The Child Advocate

Health Information on the Internet

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The Child Advocate is devoted to children and the parents and professionals that work with them and advocate for them. If you have questions about the information presented here, please consult a physician skilled in diabetes management, the resources listed or other professional in your area.

Finding answers to important health questions using Internet search engines and
simple search terms is difficult at best. And while the information consumers do find on
Web sites is generally accurate, it is usually incomplete and hard for many readers to
understand, according to a report featured in the May 23 issue of the Journal of the
American Medical Association (JAMA).

Recent surveys indicate that almost 100 million Americans go online in search of
health information; 70% of them say that what they find influences treatment decisions.

Berland and colleagues evaluated health information available on the Internet for 4
conditions: breast cancer, depression, obesity, and childhood asthma through
English- and Spanish-language search engines. Search engines were only
moderately efficient; coverage of key information was poor and inconsistent, but
accuracy was generally good.

Our results suggest that consumers using the Internet may have a
difficult time finding complete and accurate information on a health
problem. If people are relying on the Internet to make treatment
decisions, including whether to seek care, deficiencies in information
could negatively influence consumer decisions. For example, less
than half of the Spanish-language materials explained that
mastectomy and lumpectomy plus radiation are equivalent treatments
for early-stage breast cancer.
The reading level of most Web-based material is quite high. All of the
English-language sites had material that required at least a
10th-grade reading level, and more than half of the sites presented
material at the college level. Although 1 Spanish-language site
presented material at the elementary school level, all others required
at least a ninth-grade reading level. According to the 1992 National
Adult Literacy Survey, 92 million adults in the United States almost
48% of the population and more than 75% of current welfare
recipients have low or very low reading skills.51 Thus, even if wider
access to computer technologies narrowed the digital divide, the
online health information currently available would be difficult for many
people to understand.

See the AMA site for more information at: http://jama.ama-assn.org/issues/current/rfull/joc02274.html and the California HealthCare Foundation.

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