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Julie Taylor trawls the internet to find the most useful sites offering help and advice on diabetes
KEY WORDS
Children, Diabetes
Information technology
Health promotion
The internet can be a useful tool for professionals, parents, children and young people with health problems or questions, such as those dealing with a diagnosis of diabetes. However, as in any health situation, internet sites should be used with some circumspection. Anyone can post sites on the net and they should be used critically; in the same way that you would use or recommend books or journal articles. Questions that need to be asked include: Who created this site? What angle do they have? Do they have an agenda?
Drug companies run many useful sites but their primary purpose is to market their products. Some charities have helpful sites but they may also function as pressure groups with a point to get across. Never recommend a site you havert seen yourself - for instance - Novo Nordisk run a very useful site (www.living-with-diabetes.com). Designed for adolescents, this site sounds quite innocuous but it addresses personal relationships. Novo are a Danish company and Scandinavian attitudes towards teenage sexuality are possibly more liberal than attitudes in the UK.
Once the shock of a diagnosis of diabetes has subsided, one of the first actions many families take is to search the internet for information. This is an opportunity for health professionals to guide families towards useful sites. The Queens Medical Centre in Nottingham employs a librarian in childrens outpatients who will help families with internet searches. Using a search engine to look for `children and 'diabetes' will throw up a plethora of information that may be confusing...