News Release

Monday, November 5, 2007

NIDDK Website Features Spanish Health Information

The National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK), National Institutes of Health, has launched three new portals to feature Spanish health materials and resources on its website.

People looking for information about diabetes, digestive diseases, or kidney and urologic diseases in Spanish can now go directly to the appropriate Spanish-language portal page, where they will find an A to Z list of topics and titles. The NIDDK has 40 diabetes-related publications, 10 publications about digestive diseases, and 18 kidney and urologic publications in Spanish and will be adding more than 30 Spanish publications in the future, including one-page fact sheets that are part of the NIDDK's Awareness and Prevention series.

The online system for ordering NIDDK materials now includes descriptions in Spanish of available publications to help visitors choose the resources they want.

The NIDDK website also links to the Spanish portals for MedlinePlus and the National Kidney Disease Education Program. Additional links allow visitors to access the NIDDK Reference Collection, a free, online, searchable database that includes 78 Spanish resources; the National Diabetes Education Program homepage, where they can search for Spanish-language resources; and the NIDDK Interactive Tools page, where they can search for health tools such as quizzes, videos, and tutorials.

"With these new Spanish portals, we hope to make important health information available to more people who need it," said Kathy Kranzfelder, the NIDDK's director of Health Information Clearinghouses. "The NIDDK website plays a vital role in achieving our mission, including the effective dissemination of health information."

Two full-time bilingual information specialists respond to requests for Spanish health materials from the NIDDK clearinghouses. In the past 12 months, more than 17,500 Spanish publications were ordered through the clearinghouses. The NIDDK responded to more than 700 information requests in Spanish during that time.

The new Spanish portals are available at:

The NIDDK, a component of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), conducts and supports research in diabetes and other endocrine and metabolic diseases; digestive diseases, nutrition, and obesity; and kidney, urologic, and hematologic diseases. For more information about the NIDDK and its programs, see www.niddk.nih.gov.

About the National Institutes of Health (NIH): NIH, the nation's medical research agency, includes 27 Institutes and Centers and is a component of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. NIH is the primary federal agency conducting and supporting basic, clinical, and translational medical research, and is investigating the causes, treatments, and cures for both common and rare diseases. For more information about NIH and its programs, visit www.nih.gov.

NIH…Turning Discovery Into Health®

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