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The Internet has now become the first place where Canadians look for health-related information. However, there is widespread concern about the reliability and credibility of some web-based health information. Consumers want to know that they can trust what they are reading and that the sources are valid.
After researching the practices used by the best health websites in other countries, the Canadian Health Network (CHN) has developed its own set of standards to guide its selection of websites. We call this the CHN Quality Assurance framework.
Roles and Responsibilities
The CHN's Quality Assurance framework has been designed to suit our network's unique structure that involves a large number of organizations. Three groups of collaborators participate in the selection, maintenance and quality assurance of the CHN health information resources: Affiliates, Network Contributors and CHN staff.
Affiliates are nonprofit or government organizations that act as the
CHN's health subject experts. Each Affiliate continually identifies and develops
content for their particular subject area on the CHN website. They work with
Network Contributors, which are nonprofit or government organizations
that already have online health information resources in their subject areas.
Affiliates and Network Contributors also work together to develop new CHN material
and to conduct many health promotion activities within their communities. The
CHN staff at the Public Health Agency of Canada maintains the web site
and provides ongoing support to Affiliate organizations.
Objectives of the quality assurance framework
The CHN designed the Quality Assurance framework to:
- Make sure that the selection, presentation and evaluation of the site's information resources is consistent.
- Educate the user about how the information is collected, presented, and authorized.
- Help our users to interpret the information available on the site.
- Make sure that our users can always expect to find high-quality information on the CHN website.
Seven quality principles
The CHN's quality assurance framework is based on seven quality principles. The CHN strives to be:
- Accessible – The health information resources are original documents
that are organized to be accessible to a range of audiences, including children,
youth and adults. They are available in both of Canada's official languages,
through basic Internet technologies.
- Authoritative – The health information resources are thoroughly
reviewed to verify that they are current, authoritative, trustworthy, reliable,
and consistent with the best practices of respected health professionals and
subject matter experts, and that they only come from non-commercial organizations.
- Multiple-perspective – Each collection of resources on a health
information topic offers a full range of perspectives, viewpoints and approaches.
- Collaborative – The CHN is a collaboration between the Public Health
Agency of Canada and selected non-commercial health organizations across Canada.
- Responsive – We select and present up-to-date health information
resources that anticipate the needs and questions of Canadians, and address
new and emerging health promotion, disease and injury prevention topics.
- Mandate-appropriate – The resources provide health promotion
and disease and injury prevention information, not medical advice.
- Transparent – The health information resources are selected,
evaluated and audited according to the collection policy and guidelines described
on this site.
The CHN does its best to ensure that the health information on our site earns your trust. To help consumers assess online health information, we also feature a checklist called "How to find the most trustworthy health information on the Internet."
The CHN can not be responsible for websites run by other organizations, nor can we control links you may visit at other websites. Please refer to the CHN Site Disclaimer for more information.
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