FluPortal.org

NPR’s Health Blog just reported on a useful FDA swine-flu widget. The widget takes the FDA’s list of fraudulent H1N1 products — which “alert[s] consumers about Web sites that are illegally marketing unapproved, uncleared, or unauthorized products in relation to the 2009 H1N1 Flu Virus” — and packages it in a handy tool that’s easy to put on your station’s H1N1 page. (Instructions are here.)

Here’s how the list appears to work: If a website includes fraudulent H1N1 claims about a product it’s selling, it goes on the list. And it stays on the list. But once the “FDA has verified that the products or the objectionable claims related to the 2009 H1N1 Flu Virus have been removed from the Web site, this information will be added to the list.” In other words, many of the sites listed have edited themselves and no longer make fraudulent claims.

The FDA’s main swine-flu page — with lots of additional information — is here.

Minnesota Public Radio is covering H1N1 avidly. It has been collecting its own reporting as well national stories, basic primers, and other resources on its H1N1 Flu Facts & Information page. It also tweets swine-flu updates on its MNflu Twitter stream.

Yesterday, MPR health reporter Lorna Benson hosted a live online Q&A about the vaccine and more. You can read the entire chat here and an edited version here. MPR online production assistant Than Tibbetts told me that MPR publicized the Q&A through its MNflu Twitter stream, its main Twitter stream, and also via on-air promos.

Here are two of the questions from the curious audience:

Q: Why aren’t health officials testing everyone that has H1N1 symptoms? If you know that you have already had it, wouldn’t it cut down on the number of people who have to get vaccinated?

A: They are not testing everyone because it’s expensive and time-consuming, and they strongly suspect that most of the flu viruses circulating at the moment are H1N1. If you absolutely know that you had H1N1, you don’t need to get vaccinated. But if you don’t have that lab confirmation, then you can’t really be sure.

Q: How long do surfaces stay contaminated?

A: This is a matter of great debate in public health circles. I have heard well-respected scientists say that the virus can only live for a few minutes outside the body. But there are other equally respected scientists who say the virus can live for several hours.

The web tool MPR used to run the Q&A came from Cover it Live. Than Tibbetts explained that it allowed him to collaborate on the chat with colleagues in different parts of Minnesota: Tibbetts’s boss was in St. Paul moderating the chat while Tibbetts was in Moorhead running some audience polls. The polls, he said, included “mood-gauging questions” like “what do you think of the media coverage of the flu?” He felt they were a good way to keep the audience engaged while waiting for responses to questions.

The H1N1 news last week was all about vaccines — how many doses are trickling in and where, how they’ll be distributed, and how to get vulnerable people protected first.

Now you can offer your audience a handy tool to find the closest available shot: Flu.gov’s vaccine locator. It looks like this:

[Flu.gov]

It allows you to click on your state and then search for an H1N1 vaccine near you. The vaccine still isn’t widely available, but expect to see more options soon. (The map also offers info on where to get seasonal-flu vaccines.)

The locator isn’t currently offered as an embeddable widget, but it’s easy to link to it in a story or on a station H1N1 page.

[Lance McCord / cc (usable on your site) / Flickr]

As you may know, FluPortal is collecting public media coverage of the H1N1 pandemic. To help this effort, we’re using the social bookmarking service Delicious.com. You can see our full list of H1N1 bookmarks on the FluPortal Delicious page. You’ll also see the tags we are using to organize the links we find. The number of stories associated with certain tags gives a sense of how H1N1 coverage is developing. Earlier this fall, we saw many reports on how schools and universities were preparing for the return of students. Lately, there have been numerous stories about the development and distribution of the H1N1 vaccine. Here are a few from the first week of October:

• OPB | H1N1 Vaccine Arriving And There Will Be Enough, Eventually
• VPR News | ‘Small portion’ of H1N1 vaccine arrives in NH
• KPCC | Lawmakers look to persuade most vulnerable to get swine flu vaccine

You can subscribe by RSS to our bookmarks at the bottom of our Delicious page. If you’re interested in a specific sub-topic, like the H1N1 vaccine, you can select any of our tags and subscribe by RSS to those stories only.