usability guidelines for health sites

from sigia:

"This summer the Department of Health and Human
Services (HHS) under Tommy Thompson, released the
first major comprehensive Web design guidelines issued
by a federal agency. This work began at the National
Cancer Institute, and is now being distributed
throughout HHS departments, companies doing business
with HHS, and their agencies."

http://usability.gov/pdfs/guidelines.html

I was skimming through some of the sections and most of the guidelines apply to all web sites not just health-related ones. However, I did find this interesting finding in the Content Organization section:

"When segmenting content for two or more distinct groups of users, allow
users from each audience to easily access information intended for other
audiences. One study showed that users want to see information that is
intended for a health professional audience, as well as for a patient or
consumer audience. Users want access to all versions of the information
without first having to declare themselves as a health professional, a patient,
a caregiver, etc. To accommodate these users, audiences were not
segmented until they reached a page where links to multiple versions of a
document (i.e., technical, non-technical) were provided."

The screenshot example is from the National Institute of Mental Health. While the main navigation segments by audience ("For the Public", "For Practitioners", etc.) in the National Cancer Institute site the information documents index has information links labelled "patients" and "health professionals". If you select one there is a navigation tab to switch to the other type.