National Network of Libraries of Medicine

nnlm.gov

Dragonfly

Spring 2004 -- Volume 35, Number 2

New Directions for the Tribal Connections Website

by Miles White, Editor and Writer
Tribal Connections Project, NN/LM PNR

We have embarked on a new direction with the Tribal Connections website that may be as innovative as it is bold. The website, developed by Tribal Connections Project Manager Roy Sahali and others over the years, continues to be a valuable database for health related resources for Native Americans and Alaska Natives, and that will not change. The website is an important outreach tool to the American Indian/Alaska Native (AI/AN) communities and for promoting National Library of Medicine (NLM) online resources like MedlinePlus. What we have begun to do over the last several months is provide editorial content in the form of news articles and features about health and wellness issues.

We're attempting to do two things with this approach. First, we want to provide reader-friendly information about critical issues or topics in the news related to Native American health. We hope to make available information that will be interesting to both health professionals and to consumer health information seekers. Secondly, we would like to help raise awareness of Native American health issues in the general population and among Native Americans and Alaska Natives themselves by promoting Native American health writing, an area that has generally been overlooked by the major media.

Most recently, thanks to funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, we have contracted with a local Native American physician and herbalist, to write a regular column that combines western and Indian approaches to healing and healthy living. We are also working with an Native American nutritionist and dietitian to develop a regular column that will focus on food and nutrition. In addition, we have begun to seek out Indian writers who have an interest in writing health news articles for Tribal Connections. Finally, we are working with the Native American Health Writers Institute, a new project based at the University of New Mexico-Gallup, to publish Native American writers who have an interest in doing health writing in their own communities. Tribal Connections is a member of the Native American Journalists Association, and we distribute all our editorial content to online Indian newspapers across the country and allow them to reprint our features at no cost, since many Indian newspapers cannot afford to hire health writers. So far, our efforts have been well received both within the NN/LM and by Native American/Alaska Native members who have viewed the site, and we are grateful for these responses. Our challenge in the near future is to continue the direction we have started while expanding our scope to become more inclusive, with features and news articles from across Indian Country and from our various NN/LM regions. We'd love to hear from anyone who would like to contribute articles for the website. Visit us at http://www.tribalconnections.org.

Dragonfly, Spring 2004 -- Volume 35 Issue 2

This publication is funded in whole with Federal funds from the National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health, under Contract No. N01-LM-1-3516.

NN/LM | UW HSL | NN/LM PNR | Contact us: nnlm@u.washington.edu | Revised: April 6, 2004

National Network of Libraries of Medicine

nnlm.gov

Dragonfly

Spring 2004 -- Volume 35, Number 2

New Directions for the Tribal Connections Website

URL: http://nnlm.gov/pnr/news/200404/tcweb.html