Introduction: Information and Health

1  Challenges and Opportunities

• More Effective Medical Care
• Enlightened Consumers
• Increased Self-Reliance

2  Barriers

• Lack of Access or Information Skills
• Unreliable Information
• Professional Resistance
• Constraints on Consumers

3  What's Needed

• Trustworthy Information
• New Roles for Professionals
• Help for Consumers
• Reaching the Disadvantaged
• Community-based Action

4  Afterword: A Foundation of Trust

5  Endnotes

6  Resources

• Overview
• Consumer and Patient Information Online
• Quality of Care
• Equity and Access
• Community and Public Health
• Related Organizations

The Benton Foundation's Communications Policy and Practice program promotes public interest values and noncommercial services for the evolving Information Infrastructure through research, policy analysis, print and online publishing, and outreach to nonprofits and foundations. Its Web site provides current information on communications policy and highlights innovative practices of technology by nonprofit organizations.

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation is the nation's largest philanthropy devoted exclusively to health and health care. It became a national institution in 1972 with receipt of a bequest from the industrialist whose name it bears, and has since made more than $2.7 billion in grants. The foundation concentrates its grantmaking in three goal areas: 1) to assure that all Americans have access to basic health care at reasonable cost; 2) to improve care and support for people with chronic health conditions; and 3) to promote health and reduce the personal, social, and economic harm caused by substance abuse -- tobacco, alcohol, and illicit drugs.