And so it goes…
March 31, 2008 was the final day to access the Canadian Health Network. CHN was Canada’s leading web-based source for health information by Canadians. It fell prey to budget cuts despite surplus federal government accounts.
The occasion was marked by the reading of a petition in the House of Commons asking parliament to rescind the funding cut to CHN . The petition was created by Friends of CHN and presented by the Hon. Robert Thibault, Liberal Health Critic who announced that his name was among the list of supporters.
If you go to the CHN website today you will get a screen that says: “You have been redirected to the Public Health Agency of Canada: A valuable and unique source of timely, trusted and credible public health information on healthy living, disease and injury prevention.” Does this sound oddly familiar? The same words were used to describe CHN and yet the PHAC site does not provide the same information. Search queries present lists of academic papers and government documents that do not provide the straightforward answers you would have found on CHN.
If you enter the PHAC site, you will see many of the same topic areas as were listed on CHN – some even include links to CHN which simply redirects you to PHAC – how sad.
If you don’t find what you’re looking for on this new site, please send PHAC a message about it. Perhaps we can at least encourage them to update their site.
Please continue to advocate for better information. Letters to the PM, Minister of Health and others will still be noticed. We’ve heard that the volume of letters about CHN has been noteworthy. No need to stop now.
Any other issues on which a health promotion voice is needed?
Please let Health Nexus know. Thanks for all your support and encouragement.
Friends of CHN