The Office of Community-based Education and Research at Dartmouth Medical School, Dartmouth Biomedical Libraries and the Northern New Hampshire Area Health Education Center work collaboratively with 24 community primary care practices located in rural and underserved regions in New Hampshire and Vermont to increase access to and use of online health resources for providers and patients.

Our Specific Objectives are to:   Provide hardware and Internet connections to 24 community primary care practices in Northern New England and ensure operational status of equipment.     Identify, among existing practice members in the recruited practices, health information teams.     Provide training that allows health information teams to identify goals for enhanced use of quality online health information for clinical practice and patient education activities and create office systems designed to support this use.     Track specific, measurable outcomes in: a) providers' attitudes and knowledge about and use of quality online information resources in patient care; and b) patients' attitudes and knowledge about and use of online information resources for personal health care decisions.     Determine using a randomized controlled design what factors are associated with use of information resources among providers and patients.

This project applies and tests strategies using an office systems approach that have a high likelihood of success in incorporating day-to-day Internet use in clinical practice, particularly those in rural and underserved areas.  In doing so, it holds the potential of identifying ways to promote effective use of online information for patient care and positive interactions between patients and providers around health information on the Internet.  Due to our study design, we will be able to disseminate proven strategies to enhance Internet connectivity and use to our colleagues around the country.