The Center for Disease Control and Prevention Website Evaluation - Research Paper Example

The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Website Evaluation The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) WebsiteEvaluation The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is one of the most effective and reliable website that should be recommended for patients. CDC is part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services that is responsible for prevention and control of diseases, injuries, and disability. Its website contains a wealth of health information for patients that ably reflects its mission.

As one of the best government websites on Internet, CDC health information coverage is broad. In this regard, it contains information pertaining to all manner of diseases and health advice that fits all patients. For instance, the website’s “Disease and Condition” section provides a wealth of information on major chronic and several infectious diseases such as bird flu, tuberculosis, HIV/Aids, as well as common childhood diseases such as measles, scabies, and deadly exotic diseases such as Ebola.

In addition, the CDC website contain health information related to birth defects, emergency preparedness, workplace safety, travelers health, vaccine and immunization information, infectious diseases, accident and injury information and general health, just to name but a few. Apart from the being rich in information, it is also colorfully illustrated making it fit for use by patients. Furthermore, the website is not only meant for English speaking patients, but also Spanish. This is evident from the fact that the website contains a wealth of information written in Spanish language (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2013).

As much as the website focus of health education to patients, the information on the website is also beneficial to healthcare professionals and the public. In fact, the website contains over 5,000 blogs, podcast, photos, and tools suitable for managing health. In addition, the CDC website has a Health Information Search Specialist who answers all patients’ questions via a live chat service on working days except holidays 24/7. Therefore, any patient in need of urgent health information has the option of reading the information already available on the Internet or having a live chat with a Health Information Search Specialist (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2013).

The CDC website is the most credible government website for individuals looking for reliable and accurate health information. This is because the health information provided on the site is well researched by a team of scientists, nurses, doctors, communicators, economists, technologists, educators, and epidemiologists among many other professionals. All these experts have contributed their expertise in providing the health information contained on the CDC website. Therefore, this is the most reliable website for patients seeking credible and reliable health information written by experts in different fields of study (Frieden, 2013).

The CDC website is also very user friendly. This is made possible through its design that makes navigation on the website easy. For instance, all topics covered on the website are categorized into different sections, written in bold. For example, the section containing information pertaining to Disease and Conditions, Emergency Preparedness Healthy Living, and Response, Injury, Violence and safety, Environmental Health, Workplace safety and Health, Data and Statistics and Global Health are boldly written making navigation easy.

Therefore, a patient seeking information related to any of the topics covered does not experience any difficulty searching the information, since the topics can easily be pointed from the first look at the website. In fact, the website provides patients with the option of searching for condition and disease by symptom, name, or age most commonly affected. In addition, the CDC website is written at a 6th to 8th grade reading level, making it user friendly. Furthermore, In case of difficulty, a visitor of the website can always contact the Health Information Search Specialist via a chat 24/7 (Frieden, 2013).

Information provided by CDC is also current, making the website suitable for use by patients seeking the most current health information. The information on the CDC website is updated on a daily basis by health professionals. In addition, the health information is constantly reviewed by physicians and education professionals. The website contains numerous current articles that provide visitors with up-to-date health information that is important for decision-making (U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2013).

The CDC website has a number of strengths that make it unique and suitable for use by patients. Firstly, the website is reliable and authoritative, since it is managed by the U.S. Department of Health and Human services. Secondly, the site covers all pertinent health information that patients may require. Thirdly, the CDC website is user friendly with regard to design and navigation features. In addition, it has a special focus on medical pictures making it unique and appealing. Further, the site is written in a 6th to 8th grade reading level by physicians and education professionals.

Despite the many strengths, the CDC’s major weakness is the fact that the section “About CDC’ is placed down the website instead of at the top. As a result, a visitor interested in knowing about the organization may spend a lot of time searching for the section. References Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (2013). Retrieved September 18, 2013 from http://www.cdc.gov Frieden, T. (2013). “Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.” Atlanta, GA. Retrieved September 18, 2013 from http://www.cdc.gov/about/ U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (2013).

“Travelers' Health | CDC - Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.” Atlanta, GA. Retrieved September 18, 2013 from http://wwwnc.cdc.gov/travel