A fantastic source for pediatrics-related information is the University of Alabama at Birmingham Pediatric information resource page. This page allows direct links to a variety of pediatric information services including links to other pediatric hospitals and departments, to disease-related information, to pediatric literature and, perhaps most importantly, to parenting information. For example, the "Hospitals and Departments" listing includes home pages for 16 hospitals and 13 pediatric departments spread throughout the United States and Canada. Several of these home pages are excellent resources to learn more about a University with a medical center and affiliated hospital.
One of the listings under "Hospitals" is the Children's Miracle Network. This is a network of over 150 hospitals that treat children for a variety of diseases, as well as nearly 200 television stations across the United States that support the Children's Miracle Network. This organization is a nonprofit organization that tries to link children with hospitals for treatment of rare and life- threatening childhood diseases.
The hospitals under the Network can also be located alphabetically by state.
These hospital listings were only addresses and did not contain links to the Web pages or to other servers. Hopefully they will in the future. There was also a choice to view a map of the United States and locate hospitals by clicking on a specific state. That function was not operational when I perused the Web page; whether that is a frequent or infrequent malfunction, I cannot say. Probably the most interesting and moving section of the Children's Miracle Network page was the section on "Real Miracle Stories."
All in all, the Children's Miracle Network appears to be under construction. The list of the 200 television stations that support the network was unavailable at the time that I tried access it. Most of the corporate sponsor logos were also unavailable. Overall, the Web site has the strong potential to be an interesting venue for parents with acutely sick or chronically ill children.
Back at the University of Alabama pediatric information page, a truly excellent resource was the listing of information and Web sites related to specific diseases.
This site contained over 40 specific topic listings with one to several links for each disease. The diseases supported ranged from pediatric AIDS to alcoholism, including a link to ALATEEN, a support group for teenagers from families of alcoholics. At the end of the alphabet were listings for Von-Hippel Lindau Disease. The topics covered both general childhood well-being (Child Health) to accident prevention and breast-feeding, as well as diseases including cancer and genetic disease. Several of the specific links will be evaluated here.
The first is the listing for breast- feeding. Typically new mothers interested in breast-feeding find it difficult to get information or instruction on breast-feeding. Although doctors are becoming more better educated in breast-feeding principles, with managed care and decreased time with patients it is important for women to have access to outside sources for answers to their questions. One of the links was to an excellent site on breast-feeding.
The fact that over 2000 people have accessed the page suggests to me that it is a well-used and necessary resource. Women with questions about breast-feeding can directly access a mailing list about breast-feeding, through listproc@helix.net, that can be accessed through the University of Alabama diseases home page.
One area of pediatrics and child care that frequently gets overlooked is accident prevention. The Child Safety Forum tries to fulfill that void.
In addition to a number of fine features, it includes a monthly article derived from a chapter of the book entitled: "Child Safety: A Parent's Guide to Avoiding Hidden Household Hazards," written by Peter Dlugokencky. The book can be ordered directly from the Child Safety Forum via the home page. The October issue included an article on bathroom safety and covered everything from the bath and hot water, to childproofing the toilet and the medicine cabinet. I liked the fact that the book not only highlighted the methods for childproofing but gave the reader some background on why a parent should childproof the object in question. For example, everyone understands why a parent should childproof the medicine cabinet, but why should a parent childproof the toilet? I think the site could be improved if the entire book, rather than a chapter at a time, were available online. Also, I was astounded to see that only 50 people had accessed the site in the past two weeks. Clearly, in light of the number of childhood accidents and poisonings that occur annually in the United States, the site should be accessed far more often. Nutrition during pregnancy and for children was also covered nicely in the University of Alabama home page, via a link to the International Food Information Council. More importantly, it had brochures available for children themselves so this site would be of interest not only for parents but potentially for their children as well.
This attractive site highly graphics-oriented. It contains easy-to-understand interpretations of scientific articles on topics such as the importance of eating breakfast. All in all, an excellent resource for parents.
An area that was covered fairly poorly throughout the World Wide Web was poison control. There are several listings for poison control but they are mainly of academic interest and not of much help to parents. Perhaps such an oversight is really a benefit, seeing as when a child is poisoned, it isn't in the child's best interest to be looking for poison information on the computer. Instead, the first few pages of the White Pages telephone directory has several emergency phone numbers including an 800 number to call for poison control. These numbers are manned 24 hours a day by knowledgeable experts and should serve as your resource in an emergency. This "site" also includes rape, child abuse, runaway, suicide prevention and youth crisis numbers. Be sure to make them available to your children and have them handy for yourself. With this said, it should be noted that one interesting poison-related resource was found on the World Wide Web. It includes listings for over 200 poison control centers worldwide. So, if you are going to Uruguay and want to know something about local poisonous snakes or insects, you could contact this poison control center.
Another related site includes an injury prevention resource.
The Web sites covered in this month's article concentrate on pediatric diseases, and accident and poison control. As we approach the winter, with its accompanying colds, flus, and miscellaneous childhood illnesses, it seems appropriate to review such illnesses in the next issue. Therefore, next month's article will continue the pediatric topic by covering in detail pediatric infectious diseases, immunizations, and preventative medicine.