SouthSideHealth.org: a wikipedia for improving the quality of health and human service referral information

A Wikipedia for Health & Human Service Referral Information

If you are a doctor, social worker, nurse, case worker or volunteer, you refer your clients or patients to other agencies for services such as day care, medication assistance programs, job training, nursing homes, substance abuse treatment or mental health services. You probably give your clients or patients a list of resources offered by agencies in the surrounding community. The information on that list, however, is most likely out of date. In fact, research has shown that on average about half of the information on the list is inaccurate and would prevent your client or patient from being able to obtain the services you directed them to.

Why? The majority of social services are funded using private donations. Every year agencies spend a significant amount of their efforts securing monies to keep their needed services in the community. The result of this unstable funding is that agencies expand and contract, services are offered and withdrawn. For healthcare and social workers, it is virtually impossible to keep apace with all the changes to the services and agencies in their surrounding community.

You can help. Every time you provide information about a neighborhood health or social service on this website, the information is shared among a network of your peers. Doctors, social workers, nurses, pro bono lawyers and volunteers - people in your agency or in your community, benefit from knowing that the information they give to their clients and patients is accurate and up-to-date.

This site contains a rich set of social computing tools that will not only help you share the resources you update on the site, but also find the resources for your client or patient quickly. To be part of this emerging wikipedia and its community, go to the grey box on the right and click on register.

  • Better Quality Information

    That old copy-of-a-copy that you give to your clients - it is outdated and inaccurate. This online listing has enlisted several new technologies to enable professionals like yourself to keep their resource collections up-to-date.

  • User Reviews

    Just like commercial websites, a user review is a powerful way of determining whether the service being offered in the community is of good quality. Reviews capture tacit knowledge of area residents experiences and can give you the inside view of how that agency treats it clients.

  • Freshness Dating

    Every resource listing provides a "freshness dating" icon to insure that the information you give your clients is current and accurate.

  • Wikipedia Features

    SSH.org is a democratic website that relys on the collaboration of like-minded individuals interested in maintaining information that is of good quality so that their clients or pattients are given accurate information.

  • Search

    Whether you know the name of the agency you are looking for, or have a basic notion of the type of service or agency you are looking for, SouthSideHealth.org has several ways to search for the service your clients need.

  • Shopping Cart

    While you are helping your client or patient find the services they need, you can add services to your shopping cart. When you have completed your search, all of the services can be printed out, customized for your clients needs.

  • Google Maps & Transit

    Help your clients or patients find the agency they need by displaying a map of the agency location. For clients or patients who rely on public transit, use Google transit to help them take the bus or El.

  • Sustainable

    Unlike paper directories and other online databases, SouthSideHealth.org was designed to allow anyone to contribute information regarding health and human service resources. When the information about an agency changes, information can be updated immediately.

  • Comprehensive

    No more need to shop around on websites, brochures, outdated flyers or resource directories for information to give to your clients or patients - it is all here in one repository. It spans multiple "silos" of information and service domains.

  • Multiple Media

    A resource can be actual such as a commnuity agency or it can be virtual, such as a hotline, a website, or an electronic document. SouthSideHealth.org contains information about them all.

  • Granular

    So many services provided in neighborhoods are not obivous and difficult to find. These informal services, oftten provided by faith-based institutions, offer services beyond their religious charter, from healthcare to daycare. This site was designed with the abiity to add this type of information with ease.

Social Workers

A significant portion of a social workers responsibility is to provide information about community human services to their clients. Depending on their specialization they will give their clients referral information about child care, job training, nutrition assistance, employment, education, nursing homes, mental health resources or substance abuse.

Yet it is difficult for any individual worker to keep this information up to date. In fact, its nearly impossible. This website provides a set of personal productivity tools that make the management of individual resource collections a quick and easy exercise.

Doctors & Nurses


Doctors, nurses and other healthcare workers have a deep appreciation regarding the link between social determinants of health and healthcare outcomes and seek to help their patients find needed resources in their community. Most doctors would relish being able to have a social worker at their practice, but cannot afford to hire one. Having a quick and easy way to access information that social workers input, however, is highly valuable to them.

Volunteers


College students yearn for meaningful engagement with residents in your community. An exemplary model is ProjectHEALTH, a non-profit that offers University of Chicago students the experience of helping young mothers find the services they need. SouthSideHealth.org gives these energetic, web-savvy students the social computing tools they have come to expect.

Community Organizations

Community organizations seek to provide information about what type of services exist in their community. Aldermens offices give out information on services in their community such as seen on this bulletin board. In the near future, this website will provide quick, easy access to services in a community that can be accessed from any public access building such as libraries, community centers, park district facilities, etc.

Urban Planners & Sociologists

When neighborhoods are being studied for revitalization or for community asset mapping, it can be extremely difficult to accurately assess the number and types of services for that area. This site has been designed with large scale studies in mind. It has features that allow researchers to inventory the businesses and agencies in a neighborhood. All locational entities are geocoded. Geomapping capabilities are provided to identify particular types of services and to measure their dispersion throughout a region.

Pro Bono Professionals

Pro bono proessionals possess a desire to address issues of social justice by providing their services to indigent clients. Oftentimes pro bono clients need services because they have unmet social needs. For example, a pro bono lawyer may provide legal services to a client who is being evicted. The underlying need is that the client lost her job because she could not find affordable daycare in her neighborhood.

  • Private Label Print Directory

    For some agencies, having a resource directory is a pubic relations tool. The site can print a hard copy catalog, embedded with your organizations logo, of the all services in your region or in your agencies area of expertise.

  • Temporal Mapping

    Each service will be cataloged along with its days and hours of operation. By capturing this temporal information, maps can be created displaying what agencies are open during the wee hours.

  • Regionalization

    Just like Craigs List, the site will ask what city or state you are from. It will customize the view of services so that you see the services closet to your area.

  • GeoMapping

    Maps are powerful tools that wil be enlisted to help you find the services you need for your clients. Imagine being able to find another worker several miles away who may be able to assist your client.

  • Recommendation Lists

    Using a list of just 8 questions, the site will be able to infer the needs of your client and build a recommendation list of services your client may need. Imagine if you had to do this on your own - it would take hours!

  • Kiosk View

    The kiosk view will be a version that can be placed in public spaces such as libraries, aldermans offices and government buildings. It will be graphically oriented and have touch screen capabilities.

  • Urban Planning Modules

    This section will contain a series of reports using real-time data detailing the number and type of services in a user-definable geography. Using geomapping, it will describe the density of critical public services such as primary care clinics, identify "food deserts" and gaps in mental health clinic coverage.

  • Application Programmers
    Interface (API)

    An API will be available that will enable agencies to use the high-quality information in our database for use on their websites. Agencies will be able to reduce their investment in databases and upkeep.

  • PDA Support

    Community organizations who embark on a community asset mapping project may enlist a cadre of community volunteers to collect information on area businesses and agencies. These volunteers will be able to use their iphones, blackberries or personal computers to enter information about area businesses and social services as they walk the streets of your neighborhood.