hiCollaborative provides Mississaugans with reliable consumer health information
A new municipal initiative that involves the University of Toronto Mississauga is enhancing the way local citizens get information about health conditions and resources.
hiCollaborative is a charity developed by a network of local organizations that includes UTM, and which provides Mississauga residents with access to relevant, reliable and accurate consumer health information. Its website, www.consumerhealthinfo.ca, features useful and current consumer health data and tools that support self-care, disease prevention and informed health-care decision making. The resource was created by member or affiliate organizations such as Trillium Health Centre, the Canadian Lung Association, Peel Public Health, the Dixie Bloor Neighbourhood Centre and the Mississauga Library System. Today, hiCollaborative is run by the UTM library with the involvement of the university’s Institute of Communication, Culture and Information Technology and the Biomedical Communications department.
The site features a comprehensive range of resources on anxiety disorders, arthritis, asthma, heart disease, hypertension, stroke, COPD, depression, diabetes and cancer. Each topic shows both online resources offered by member organizations, and related programs and services available in Mississauga. Users can also conduct searches on health topics and get referred to the websites of reputable third-party organizations that are considered leaders in their respective area of consumer health.
Also on the site is a comprehensive list of consumer health events happening in the regions of Peel and Halton. October features 20 such events, including a dental hygienist clinic run by Square One Seniors Wellness Services, an Evening Education Series led by Alzheimer Society Peel, and a session on living with vision loss at the Mississauga Central Library. Users can browse the event list or search the calendar by date, keyword and location.
Dozens of informative and engaging videos about everything from anxiety disorders to cancer to hypertension to stroke can also be accessed. Several are creative hand-drawn animations about topics such as cancer-related fatigue and hip and knee replacement created by Dr. Mike Evans, a Toronto physician and medical professor who has a nationally syndicated radio show about health on CBC.
Among the contributors to the site is Laura E. Smith, who earlier this year completed the Master of Science in Biomedical Communications program at UTM. For her Master’s Research Project for the two-year program, the 27-year-old wanted to provide clear and comforting health information to families who have experienced the sudden death of a loved one. She decided to focus on a condition to which she has a personal connection—heart disease, which caused her father’s death seven years ago.
What resulted was Understanding What Went Wrong, a hand-drawn web resource with a female guide who explains what causes hardening of the arteries through easy-to-grasp text and straightforward drawings of the heart. On the site, users can get a basic understanding of how the heart works, and learn about how fatty material creates plaque within the walls of an artery, the different types of atherosclerotic plaques, and arrhythmia and heart scar tissue. Down the road, more information may be added to the site about other conditions that can lead to unexpected death.
Says Smith: “The best thing I can hope for is that people come away from the site with a sense of understanding and some solace, and that it helps resolve any unanswered questions surrounding their loved one’s death.”