The National Health Observances Toolkit

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Health observances are special days, weeks or months designated by government, health organizations and medical professionals devoted to promoting specific health topics. For 2010, there are over 175 national health observances!

The Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion (ODPHP), part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, recently launched the National Health Observances Toolkit to help promote certain observances. Each month, healthfinder.gov features one health observance and provides a specific health observance toolkit, which can be viewed online or downloaded in PDF format. Each toolkit contains information and ideas to engage the public in health promotion activities:

• Sample announcements
• Sample Tweets
• E-cards
• Web badges
• Actions to get involved
• Related tools on healthfinder.gov
• Resources

They also provide tips to plan and promote a National Health Observance.

The ODPHP coordinates the official list of American National Health Observances by providing an annual calendar that includes all observances, along with sponsoring organization and contact information. The complete listing of monthly health observances can be found here: 2010 National Health Observances
A PDF of the list is also available.

Additional Calendars for Health Observances

If you’re looking for health observances focused on a particular topic, here are several other resources (note that some observances may overlap with those found in the ODPHP National Health Observances calendar located on healthfinder.gov).

• The American Cancer Society provides the 2010 Cancer Awareness Calendar
• The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) offers a selected list of national health observances, holidays and other special times of the year for Women’s Health Observances
• Food & Health Communications, a private publisher dedicated to creating fun, engaging nutrition education materials for professionals and teachers, provides the Food, Nutrition, Health Observances Calendar
• The World Health Organization (WHO) lists a number of Annual World Events
• The National Institutes of Health provides a Calendar of Events