Since 1995, National Health Education Week (NHEW) has been celebrated during the third full week of October. Sponsored by the Society for Public Health Education (SOPHE), this celebration focuses national attention on a major public health issue and promotes consumers’ understanding of the role of health education in promoting the public’s health.
At OncoLink, we celebrate health education everyday! We know that being educated about your illness (or a loved one’s illness) is empowering. It can provide some reassurance during a chaotic time, allow you to become an active member of your care team, make educated treatment decisions and get through treatment with a little less uncertainty. We hope that people dealing with a cancer diagnosis – whether new or ongoing – will find the support and resources they need on OncoLink.
This year, National Health Education Week (NEHW) is focusing on paying tribute to Health Education: Past, Present, and Future. As a group that has been educating patients, families, friends, and providers since 1994, we understand how far things have come. When OncoLink first started, there was no easy way for a patient to get information about their cancer and treatments. One of our most popular features back then was Ask the Experts- where people submitted questions to our experts. Flash forward to 2015 and we are an on demand, get it when we need it society. OncoLink has worked to meet these needs with tools that create personalized information, improved search features, and making our most popular information easy to get to on our site.
The way we get information may have changed over time, but the benefit of being knowledgeable about your condition has not. At OncoLink, we hope our site can be a tool for people with cancer to become educated and empowered, and become active participants in their care.
This week, the NHEW asks you to acknowledge your health education heros using the hashtag #NEHW2015. I’d like to give a shout out to our team here at OncoLink for all their hard work in cancer education!