On Friday, January 29 at The Hospital for Sick Children, the Honorable Leona Aglukkaq, Federal Minister of Health, announced
that the Government of Canada, through the Public Health Agency of Canada, will be contributing $4.5 million dollars over
three years to AboutKidsHealth.ca.
"AboutKidsHealth has already proven its value to hundreds of thousands of Canadian parents, young people and health-care professionals,"
said Minister Aglukkaq, as she made the announcement. "With this investment we will give all Canadians access to this exceptional
website which delivers accurate, credible and accessible information about children's health, in a way that will benefit healthcare
professionals, parents, and children."
The infusion
of money will provide the financial stability necessary for AboutKidsHealth to build a national network of partners, better
serve vulnerable populations - more specifically rural, northern and aboriginal Canadians - and allow it to move toward full
financial self-sufficiency in the years to come.
This process is already well underway. All approximately 30,000 pages of AboutKidsHealth will be available in French this
summer, with Chinese and key sections of the site in Spanish, Arabic, Urdu, Tamil, Portugese, and Punjabi to follow. This
translation was funded by a contribution by Citizenship and Immigration Canada in 2009. Additionally, partnerships with other
pediatric hospitals and institutions have been developed or are under development to create a national network of expertise
in child and youth health.
In 2001, TD Securities made a remarkable donation that brought AboutKidsHealth to life and sustained it for eight years. AboutKidsHealth.ca
launched in June 2004. It now receives more than 140,000 visitors in an average month, from over 450 Canadian cities and 180
countries around the world. The site’s evidence-based content is supplemented by effective animations and illustrations, including
more than four hours of narrated animation in its unique Just for Kids section.
"The information found throughout AboutKidsHealth is very impressive, both because it's so comprehensive and because it's
so accessible," said Dr. David Butler-Jones, Chief Public Health Officer of Canada, adding the site “offers parents, children,
and health-care professionals information and tools they can use and understand."
That a web site is capable of offering this type of service may seem obvious in 2010 but the notion required revolutionary
thinking at its inception. Important ideas for the organization of AboutKidsHealth arose from work that evolved from a chance
encounter in an elevator in 2001 between Dr. Ross Hetherington, Director of AboutKidsHealth, and Dr. Eric Bouffet Director
of the Neuro-oncology programme at SickKids. “Eric, Darren Hargrave, a Fellow working with Eric at the time, and I developed
the model for the resource centres of AboutKidsHealth. Those two were well ahead of the curve in terms of using the web for
patient education. At the time few physicians had explored the internet’s potential.
Global reach
"People from around the world have come to rely on the expertise that SickKids offers; AboutKidsHealth is a dynamic website
and resource that help us share our knowledge on a national and international scale," says Dr. Susan Tallett, Chief of Education
at SickKids. "At SickKids we believe that family members, including children are increasingly knowledgeable about their health
conditions and it is a high priority to provide them with resources that are easy to access, developmentally appropriate and
evidence informed."
“We stand on the threshold of a national collaboration among paediatric hospitals across Canada. This will lead to the creation
of a Canadian library of child health information and tools, and development of programs for underserved rural and Aboriginal
populations. Trusted answers to child health questions will be available to all Canadian families, regardless of the language
of the home, regardless of the region of Canada in which they live, whenever they need it”, says Dr. Hetherington, “We are
profoundly grateful to Minister Aglukkaq and the Public Health Agency of Canada for this opportunity.
