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Huntington Memorial Hospital Launches New Website to Help Teens and Their Parents Make Better Health and Lifestyle Choices
Arcadia Weekly Feb 23, 2012
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Huntington Memorial Hospital announced today the launch of a new website designed to address common teen health and lifestyle issues and foster awareness of community support resources for teens and their parents.
The “Healthy Teens” website – www.healthyteenspasadena.org – is funded, in part, through an award from the National Network of Medical Libraries. The award will allow the hospital and its medical library to forge partnerships with the Pasadena Unified School District and the Pasadena Public Library and collectively promote awareness and use of teen/parental health resources in the Pasadena community. The partnership will also include speakers, displays and other informational handouts at local high schools, public libraries and throughout the community at large.
“Pasadena’s 2010 Community Needs Assessment report clearly indicates that health education outreach to teens and their parents is a seriously unmet need,” said Sherrill Olsen, manager of Huntington Hospital’s health sciences library. “Teens are commonly thought to be one of the healthiest segments of society, but the increasing availability of addictive substances and the prevalence of unhealthy lifestyle choices can lead to disastrous health consequences. Our program will address these issues head on in an accessible and informative way.”
The website offers teens and their parents an extensive list of local resources to help them tackle such health issues as chemical dependency, eating disorders and mental health. At the same time it provides equally comprehensive resources that acknowledge the challenges and questions teens face on a wide range of lifestyle choices including dating, housing, birth control, tutoring and volunteering. Equally rich resources are available through the site for parents and educators on these and other topics.
“Our program is all about helping teens make intelligent, well-informed choices and supporting parents of teens in the challenges they face as well,” said Olsen.
The launch of this teen-oriented website comes just 16 months after Huntington became the first hospital in the country to partner with the Healthy Communities Institute to offer a one-stop, online source of publicly available data about community health. That website, known as Healthy Pasadena (www.healthypasadena.org), helps community members and policy makers learn about health-related issues and local resources so that individuals can make informed, healthy lifestyle choices for themselves and their families.
