San Antonio Affiliate

I have begun my environmental scan of the Web sites of other Komen Affiliates, with regard to their presentation of educational material, and so far the best site I have seen belongs to our neighbors in San Antonio. They have education/health-information materials divided into "Education and Outreach" and "Resources." The education page contains a list of books, and the resources page has available pamphlets--none of which is available on the Austin site. While there are some design and editing issues--the link to "Children's Support Groups" takes you to a link of children support books--and it would be nice to see Web resources as well as books, the education section offers at least a place to start.

Both the resources and the free educational material however would benefit from a link or at least explanation as to how to acquire this material. For the brochures, should they call the office? Order from the national office? In effect, offering free material while useful in explaining what the office has may in fact result in creating more work for the affiliate in fielding these requests. I think that we should have something like the available materials page but link it to the National site and suggest that they be ordered from there. Although perhaps this would suggest that people should contact the National site for, say, health fair presentations, which is not desirable. I will have to figure out the best way to handle this. For the books, I wonder if the library has them? A link to the online catalog page might be a good way to go.

I was going to complain that the site had no local resources--but there is a link, hidden on the Resources page in small font, that says "Click here for a listing of local organizations providing low cost or free services to women." The link is a Word doc, with a list of addresses and phone numbers, much like the one our site. As with ours the focus is on free or low-cost mammograms, when in fact often women are looking for other services as well. There is also a certain amount of jargon--"patient navigation" and ambiguity--what are "services"? They have information about transportation, though, which is great. This site definitely gives me some ideas for ours, but I will keep looking to see if there are any affiliates who offer local resources in more depth, with more information, or with more features (like maps) built in.