Contrasting Diseases With Information

Comparing resources for maladies
1. Choose a population
The population I have chosen is families with children with Phenylketonuria. Typically these families have young children, because symptoms of this condition manifest within months. The primary concern of these families is to get their children the care they need to have healthy lives. Those needs include proper dietary measures (Diesen, 2016, p. 1002) and ways to counteract the accumulation of phenylalanine (Jha et al, 2017, p. 187). This population needs to know what options are available.
2. I: The intervention is a web-based parent/child/family resource. When evaluating the chosen source, begin with these questions: 
Is the chosen parent/child/family resource valuable? Does it serve a perceived need?
The web-based intervention selected is Mayo Clinic. This particular resource is of considerable value. It serves the perceived need of providing information that acts as the foundation for the assistance required of children who have Phenylketonuria. To that end it furnishes fairly comprehensive information. Specific information relates to pharmaceuticals, symptoms, risk factors, and other aspects of this condition. Its primary value is the broad array of information it contains.
Does the resource provide information or support that the parents/child/family would not otherwise have access to?
There is so much information on the internet that it is difficult to say whether one particular germ of information is unique or unobtainable anywhere else. Still, Mayo Clinic presents a bevy of information in one place that is readily accessible. Certainly, some of this information is found on other web sites or is accessible through medical practitioners. Nonetheless, information such as prevention may be less commonly found outside of this site.
Is the information in the resource current and accurate? Is it appropriately written for the population served?
The information contained in this resource is current. The page was either completed (or more than likely updated) on the 17th of October, 2017. Moreover, the information contained on this page is on the whole accurate. Perhaps one of the strengths of this resource is the tone and diction with which it was written. It is written in easy English and provides a degree of lucidity invaluable to its population.
Who is responsible for authoring, publishing, maintaining or otherwise running the resource? What are that person’s credentials?
There is a fair amount of ambiguity related to the author of this particular page on Mayo Clinic. The page itself is attributed to Mayo Clinic Staff. Who exactly that staff consists of is not revealed. By extension, then, the credentials of the staff members is also unknown. What is certain, however, is the references utilized for compiling this resource. Moreover, the staff consists of a couple of scores of editors, the vast majority of which are medical doctors. Some of these staff members hold doctorates. Exactly who was involved in this particular page, however, is not specified. The references come from a number of reputable sources which individuals may cross-reference on their own. Some of these references come from expert opinions of individuals who were privy to, or perhaps part of, the Mayo Clinic at some point in time.
3. Compare your chose source with any other parent/child/family resource you desire.
The resource compared to the Mayo Clinic is March of Dimes. One of the strengths of the latter source is the amount of statistical information it has available. These statistics are not as prominently displayed on the Mayo Clinic site, if they exist at all. Still, this site was either created or last updated in 2013, which gives one reason to consider the accuracy of this statistical data today.
4. What is the outcome of this comparison?
The Mayo Clinic site compares favorably to the March of Dimes site. Although the latter has links to additional resources which take the viewer off of the page, there is nonetheless more information on the Mayo Clinic site. Furthermore, the latter contains information which the former does not have, which only increases the value of the Mayo Clinic site.
References
Diesen, Plata. (2016). ‘I feel lucky’: Gratitude among young adults with phenylketonuria (PKU). Journal of Genetic Counseling. 25(5), 1002-1009.
Jha, P., Chaudhaury, N., Abhinav, P. (2017). A case report: Phenylketonuria in a one year-old child from India. International Archives of Integrated Medicine. 4(9), 187-190.