June 2004

Health website gets better with age

As it celebrates its fifth anniversary, the Better Health Channel boasts the answer to more than 2,000 health-related questions, 1,600 articles on healthy living and health conditions, 38,000 health professionals and services and 300 healthy recipes.

The Better Health Channel now receives the most visitors of any state or national government health website in Australia with around 200,000 people visiting each month to read more than a million pages.

While 90 per cent of visitors are Australian, the rest come from countries as diverse as Algeria and America, Canada and Korea, India and Ireland, Nigeria and Norway, Pakistan and Poland, Spain and Slovakia.

The Better Health Channel, like all good websites, has grown and responded to consumer demand for quality health information by adding new information and features.

When it was launched in May 1999, the Better Health Channel had around 100 articles and a listing of 2,500 local health services in Victoria.

Content partners—peak Australian health organisations authoring and reviewing content—have since helped multiply information on the site.

So have visitors, many of whom have sought information, made suggestions and given opinions of the site.

Responses to the Better Health Channel have included:

‘I live in the USA and recently had surgery for ovarian cysts. Of all the sites I visited, I found yours the most informative without being overly technical or frightening’;

‘I was searching on Google for blood pressure and stroke to find information to help me understand what is happening with my father, currently in hospital with this condition’;

‘I loved the recipes and the shopping list. We would like to use these recipes and shopping list as the basis of our weekly menu planning and shopping. The fact the recipes are suggested by peak health bodies, helps us to know this would be a healthy option’;

‘I am a nurse working with homeless people and I use this site on a daily basis as an engagement tool and for health promotion and education’;

• Visit www.betterhealth.vic.gov.au.