11 December 2008

Best Blog EVAH - Health Disparities Blog at Case Western Reserve University

I found David Porter on Twitter one day and noticed he made a lot of comments about health disparities - something my wife studies in earnest. Turns out he's a Research Project Associate and webmaster for Case Western Reserve University's Case Center for Reducing Health Disparities.

And he puts together an impressive blog.

It's not overwhelming or too shiny; it doesn't suck up bandwidth by throwing a bunch of widgets or huge graphics on the page. It does use some of the basic social media tools that you'd look for in a blog - a really strong delicious links page (you'll notice the blog depends rather heavily on it), some aggregator tools, an RSS feed. You can find some multimedia content (podcasts) in the sidebar and a small but adequate blogroll.

The best thing about this blog is the technology doesn't get in the way of the content. This is a strong example of social media supporting a positioning strategy - it collects some of the best thinking on health disparities and presents it in an accessible way, placing it under the "brand" of Case Western Reserve University. CWRU doesn't necessarily have the reputation of an Ivy League school or a huge land grant school, but tools like this help establish its credibility in a very important - and arguably undervalued - niche. I now know one of the best places to go for information about health disparities is Case Western Reserve University, and journalists looking for a source or notable quotable can go there as well.

My wife mentioned she'd like to see more there on rural health disparities, and I'm hopeful that can be remedied...

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