Have you taken the time to read a wichealth.org evaluation report yet? If not, you're missing out on a lot of great information about the effectiveness that wichealth.org has on the more than 300,000 WIC participants that use it each year. Have you wondered where all the information goes that we collect during a participant's session? Well, it's all in our reports with valuable information right at your fingertips. With each report we pull out a few highlights to give you a taste of what you'll get out of the report because we know you'll be encouraged to download and read it:

• wichealth.org usage has increased to a rate of over 300,000 completed lessons per year. How exciting to see how quickly our wichealth.org community is growing and expanding.
  
  
• Link frequency (number of link views) increased odds of stage progression for all wichealth.org users beginning their lesson in one of the earlier stages of behavior change.
  
  
• The lessons that demonstrated the greatest depth of use included "A Recipe for a Healthy Pregnancy," which had 18.4% of users access more than five links during their lessons, and "Healthy Whole Grains" (16.9%).
  
  
• 83.5% of users responded that they preferred to login to wichealth.org for nutrition education over other available methods.
  
  
• 82.5% of wichealth.org users indicated that they used text messaging. Further, 70% responded that they currently subscribe to an unlimited text messaging plan.

Click here to download the most recent annual evaluation report for 2011 Fiscal Year.

Have you checked out our evaluation reports yet? Our expert evaluator analyzes our data and creates a comprehensive summary every 6 and 12 months. There’s lots of great information in these reports that you sbouldn’t miss out on reading. What will you find in the newest 6 months report? Well... here’s just a few examples, but you’ll have to download the rest to see more:

• wichealth.org usage has increased to a rate of over 200,000 completed lessons per year. Wow! That’s almost double than last year. Keep it up.
• Over 90% of users in an early stage advance at least one stage. That means the information is valuable to the client and encouraging them to want to adopt healthier habits.
• Secrets for Feeding Picky Eaters was the most popular lesson. Want to see what the most popular lesson is in your state or agency? Check out the stats section.
• Lots of staff request data from the survey about usability… I bet you’re interested in seeing that data too. Did you know you can find these stats in the evaluation reports? Look on page 4 of the new report.
• The link “Common eating problems and how to cope with them” was the most popular link viewed.
• The overall average rating of a link by wichealth.org users is 4.5! That means we must be doing a good job offering great resources.

OK, now download that report and check out what else it has to offer! Don’t forget to share it with other staff. Click here to download.

Our Creative Director, Jason Rivas, recently developed this excellent handbook for WIC agencies, Like Facebook Love Your Community. I recommend this to all WIC staff, whether you haven’t thought about social media yet, are contemplating jumping on the social media bandwagon, or if you’ve been on board for a while now. This handbook is full of useful information to help WIC staff become aware of the features and tools available through Facebook and how to utilize them to their full potential to create a meaningful online community and experience for your clients.

What can you expect to find in this handbook? Well, here’s just a handful of all the valuable information you will find!

• Difference between Pages and Groups and what is best
• How to best utilize status updates to create conversations
• Tips on planning ahead for status updates, etc. to make managing your page easier
• Determining what time is best to post messages
• Increasing page interaction
• Posting events
• Posting and arranging photos and videos effectively
• Customizing the design of your Facebook page

Check out this handbook today and share it with all of your agency staff! To link to this handbook, click here. The handbook can also be accessed through the Resources section of this site.

Will you be at any of these upcoming conferences?

• NWA conference in Portland, Oregon, May 1-4
• Michigan WIC conference in Grand Rapids, Michigan, April 18-19
• Illinois WIC conference in Springfield, Illinois, April 27-78

We'll be there exhibiting and would love to see you at our exhibit booth so we can have the opportunity to show you what's new and talk about how wichealth.org is going in your agency.

Hope to see you there!

 

If you haven’t read our evaluation reports, you’re missing out! There's a lot of valuable information packed into each report. To help you get an idea of what you will find inside, I’ve provided some highlights below from the most recent evaluation summary for the period October 1, 2009 through September 30, 2010.

• Over 117,000 lessons were completed by 81,617 WIC clients in 15 states.
• Keep Your Family Safe from E.Coli was the most popular lesson. For several months this lesson was the first one clients saw on the homepage which may have affected this ranking, so we have changed things a bit on the homepage to promote distribution. Although it's still a popular lesson, look for changes in ranking on the next evaluation report.
• Over 67% of clients access wichealth.org from home, with the second ranked location being at the WIC clinic (8.6%).
• The majority of users (65%) were determined to be in the maintenance stage of behavior change.
• Among users entering the site staged in pre-contemplation, contemplation, or preparation, 92.7% advanced at least one stage of change.
• 98% of clients found the information on wichealth.org helpful.
• Over 90% indicated they believe they can make changes using what they learned. Check out the full report for more measures of site usefulness.
• Over 94% of clients indicated wichealth.org was easy to use.
• An average of 1.6 links were viewed per session at an average of 2.4 minutes spent on each link.

This is just a snippet of the valuable information you will find in the 21 page report. Visit the Evaluation Reports section to download the full version.

Are you having a difficult time using or seeing content displayed on wichealthsupport.org? It may be due to your browser. If you have Internet Explorer 6.0, keep reading.

Internet Explorer 6.0 launched in 2001 and, since then, major revisions have been made resulting in newer versions being available for download (3 new versions to be exact). We make every effort to accommodate as many browsers as possible, but with IE6 being nearly ten years old, it's difficult at times (and sometimes impossible) to make every aspect of our sites function correctly using older and less capable technology.

OK, so now you know your browser is causing issues, what can you do?

1. Use an alternative browser such as Firefox.
2. Upgrade Internet Explorer to 7 or 8. It's free! Do a Google search for "Upgrade Internet Explorer." If you need help, feel free to email us.

*When downloading an upgraded or alternative browser, you may need to contact your IT department for assistance.

The support site has been redesigned and we have some great new features we know you will love, such as, the ability to access information on completed lessons for individual clients and statistics specific to your agency.

You will need a user name and password in order to access the statistics and client search. Here is how you can get it!  

Email the following information to Stephanie at stephanie.pichan@wmich.edu:  
1.  Name and position
2.  State and agency (or county, if applies)  
3.  Email address you would like us to use to create the account

*If you have Internet Explorer 6.0 or below you will need to upgrade to a higher version in order to enjoy full benefits of the site. Higher versions of Internet Explorer can be downloaded off the Internet. If you are having difficulties, contact your agency's IT department.

Please allow 48 hours for your account to be created.

With the tremendous growth we've experienced over the past year, it's become a priority for us to provide a way for WIC staff to easily stay up-to-date on the ever-expanding wichealth service and all that it provides. That's why we've retooled our support site to better serve your needs and added this blog as part of our overall plan.

This is where we will post insights, ideas, and the latest wichealth news, including recently added features or any technical issues we may be experiencing. So whether you pop in once a week or once a year you can quickly catch up on all that's been happening with wichealth. And believe me when I say we'll try hard to make it a fun place to visit - like an ice cream shop without all the fat.

Oh, and this is just the beginning! We're already thinking ahead to how else the support site can be used in innovative ways to improve our support offerings. So come back soon! There are lots of good things to come.