Category: grades 3-5

Main Link:  https://www.who.int/

The World Health Organization (WHO) website is incredibly useful for staying up to date on current international health crises and retrieving health information. It is especially useful today as we fight through the coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic on a global scale. The WHO makes it incredibly easy to access important information and guidelines in an organized and timely manner. In addition to raw information, the WHO deliberately organizes and displays data geographically, helping to manifest the bigger picture from across town to across the world. 

What you can do: By going to the WHO main website, you will gain access to tons of medical and research data. Important news alerts and articles can be found on the main page, as well as WHO guidelines to follow. Different health topics, country/regional data, and breaking headlines are all available at the click of a button. Just from the home page you have the ability to view an interactive world map with COVID-19 data. A more in depth tutorial of how to navigate the website is below. 

Privacy/for parents: The WHO is a reputable international organization that works as an agency for the United Nations. General data and usage statistics may be collected. Learn more about the WHO website’s privacy policy here: https://www.who.int/about/who-we-are/privacy-policy

Navigational overview: The WHO website’s homepage contains a top menu, emergency and COVID-19 quick-links, an interactive map and news articles near the bottom of the page. 

The top menu contains most of the data available on the site. The first tab, Health Topics, contains both an alphabetical assortment and a list of the most relevant health topics.

The second tab, Countries, displays the world’s main regions and countries found a-z.

Clicking on the specific letter the country begins with will redirect you to a list of countries beginning with that letter. Clicking on the country will display an overview with a map and health statistics from that country.

Clicking on a specific region will take you to a specialized WHO website for the region, i.e the Americas region will redirect you to -> https://www.paho.org/en

The third tab, News Room, displays current WHO headlines and links for all WHO news.

The fourth tab, Emergencies, shows relevant and recent emergencies It might be helpful to visit the by country and by disease tabs.

The fifth tab, Data, contains a link to all WHO data sets and other data and statistics links and resources.

Back on the homepage, clicking on the red Emergency block will take you to a new emergency page.

On the left, you will see a question bar, where you can type in a question and relevant Q/A will appear. You will also see a press conference schedule and videos on this page. Rolling updates on disease are located below the conference videos. 

On the right, you will see a donate button, a question answering tab, travel advice, and many helpful links including a Mythbusters tab.

The Quick Links tab on the homepage gives scam alerts, advice guidance, updates and research development links. 

Clicking on the Interactive Map will give a geographical map of coronavirus, where you can click on a country to access its COVID-19 data. Upon hovering over a country, confirmed cases/deaths will be shown. You can use the left menu/guide to represent countries by infections/deaths. There is a “Download Map Data” button in the bottom right-hand corner of the map, in addition to info below the map.

This should be a good starting point for getting familiar with the WHO website. Don’t forget, all these resources are available to you for free!