Website review: Healthy children

Abstract

I had the pleasure of attending the ASEAN Paediatric Congress held in Singapore in 2011. Many of the presentations were both interesting and informative. One of the highlights for me was a talk given by Dr Marion Burton, President of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), on the changing trends in global paediatric care. Dr Burton gave a broad overview of many of the issues faced by today's children and young people, such as obesity, dental caries and mental health problems. During the talk, he mentioned the AAP's consumer website, http://www.healthychildren.org (Fig. 1), which will be the subject of this website review. Healthy children website homepage. Designed to be a virtual extension of the paediatrician's office, the Healthy Children website aims to provide trustworthy and up-to-date paediatric health information to parents and health consumers. A wide range of topics is covered, for example, vaccination, developmental milestones, healthy living and home safety. The content is developed and reviewed by experts based on the best current scientific evidence. The website is well designed and beautifully set out, and contains many user-friendly and interactive tools. General information can be accessed according to the age of the child using the ‘Ages & Stages’ tool. Registering with the website allows parents to obtain customised health information based on the age(s) of their child(ren). Parents should find a number of tools/sections particularly helpful: Symptom Checker: This tool allows parents to choose the body part where their child is experiencing symptoms, browse through a list of common symptoms for that region, and find out for each symptom the possible causes, when to call for help, as well as general care advice. Ask the Pediatrician: This tool allows parents to read through a number of questions posed by users of the website, together with the answers provided by a team of paediatricians. Many of these are common questions that paediatricians may be asked by parents in their practices. Hot Topics: This is the news section of the website, and contains short articles summarising key messages from recent research and current paediatric headlines. It may be of use to both parents and paediatricians as it is frequently updated and references are provided in most of the articles. My only criticism of this otherwise excellent website is that the website's homepage displays the logo and slogan of a soft drink company, a major sponsor of the site. In my opinion, this may give parents and other users of the website the wrong message about soft drinks, and is in conflict with the AAP's recommendation ‘to restrict the sale of soft drinks and sweetened fruit drinks to students’, as well as their statements that ‘too many of these empty calories can lead to obesity, currently the most common childhood medical condition’ and that the sales of these drinks result in revenue ‘that is earned at the expense of children's long-term health’ (excerpts from HealthyChildren.org audio article on ‘Soft Drinks in Schools’).