Remember Flu.gov’s flu-shot locator? And Josh’s post about mapping local H1N1 vaccine clinics? Well Google may have come up with the best option yet: its own flu-shot locator.
Try it. It’s very easy to use. When I punched in PRX’s location — Harvard Square in Cambridge, MA — this is what came up:
The red syringe icons indicate seasonal-flu shots; the blue indicate H1N1 shots. In addition to the addresses and phone numbers for each clinic in the left-hand sidebar, there’s also a helpful reminder to contact the clinic you pick before heading out — to check on its supply of vaccine. It also suggests that the MA public-health department may have additional clinic listings.
Google isn’t making the individualized maps embeddable — so you might still prefer to create your own vaccine-clinic map for your H1N1 web page. [See update below.]
[Update 13 November 2009: We just learned that Google collaborated with Flu.gov on the finder and that you CAN embed a widget on your website! You get to choose a small or large version. Just copy and paste the code; it can be on your site in seconds. Here's what the small one looks like:]