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The article below is from the November 2010 issue of European Science Editing (vol. 36, no. 4). Previous This Site I Like articles are in the Archive.

WebWatch articles from past issues are archived in the Editors' WebWatch Archive page.

This Site I Like

November 2010

Preventing avoidable chronic diseases

Avoidable chronic diseases account for the greatest healthcare burden and social burden of disease. Preventing chronic disease is cost-effective and can be a cost saving, reducing demand on our health are services. Prevention of chronic disease is a worldwide priority which needs long term strategies with support from public policies and health promotion.
Many organizations work on tackling lifestyle risk factors and addressing economic, social, and environmental determinants of avoidable chronic diseases. The National Heart Forum (NHF) (http://www.heartforum.org.uk) is a leading alliance which works in the areas of policy development and advocacy, information provision, research, and modelling of avoidable chronic diseases, both nationally and internationally. The information and resources that we provide may prove useful when you need to find out more about public health and the prevention of chronic disease.
We link extensively to what our members do and also other national and international organisations. We provide information on controlling the density of fast food outlets, the use of salt and sugar, creating healthier physical environments, promoting active travel and play, labelling of food, and modelling levels of obesity. We also promote work towards reducing health inequalities and tackling disease in low and middle income countries, highlighting the impact of climate change on public health and related areas. The website uses a variety of technical functionality to personalise content to the user, allowing users to select how they access information by using topic categories. There are plenty of feeds and newsletters to sign up to.

News briefings
The information services team provides a comprehensive range of free services on avoidable chronic diseases via e-news and e-research briefings. The briefings are abstracting services that you can receive via email, browse on the website, or get via alerts (RSS feeds). The e-news briefing collates published news stories from the media and press releases. The e-research briefing collates recently published peer-reviewed research mainly from journals or official reports.

Obesity Learning Centre
Another NHF website is the Obesity Learning Centre (OLC; http://www.obesitylearningcentre-nhf.org.uk), which was funded by the Department of Health and the Department for Education. The OLC supports those individuals who work in the community in tackling obesity, and so the audience of the website is varied and requires different information.
We do not aim to replace any other obesity website or information service, but we highlight what they do on the OLC, acting as a portal. The OLC works closely with the National Obesity Observatory (http://www.noo.org.uk/) and Change4Life (http://www.nhs.uk/Change4Life). We provide free tools, case studies, recently published news, and links to new resources and websites relevant to obesity. The OLC is also about sharing information, and we encourage professionals to discuss their local issues and share what works and doesn’t work for them. As with the NHF website, we provide news feeds and newsletters that can be subscribed to.
 
NHF Chronic Disease eLibrary
The Chronic Disease eLibrary (http://62.49.40.20:7070/rmwp) is a unique repository of information resources relevant to chronic disease prevention. A lot of information in public health is grey, meaning it is rarely published, and the eLibrary collections contain abstracts and links to these resources: reports, abstracts and presentations, recommended reading, toolkits, articles, and guidelines. You can also download the references in other suitable formats. Information can also be found scattered across a number of websites and libraries, such as NHF Evidence (http://www.evidence.nhs.uk/default.aspx) and the WHO Global Info Base (https://apps.who.int/infobase/report.aspx).

Social media
A lot of news in chronic disease prevention can be found in social media. Many public health organisations tweet and blog regularly, and you can read tweets or blogs without being registered. We maintain one for all avoidable chronic disease (http://twitter.com/NHeartForum) and one for obesity alone (http://twitter.com/obesitylearning).

NHF Dashboard
The dashboard, using Netvibes (http://www.netvibes.com/nationalheartforum) contains listings for tables of contents for a range of prevention and epidemiology journals and key events. You can also find links to other relevant websites and journals on the dashboard. The dashboard is a method of delivering the most up to date information instantly. You do not need an account to access the dashboard.

Helena Korjonen
Associate Director Information Services
National Heart Forum
helena.korjonen@heartforum.org.uk