After a decade of providing health information to Duke students, the Student Health Center's website finally received a face-lift. New and improved, the website went live late Monday evening.
"We're really excited about the website," said Administrative Coordinator of Student Health Ray Rodriguez, who spearheaded the project with Assistant Director of Student Health Jean Hanson. "We've been waiting for this for so long."
Unlike the old student health website that Health education Specialist Becky Griesse said "you could get lost in," the new site boasts easier navigability and expanded sections on health information.
"We've been updating and creating new topics on eating and body image concerns, contraception and Healthy Devil information," Griesse said. "The website's role is to be able to address students' needs more immediately and make it easier for students to find the information that they want."
Despite the obvious changes in content and format visible on the front page, more interactive features are still to come before the end of September, said Rick Cecil of Hesketh.com, an outside website development company with which the SHC contracted.
Feedback from a subset of peer educators and a student advisory committee over the summer helped Hesketh.com and the SHC find out more about how to better meet students' needs, Rodriguez said.
One result of student advice was to provide downloadable forms including peer educator applications and Healthy Devil program requests on the website.
Hanson also noted that students will now have the ability to download patient forms, fill them out ahead of time and spend less time in the clinic. "This new feature will help us better cater to our patients and students," she said.
Since the SHC website was initially published as the 'Healthy Devil Online' in 1992, the center has been riddled with website trouble.
"The old website was dated," said Dr. William Christmas, director of student health services. "We needed to give the student health website a better image and make it look better."
Hanson said the Center has hired three different contractors to try to "redo" the site in the past, but all that resulted was a hybrid of site designs which were very difficult to update.
The unveiling of the SHC's reformatted website has been well overdue since the Healthy Devil became the SHC on Flowers Drive last year.
Christmas said the old website still had information based on the Healthy Devil's old location on West Campus, and about the infirmary, which no longer exists.
"We had a lot of information... [that] was difficult to find and change and bring up to date," Christmas said. "One of the things that this upgrade is doing is making us update the site."
Fran Whaley, who works for Student Health Services at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, said she recognizes the importance of maintaining a student health website. "The first place students turn to is the Internet, and I think it's no different for student health programs," she said.
The $50,000 cost of the SHC website's overhaul was covered by the Waggoner Fund, which will provide $300,000 to the SHC over five years. Established in 2001, the fund is intended to "enhance the wellness of the campus community" and was the first gift of its kind Student Health ever received, Hanson said.
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