Tox Town is now available in both English, http://toxtown.nlm.nih.gov and en español, http://toxtown.nlm.nih.gov/espanol. Visitors can learn in English or in Spanish about environmental health concerns and over 30 toxic chemicals in these imaginary neighborhoods: a City, Farm, Town, US-Mexico Border, and Port.

In either language, Tox Town uses neighborhood scenes along with color, graphics, sounds, and animation to add interest to learning about connections between chemicals, the environment, and the public’s health. Tox Town’s target audience is high school, college and graduate students, educators, and the interested public.

Tox Town en español identifies Spanish-language information in a subject area – environmental health and toxicology – that currently has few Web resources. To supplement the limited Web resources in Spanish, nearly 100 pages of background information describing environmental health concerns were translated and reviewed by a team of bilingual health information specialists.

Tox Town is ideal for supplementing classes in environmental science, earth science, forensics, and health. Also, students learning to read either English or Spanish may use Tox Town to improve language skills as they toggle back and forth between the Spanish and English text.

Tox Town joins three other Spanish-language Web resources from the National Library of Medicine. ToxMystery, for grades 2–6, features a bilingual talking cat that teaches about possible chemical hazards around the home, http://toxmystery.nlm.nih.gov. MedlinePlus (en español at http://medlineplus.gov/spanish ) directs users to hundreds of Spanish-language resources on health including drug information, news stories and interactive tutorials that read aloud in Spanish or in English. The AIDSinfo Web site, home for treatment guidelines, drug information and clinical trials related to HIV/AIDS, also has a Spanish version, infoSIDA, available at http://aidsinfo.nih.gov/infoSIDA.

Tox Town® is a project of the Specialized Information Services Division of the National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health. Promotional materials and Tox Town images for Web sites and publications are listed at http://toxtown.nlm.nih.gov/clipart.html. Please send your comments or questions on Tox Town to tehip@teh.nlm.nih.gov.

American Idol’s Randy Jackson is the featured celebrity in the March issue of the MedlinePlus Magazine. Check out the latest issue to learn more about Randy Jackson’s experiences with controlling his diabetes. That’s what’s up dawg!

MedlinePlus Magazine is the NLM quarterly guide for patients and families. It brings the latest and most authoritative medical and health care information from the NIH as featured online on the MedlinePlus site. The MedlinePlus magazine is provided to all NN/LM members free of charge. This winter’s issue features many topics including the mind body connection role in fighting disease, kidney disease and diabetes, the growing epidemic of “diabesity” and healthy pregnancy.

Sign up for a free subscription to the MedlinePlus Magazine at: http://www.fnlm.org/join.pdf.

Congratulations to Martha Prescott at Berkshire Medical Center Health Sciences Library in Pittsfield, MA for being chosen as a pilot site for the MLA Health Information Literacy project. Martha will be the first librarian in our region to pilot a new health information literacy curriculum designed to increase health care providers’ knowledge of health information literacy. The project aims to increase provider’s use of NLM consumer resources

and promote the role of librarians as key providers of this information. The curriculum is part of MLA’s Health Information Literacy Research Project which is studying hospital-based health care providers’ and administrators’ awareness and understanding of health information literacy and its value in support of patient care. The project is funded by the NLM.

Congratulations to Martha Prescott at the Berkshire Medical Center for receiving this honor!

For a list of other pilot sites throughout the country:
http://www.mlanet.org/resources/healthlit/hil_project_pilot.html

The free online course, “Unified Health Communication 101:Addressing Health Literacy, Cultural Competency, and Limited English Proficiency,” developed by the Health Resources and Services Administration’s (HRSA), has now been approved for 5 MLA Continuing Education Contact Hours.

This interactive training course will help you:

• improve your patient communication skills
• increase your awareness and knowledge of the three main factors that affect your communication with
• patients: health literacy, cultural competency and low English proficiency
• implement patient-centered communication practices that demonstrate cultural competency and
• appropriately address patients with limited health literacy and low English proficiency

Additional information about the course can be found at: http://www.hrsa.gov/healthliteracy/training.htm.

The March issue of NIH News in Health is here! NIH News in Health is a consumer health newsletter with practical tips to improve your health. You can find it online at: http://newsinhealth.nih.gov. This month’s front page story is “Making and Maintaining Muscle: How Much Protein Do You Need?”

Other articles in this month’s edition focus on living with Crohn’s Disease, supplement use and cancer, and talking with your health care provider about incontinence.

The PDF makes a nice addition your consumer health collection or for hospital waiting rooms.