The Canadian Diabetes Association’s two-year-old Website on the Internet has just received a brand new look and an extensive upgrade.

The site has been receiving about 60,000 to 70,000 hits a week in recent weeks by interested surfers and it’s bound to rack up even more now.

The new design is graphically pleasing and makes it easier to move from area to area whereas before it was simply text on screen. The upgrade includes an expansion of available French-language material, including information from the CDA affiliate, Association Diabete Quebec. Before Christmas, the Website also began featuring selected articles translated into Chinese.

The Website holds about 750 pages of material in English in three distinct sections. It's obviously not a site someone can sit down for an hour in front of their computer screen and read all the way through. But of course, it's not designed for that.

It is designed so that those who click onto the introductory Home Page can then travel around the whole site easily and get the information they want, and need, quickly. The three major sections are:

Diabetes From A-Z is for the general public and contains an illusated and extensive dictionary about diabetes, information on living with diabetes, some fun and games for children with diabetes, and other material.
Professional section for doctors, diabetes educators and other healthcare professionals which includes abstracts from Canadian Journal of Diabetes Care and the contents of Canadian Diabetes online. This section also outlines available opportunities for research grants and a method to download grant applications forms.
Virtual Branch which is updated weekly and has a full listing of provincial offices and 170 CDA branches, facts about their activities and catalogues of available products and information brochures.

The home Page has a separate area called What's New with the latest information in the form of updates, new media releases and other news.

The CDA is Canada's response to diabetes with provincial offices and 170 branches across the country. The Association's mission is to promote the health of Canadians through diabetes research, education, services and advocacy.

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