Teens struggle to find accurate, useful health informat...( s. For search engine and site des...),Health

For search engine and site designers, it's important to understand how teens search and to build sites with that in mind. For example, most of the students relied on only the first few results from search engines, suggesting it's important that health sites appear near the top of results for searches on health terms. Intuitive, clear site navigation is also important.

"As we move toward a health care delivery system that relies more and more on the Internet to deliver high quality health information, we must pay attention to issues of accessibility in cyberspace. There are very specific barriers to finding relevant health information on the Internet. They can be minimized, but we're just starting to get a handle on what these specific barriers are," Richardson says.

"Also, a lot can be done to tailor Web sites to particular groups. In this case we are focusing on adolescents who don't tend to see a doctor very often and who have health issues that are often sensitive and hard to talk about with anyone."

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Contact: Nicole Fawcett
nfawcett@umich.edu
734-764-2220
University of Michigan Health System
17-Oct-2003