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NetWellness Celebrates Tenth Anniversary of First Grant

Cincinnati, Cleveland, Columbus [November 1, 2004] -Ten years ago on October 1, 1994 the University of Cincinnati (UC) received the first grant to create NetWellness. The U.S. Department of Commerce's National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), in the first year of a program to extend the Internet to underserved areas of the country, awarded UC one of a handful of grants. With its over 40 community and business partners, UC developed one of the first consumer health sites on the Internet and installed dozens of computers for public use throughout the Cincinnati area and across southern Ohio. Roger Guard, CIO of the UC Medical Center and the principal investigator of the first grant, noted, "In keeping with the Jeffersonian nature of the NTIA program, we made high-quality health information available to people who had not or would not ever visit the university to use the information resources available there. We took the "library" to them, in their homes, and for those who didn't have computers, in libraries, schools, senior centers, and health clinics."

Steve Shoemaker, who owned TriState Online, one of the program's original partners, and remained with the program for years as a volunteer, recalled, "The concept behind NetWellness, making the wealth of information at the Medical Center, sometimes locked in professors' heads, broadly available was novel and exciting. It hadn't been done before, and to this day no one does it as comprehensively as NetWellness." While thousands of web sites have come and gone, NetWellness continues to serve consumers world-wide and will celebrate the web site's 10th anniversary in June 2005. NetWellness offers 35,000 pages of unbiased, science-based information on hundreds of diseases and wellness topics. Through its Ask an Expert service health professionals, nearly 300 faculty from the three university partners, volunteer their time and expertise to answer specific questions posed by visitors. They have answered nearly 25,000 questions.