of Medicine Patient Education Research Center has about 20 years of experience developing, adapting, and testing self-administered scales in English and Spanish.

These tools are available at http://patienteducation.stanford.edu/research/ to health professionals without permission and at no cost, thanks to funding from the National Institute of Nursing Research (NINR). They’re available as downloadable PDF files (using the PDF link at the bottom of each page).

The Stanford Patient Education Research Center staff, based in Palo Alto, California, has also developed a range of educational materials for use by both consumers and health professionals. These can also be found on their website.

Health and Age

Health and Age is a site dedicated to promoting positive aging and can be found at healthandage.com. The site includes news, in-depth articles, information on specific diseases and conditions, a Q & A section for readers, and a free subscription to the bi-monthly Positive Aging newsletter (also available in Spanish).

It is sponsored by the Web-based Health Education Foundation (WHEF), an independent non-profit organization. HealthandAge.com was created in 1998 by the Novartis Foundation for Gerontology (since January 2005 the HealthandAge Foundation).

They explain, “In short, our mission is to open up the discussion on aging, limited not so long ago to a select few, to involve millions of people across the world. This should enable people to benefit directly, and also help others to benefit, from the ongoing progress of clinical research in an area of such major relevance to human well-being.”

Pain EDU

PainEDU is an educational website for clinicians, teaching about pain assessment and management. This site located at painedu.org is a comprehensive resource and is based on the latest scientific information about pain treatment. It is developed and maintained through an unrestricted educational grant from Endo Pharmaceuticals.

The site includes:

• interviews with leaders in the field (this month Joshua Cox, Coordinator of the Pain Management Service at Good Samaritan Hospital, in Dayton, Ohio)
• roundtable discussions (for example How might you treat a patient suffering from chronic pain that was employed in a safety-sensitive job?)
• a fully accredited CE course
• a free newsletter
• book reviews
• treatment tools and resources
• articles on issues facing different populations

Clinical Trials

ClinicalTrials.gov is a service of the US National Institutes of Health and is developed by the National Library of Medicine. It provides regularly updated information about federally and privately supported clinical research in human volunteers. It gives you information about a trial's purpose, who may participate, locations, and phone numbers.

You can search by condition, sponsoring organizations, or recruitment status. If you are looking for general information about clinical trials, it’s at http://clinicaltrials.gov/ct/info/resources.

NIH Resources

The National Institutes of Health offers information on countless health topics on their Health Information page at health.nih.gov. Just use their A to Z directory or browse major categories BodyLocations/Systems, Conditions/Diseases, or Health and Wellness. With each topic you’ll find articles, resources, research summaries, and links.

The site also includes interesting features on healthy lifestyles and links to a variety of health newsletters that you can subscribe to free.

Chest Physicians Offer Free Guides

The American College of Chest Physicians offers free patient education guides that are used by both health professionals and their patients. They can be downloaded as PDFs from http://www.chestnet.org/patients/guides/index.php. Topics include Asthma, COPD, Lung Cancer, Smoking Cessation , and Pulmonary Rehabilitation.

The ACCP is a medical specialty society of physicians, surgeons, allied health professionals, and individuals with PhD degrees who specialize in diseases of the chest: pulmonology, cardiology, cardiovascular and cardiothoracic surgery, hypertension, critical care medicine, and related disciplines.