This small grant application is submitted in response to the National Action Plan on Breast Cancer request for applications involving new outreach programs for information dissemination with special emphasis on consumer involvement. We propose to gain broad access to the Internet for Y-ME National Breast Cancer Organization. Utilizing the state-of-the-art technology support of Counterpoint Publishing (a leading Internet and CD-ROM publisher) in collaboration with the Robert H. Lurie Cancer Center of Northwestern University, we will leverage the rapidly expanding global information technologies to support the outreach and information dissemination missions of Y-ME. We will establish the following services for Y-ME: (a) a Y-ME home page on the World Wide Web, (b) a Y-ME Gopher service, (c) a frequently asked questions (FAQ) information service, (d) a Hotline (similar to the telephone hotline already used so successfully by Y-ME), (e) a moderated discussion group, (f) the Y-ME newsletter, (g) a bulletin board of events, (h) hypertext links to other sources of breast cancer information, (i) current information on topical issues in breast cancer, (j) electronic mail services for sending individualized information immediately, with the ability of the recipient to print hard copy for saving. In the future, interactive, multimedia CD-ROM educational disks may be developed.
