Internet website choice

On the Yahoo! website search engine, I located the PR Newswire. This site is rich in current news on a variety of topics. This United Business News Media website covers the topic of health care in a non-biased and full-coverage manner. The visually austere website offers links to other countries and media styles; providing a unique link to the news of the day in a information saturated world.

Dialog database search

The dialog database search was helpful because it provided a method for really fine-tuning a search. To go from over ten thousand hits to 3 hits with just on search parameter changed leads one to think that there is a measure of control in the search that is not so easily replicated in the other, easier search engines. That the search would have cost more than ten dollars was not ideal. If the search could be done within the regular web sites, that would make it really research-friendly.

Images

The intent was to insert a graph of the disparities in America; however the graphs were difficult to find. Instead I opted for a more, perhaps controversial, however apt, depiction of the complexity of the issue of gender, disparities, and medical care in the United States. These images were selected for what they represent, not only what they provide to the issue at first glance, but also with contemplation and closer inspection of the images, the depth of how this issue affects many people in the United States everyday. Yet, the images should also support the idea that there are those who care; and there are those who are listening and attempting to find solutions to the problems that currently persist.
All images were used from the website 'flicker' I tried to find other images on the American Memory site, but the historical images did not provide the current imperative of the issue today. The websites QBIC and Tiltomo were not helpful; I could not figure out how to search for terms.

Tagging Exercise

This posted tagging exercise is a result of the resources on disparities. The tag query "disparities" resulted in retrivial of three sources, only. The tag cloud was the general one, not the individual books. I tried to retrieve a source with the three basic query codes of 'gender, disparities, medical,' however the 'tagmash' resulted in no returns, as did other combinations of tagmashes. The individual words brought some interesting hits; but this tag query result came the closest to my subject topic.

RSS Feed

The RSS feed from the Population Reference Bureau, at: http://www.prb.org/Topics/Gender.aspx?rss=1#, has an advantage for inclusion here as the focus of the parent organization is to inform individuals from around the globe about the status of others in this same world. The Bureau seeks to aid in empowering these same people through providing this information, to improve the well-being of this and the generations to come. There are programs which can be applied on a national and international level; increasing the scope of application for this site as a research resource. This blog is focused on investigating the different gender based disparities in medical services provision in the United States; and this RSS feed supports that focus.

Pod Cast

The ongoing debate of healthcare in the United States, for many people, focuses on the 'insured and uninsured' in a way that dehumanizes the individuals whom stand to loose the most if the current system continues, unchanged. This audio podcast provides a discussion on the needs of most under-served sector in our nation, and is from a reputable source, National Public Radio. The National Public Radio topics are invariably timely to the issues of the day, and well researched. Searching the web with Yahoo!, the page was easy to spot under the results listed for podcast directory as: NPR: Poscast Directory.

Related Blog

The following excerpt from a post in the 'Daily Kos' (in italics), provides a brief look at the interesting comments I found on this blog. The blog itself, I found following the link http://technorati.com. I had not been able to put my finger on the reason that I have not previously viewed many blogs, and subscribed to none until I was searching for an appropriate blog to include here; that reason would be that many seem to be knee-jerk reactions to the world we live in. I prefer the more reasoned approach, and that has led me to the ones selected for inclusion in this blog.

Some Don't Miss Testimony from This Week's Health Care Hearings
by mcjoan
Sat Jun 27, 2009 at 09:00:06 AM PDT
There were a couple of stories this week coming from Congressional work on health care reform that didn't find wide distribution in the public debate, but need to be heard.
The first came from Wendell Potter, a former head of corporate communications for CIGNA, the country’s fourth-largest insurer. Mr. Potter did conduct a lengthy and important interview with CJR, but his story hasn't been widely circulated. What he talked about in this interview, and in his testimony before Sen. Jay Rockefeller's Commerce Committee, (provided here by Ezra, pdf) is how and why insurance companies do business.