- First Gov

www.firstgov.gov

This website’s packed home page contains dozens of links organized under six main headings: General Health, Health Topics A-Z, Food, Nutrition and Fitness, Health Insurance, Health by Population Group and Services in Your Community.

Each of these headings contains a grab bag of links to topics both expected and less so. For example, under Nutrition and Fitness, you’ll find links not only to “Food Publications,” “Food Safety,” and “Consumer Advice on Food, Nutrition and Health,” but also to “Mad Cow Disease (BSE) and Food Safety” and “Meat Recalls.” Clicking on any link will take you to a specialized government website, often with detailed and comprehensive information about that topic.

Elsewhere on the home page you’ll find an alphabetical listing of Featured Sites, which include “Quarantinable Diseases,” “Quit Smoking Now,” and “PandemicFlu.gov.” The box, Get It Done Online!, offers links to some practical health management tools found on various government websites. These include “Alcohol Calories,” “Nursing Home Compare” and “Diet Score,” where you can assess your food intake and activity levels.

The navigation bar to the left on the home page groups links under three headings: By Organization, Contact Your Government and Reference Center. None of these are necessarily restricted to health and medicine concerns. Under By Organization, you can search through federal, state, local or tribal government links, or click on “Cross-Agency Portals,” which are links to websites that involve multiple government agencies or both government and private sector efforts.

Contact Your Government offers a “Frequently Asked Questions” link, as well as links to long lists of agencies that you can contact by mail, email, phone or in person. The list ranges well beyond healthcare to include contacts for state banking authorities, how to obtain birth, death and divorce certificates and locations of court websites (by state).

The Reference Center provides links to “Data & Statistics,” such as aging statistics; a link to Form.gov, the hub for federal forms of all kinds; “Graphics and Photos,” with links to pictures of many things, mostly not health related; “Laws and Regulations” and “Libraries.” By clicking “More,” you’ll be directed to still more sites with directories of abbreviations and acronyms, maps, news, calendars and historical documents.

This website is the health and nutrition sub-link from FirstGov.gov, the U.S. government’s official web portal.

Last modified: 20 Sep 2006.