Wikipedia talk:Choosing Wisely

Precedent set by this

So far as I know, the Choosing Wisely campaign includes the first public attempt of a major organization to do outreach for public health by arranging for educational staff to work with the Wikipedia community. Blue Rasberry (talk) 14:51, 29 June 2012 (UTC)

Navigational box at the bottom of this page

The navigational box at the bottom of this page links to subpages which display the following content:

1. links to fact sheets and sources of health information
2. a table which links to Wikipedia articles and gives traffic information about those articles
3. examples of the kinds of Wikipedia edits made from the content in the sources listed on that page
4. perhaps notes about that project

The purpose of the navigational box is to help anyone to quickly come to understand what kinds of edits have been made on Wikipedia in association with the Choosing Wisely campaign. The subpages sort the classes of edits by the names of the organizations most responsible for collecting and presenting the information on the factsheets.

The table describing traffic to Wikipedia articles related to the content in the fact sheets is supporting evidence for the idea that Wikipedia is a popular source of health information. One of the premises behind this project is that Wikipedia is a tool which people use to help them understand the decisions which they make must make about health issues, and that organizations which support the development of health articles on Wikipedia are providing information which the public is demanding through the medium in which the public is demanding this information. Thoughts? Blue Rasberry (talk) 16:35, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

Medical content on Wikipedia

No one should go to Wikipedia for medical advice. People should seek medical advice from their health care provider.

A significant number of people are going to Wikipedia for health information. Based on the incomplete information and data I have, I find that I have enough supporting evidence to justify my own belief that Wikipedia is the most consulted source of health information for some demographics of people, and that it is one of the most consulted sources of health information among all people, and that it is not unreasonable to think that Wikipedia is the most consulted source of health information in the world. I base these beliefs on what I know about Wikipedia traffic numbers and the traffic numbers of other websites.

Because so many people are going to Wikipedia, anyone who is interested in health education has a obligation to respond to Wikipedia somehow if they are to be effective health educators somehow.

In some of my contributions to health content I write about things like comparative costs and comparative side effects of drugs. I feel that this information is encyclopedic but it also can be perceived as the kind of information presented when drug advice might be given. I do not want to give advice, and I do not want patients making decisions alone which should only be done with health care providers. However, in many places in the world patients have some agency in their health care decisions and have some compulsion to balance health care benefits with financial costs. If, for example, there is encyclopedic content which states that there exist two drugs and one is expensive and one is cheap, then I feel that this information is worthy of inclusion in articles along with other characteristics like safety alerts, side effects, and other things which consumers of drugs consider. Thoughts? Blue Rasberry (talk) 18:15, 20 September 2013 (UTC)

Page sorting

Thanks a lot to Steel1943 who recently sorted subpages in this project to be uniform. This includes both the pages for societies contributing information and the watchlist subpages linked from those pages. The project is organized much more neatly now. Blue Rasberry (talk) 13:43, 11 July 2016 (UTC)

A new newsletter directory is out!

A new Newsletter directory has been created to replace the old, out-of-date one. If your WikiProject and its taskforces have newsletters (even inactive ones), or if you know of a missing newsletter (including from sister projects like WikiSpecies), please include it in the directory! The template can be a bit tricky, so if you need help, just post the newsletter on the template's talk page and someone will add it for you.

– Sent on behalf of Headbomb. 03:11, 11 April 2019 (UTC)