A nonprofit publication of the Kentucky Center for Public Service Journalism

Lynne Saddler: Northern Kentucky Health Department redesigns website to make it easier to find help


For many people, the nkyhealth.org website is the first experience they have with the Northern Kentucky Health Department. We consider it our virtual front door.

Users come to the site looking for the latest food inspections scores, for information about the services available at our county health centers and perhaps for details about a job opportunity with the Health Department.

Almost 5,000 people visit the website each month, and about half of them do so from a mobile phone.

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As part of an on-going process to look at ways to improve how we communicate with the public and our community partners, we examined the content on the site—and quickly realized that we had too much of a good thing. The amount of information available made it hard to zone in on what the user might be looking for.

Further, the site did not adapt to the user’s device. While a scaled down mobile website provided some information for those visiting nkyhealth.org from a phone or tablet, we know that we needed to better meet their needs.

I am excited to announce that earlier this month we launched the re-designed nkyhealth.org website.

Content is now organized by the user’s anticipated need—individuals/families, businesses or organizations, and community partners. It’s designed to work on a variety of devices—smart phones, tablets, laptops, etc.

Most importantly, we’ve drilled down what’s contained on the site, trying to focus on those details that visitors to the site need to get from the Health Department, and providing links for further detail, should someone want to know more.

The design is bright and clean, and reflects the Health Department’s new visual look as well—something that we’ve also recently updated to better reflect the current scope of public health in Northern Kentucky.

So whether you’re looking for information about quitting smoking, want to find out if you’re eligible for the WIC nutrition supplement program or would like details of the public health response to the heroin epidemic, I hope your first stop will be nkyhealth.org.

And if you like what you see — or if you see something that could be improved—be sure to connect with us; either via the Contact Us section of the website or by finding us on Facebook or Twitter at @nkyhealth.org.


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