Helping patients decipher options.Beginning next spring, a consortium of 20 scientific publishers, three health societies, and four other groups representing publishers and libraries will debut a free online service offering new medical findings to consumers. The goal of patientINFORM (www.patientinform.org) is to make technical research easier for the public to understand and to "empower empower verb To encourage or provide a person with the means or information to become involved in solving his/her own problems patients to have a more productive dialogue with their physicians," says Harmon J. Eyre, chief medical officer of the American Cancer Society American Cancer Society, n.pr established in 1913, this national volunteer-based health organization is committed to the elimination of cancer through prevention and treatment and to diminishing cancer suffering through advocacy, scholarship, research, in Atlanta. The not-for-profit Web site will initially focus on cancer, diabetes, and heart disease and eventually expand to other disorders. Summaries will describe new research and put it in context, the site's developers say. These reports will also provide no-cost links to full-text research papers and related information. Ignorance about health "has been called a 'silent epidemic epidemic, outbreak of disease that affects a much greater number of people than is usual for the locality or that spreads to regions where it is ordinarily not present. ,'" says Richard Kahn of the American Diabetes Association The American Diabetes Association, or the ADA, is an American health organization providing diabetes research, information and advocacy. Founded in 1940, the American Diabetes Association conducts programs in all 50 states and the District of Columbia, reaching hundreds of in Alexandria, Va. The new program is designed to overcome the embarrassment or intimidation many patients feel when faced with complicated information or jargon jargon, pejorative term applied to speech or writing that is considered meaningless, unintelligible, or ugly. In one sense the term is applied to the special language of a profession, which may be unnecessarily complicated, e.g., "medical jargon. , says Kahn.--J.R. |
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