A team of medical informatics and child life specialists at the Johns Hopkins Children's Center has met the challenge of providing peer support to seriously ill teenagers with an Internet service, Hopkins Teen Central. Hopkins Teen Central's creators say the service shows potential for wide use in hospitals nationwide.
Reporting on the project today at the 1999 Pediatric Academic Societies meeting in San Francisco, one of the Children's Center team said teenagers with such chronic diseases as cystic fibrosis (CF) become socially isolated because of their symptoms or treatments, making it difficult to arrange traditional, in-person support groups to address emotional and social needs.
According to Kevin Johnson, M.D., assistant professor of pediatrics at the Children's Center, Hopkins Teen Central is a virtual support group. The password-protected Web site links adolescent CF patients with one another and Children's Center clinical staff. The site consists of personalized patient profiles, question-and-answer pages, private pages, a group message board and reference information. Children's Center CF patients access the site through their personal computers or through WebTV devices provided by the hospital.
Hopkins Teen Central was developed by Russ Ravert, a child life specialist who focuses on enhancing the emotional and social well-being of Children's Center patients; social worker Andrea Everton; computer programmer George Ciervo; and Johnson, a medical informatics specialist.
The service was launched in September 1997 with 17 Children's Center CF
patients. A one-year evaluation showed that each participant used the site an
average of six times per month, and 24 percent logged in more than 12 times per
month. Although users showed no increased knowledge of CF, or altered
perceptions of their care, interactive events, such as scavenger hunts and
hospital bingo, increased use of the site, and e-mail was use
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Contact: Staci Vernick
svernick@jhmi.edu
410-223-1747
Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions
1-May-1999