University Library News Release
Date: March 29, 2006
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: Jeanette Smith, NMSU Library, (505) 646-7492, jcsmith@lib.nmsu.edu
Border Health Network Named State Winner
The Border Health Information and Education Network (BIEN!) has been named the state winner for New Mexico for the 2006 NCLIS Health Information Awards. The award was announced by its sponsor, the U.S. National Commission on Libraries and Information Science.
Awards were given to health information programs in the fifty states and the District of Columbia. Selection criteria included how well the program encouraged lifestyle improvement among the target population, the program's adaptability, collaboration with other community organizations and how successfully the program was able to reach out to people with low information literacy skills.
BIEN!'s mission is to increase access to quality health information in English and Spanish in the New Mexico-Mexico Borderland for consumers and health care providers. Visit the BIEN! web page at http://www.bienhealth.org.
Now in its seventh year, BIEN! is a unique multitype collaboration of public and academic libraries, hospitals, clinics and other health organizations. The number of partner institutions has grown from seventeen to twenty-eight.
The BIEN! project was originally funded by a grant from the National Library of Medicine (NLM) to the New Mexico State University Library. The project director was Sylvia Ortiz of the library. BIEN! is sustained by support from the Border Epidemiology and Environmental Health Center and the New Mexico Outreach Office of the U.S.-Mexico Border Health Commission.
In addition to the NLM grant, BIEN! has received funding from the Paso del Norte Foundation and awards from the American Library Association and the National Institute of Standards and Technology.
For more information, contact Norice Lee of the NMSU Library at (505) 646-5091 or nlee@lib.nmsu.edu.
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