For years there has been a desperate need for a one stop site for health information on African Americans and the Black population in general that everyone, even a person with no medical background, will find useful and persuasive. This web site promises to provide that. The Blackhealthonline web site aims to provide useful information for healthcare consumers and providers. As a result the site is conveniently organized into two sections: the healthcare professional site and the healthcare consumer site.

The healthcare professional site aims to deliver peer reviewed medical literature relevant to the practice of medicine as it relates to those diseases that are predominant in people of African descent. As a result, the contents are more geared towards those individuals with medical backgrounds who are involved in the delivery of healthcare to the black community.

We hope you will find this site useful and relevant in your decision-making process while providing care to your black patients. We expect this site to be constantly updated, and prompt in providing late breaking news on all aspects of medicine and health as it relates to the black community. To access this site, you will be expected to register and have a login name and password. The registration is free. You will also be automatically added to our subscription list so that we can provide you with late breaking news as they occur.

The Healthcare consumer site is for everybody. This site is written with the layperson in mind. It’s essentially intended to empower the consumer to get the best that medicine in the new millennium has to offer. It features a site - Major Diseases Center, that is dedicated to those diseases (such as diabetes, hypertension, etc) that are not only prevalent in the black community, but exert the greatest toll on them with respect to death and disability.

The healthcare consumer site also addresses other healthcare issues and diseases, that have a less catastrophic impact on black health than the conditions covered in the Major Diseases Center, but remain more prevalent in the black community. For your convenience, these diseases have been arranged in alphabetical order from (A-Z). To further make sure you come out empowered with knowledge, some of the articles are followed with questions and answers (Q & A) to reinforce the key points you need to know. Also on this site is a section on travel medicine – Travel Medicine Electronic Guide, that arms you with relevant health information you need before traveling out of the United States.

Another section of the healthcare consumer site features - Health News Summary, which will serve as a sort of archive for breaking news and disease updates. Hopefully, this section will keep you current with developments in the field of  medicine.

Because our goal is to make this web site the one stop place for all your health informational needs, the healthcare consumer site provides a place, Health Insurance Information Center, to learn about health insurance plans – (if you call it Insurance 101, you are probably right). This is knowledge you need to make informed choices regarding the selection of health plans.

To further make you an active participant in adopting healthy lifestyles, the healthcare consumer site provides two interactive sites:
(1) "Ask the Doctor" - a site that is intended to provide you with a one on one opportunity to ask those personal health questions you have always wanted answers to but feel too shy to ask your doctor.
(2)"Online Discussion Forum" - an online version of support groups where patients with similar illnesses or health interests can chat, share knowledge and experiences that could potentially benefit all participants.

For your convenience, the healthcare consumer site also provides you a place to store your medical records – (Your Online Medical Records). These web-based medical records are thus accessible anytime, anywhere, even in an emergency. This section of the site appropriately named, "Your Online Medical Records", is a secure site allowing only you to input, retrieve and update medical information about you that your healthcare providers may need to make critical decisions while delivering care to you. We believe Internet-based electronic medical records are here to stay, and will ultimately improve quality of care while eliminating frustration and difficulties that currently exist in accessing patients' medical records.

Time and time again, some of us, both consumers and healthcare providers, have been faced with situations where we wish we had copies of previous lab tests, EKG, X-rays, CAT scan results, lists of allergies and medications and other pertinent medical history. Yet, we find ourselves unable to access these records because the patient may have moved, or the situation you are in is occurring in the middle of the night. In fact, it could be any number of reasons. "Your Online Medical Records" promises to take away all the frustration and difficulties in such situations because with the click of a mouse and Internet access from anywhere in the world, at any time, you can obtain your own records. You can also log in at anytime you want to review these records, correct and update them as necessary.

Other sites of interest to the healthcare consumers located on the homepage include; Black Women's Health Corner that focuses on women's health issues; Your Child's Health that addresses health issues of children; and Drug Interactions Library that allows you to find out whether the medications you are taking interact with each other, or interact with a certain food, to cause a bad reaction in your body. Also located on the homepage is a special section called "Tropical Diseases Center". This section is directed primarily at physicians and other health care providers caring for patients in tropical and sub-tropical clinics around the world. Such locations include Africa, the Caribbean and a number of other tropical islands. Although primarily directed at physicians in these locations, in this day of world-wide travel for business and leisure, we believe that numerous occasions will arise when healthcare professionals and consumers from the US and other developed countries will need information about specific tropical illnesses. This center is designed to provide that information.

Please remember that no reading or personal knowledge can substitute for a healthcare professional. Use this site as a guide and supplement to medical care, not a replacement.

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