Availability of e-information for women's health services: assessment of California State University Student Health Centers.
BACKGROUND
We sought to determine the availability of e-information for women's health services and discuss the implications for access to essential preventive health services for college-age women.


METHODS
California State University (CSU) Campus Student Health Center (SHC) websites are evaluated against a set of criteria developed from national directives for women's health issues. An analysis of these websites was conducted in January-July 2009. A review of related literature was also conducted.


RESULTS
Inclusion of essential women's health services (EWHS) on SHC websites varies significantly across services and campuses, and no guidance exists for material to include despite well-documented concern about quality of web information and the importance of this information for college-age women.


CONCLUSIONS
Our findings point to the need to more broadly assess campus health center use of the Internet to provide health service information to students and establish guidelines for SHCs to communicate EWHS to the female student population.
Judson
Kim
K
Department of Health, Human Services and Public Policy, California State University Monterey Bay, Seaside, California, USA.
Goldsack
Jennifer
J
Sonnad
Seema S
SS
D000328:Adult; D002140:California; D005260:Female; D017408:Guidelines as Topic; D006801:Humans; D007255:Information Services / Q000600:supply & distribution*; D020407:Internet / Q000600:supply & distribution*; D008490:Medical Informatics / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D013333:Student Health Services / Q000600:supply & distribution*; D014495:Universities; D014932:Women's Health Services / Q000600:supply & distribution*; D055815:Young Adult