Selected Patient Information Resources in Asian Languages
Selected Patient Information Resources in Asian Languages (SPIRAL) was a web resource that connects people to authoritative health information in Asian languages that was freely available online. SPIRAL was maintained by the Tufts University Hirsh Health Sciences Library and funded by grant from the New England Region of the National Network of Libraries of Medicine. History. SPIRAL began as a collaborative endeavor between the South Cove Community Health Center, New England’s premier primary and preventative health center for Asian Americans, and the Tufts University Hirsh Health Sciences Library. Long-time neighbors in  the Chinatown section of Boston, the Tufts University Hirsh Health Sciences Library and South Cove Community Health Center entered into a collaborative partnership in 2001 to address a growing need for Asian language health information in the Boston-area. According to United States Census data, the Asian American population in the U.S. as a whole grew 72% between 1990 and 2000. Librarians at the Tufts University Hirsh Health Sciences Library were responsible for locating authoritative information on these languages. Methods employed to locate authoritative information include utilized popular web search engines, soliciting recommendations from health provider and consumer health professionals  working with Asian-language speaking populations, and consulting consumer health resources focusing on multicultural health and cultural competency (e.g., journals, listservs). Resources were considered for inclusion on the SPIRAL web site if they have English-language versions of documents available for comparison and were created by authoritative sources. Information sources were classified as authoritative if they were : Selected resources were organized on the SPIRAL web site by health topic and by language. Qualified, volunteer translators have reproduced the SPIRAL web site and related materials into the target languages to allow native speakers to navigate the site more easily. In 2017 , the SPIRAL website was discontinued. Distinctions. SPIRAL has received the following distinctions: