EthnoMed is a Web based resource file that was started in 1994. It is designed to help health care professionals in the greater Seattle area who are seeing increasing numbers of non-European, non-English speaking refugees and immigrants. The care providers must try to bridge language and cultural barriers during brief medical visits.

Collecting and preparing focused documents for this file is very labor intensive. The information needs to be gathered, summarized, and presented so that the content of EthnoMed meets rigorous academic standards. Additionally it needs to be reviewed by members of the communities being described.

Recruiting writers has not been easy. When a clinician or student does agree to prepare a document, EthnoMed team members must then spend time getting the prospective researcher oriented. Unfortunately, at this point, many potential contributors, realizing the time and effort involved, drop out. This poster, which will ultimately appear on EthnoMed, will allow potential authors to decide whether they want to make the commitment to prepare a document for EthnoMed before they begin to discuss the details of their intended research.

Using a frames format, in the left hand column the poster will describe the general process of developing a document based upon field work. The right hand column will provide concrete examples from work done at Harborview Medical Center, especially that related to dizziness and fever in the Cambodians including their ideas about "wind illness."

What is EthnoMed?

How do you create documents for EthnoMed?

• 1. Select a topic
• 2. Conduct a literature search
• 3. Decide upon research methodology
• 4. Write a proposal and submit it to EthnoMed team
• 5. Conduct the research
• 6. Write up results
• 7. Submit written documents to EthnoMed team so they can be put on the Web

What are some of the challenges related to getting information for the EthnoMed site?

Continue to Poster in Frames Format