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Community Health Education Outreach
The Community Health Education Center is the cornerstone of the Community Health Information Network, 
a comprehensive consumer health outreach effort by VCU’s Tompkins-McCaw Library. CHEC and COIN provide consumer health information to patients and community members that empowers individuals to learn how to manage their health.
COIN is comprised of four partner consumer health information centers: CHEC, operated with the VCU Medical Center; Massey Cancer Center’s Linen-Powell Patient Resource Library; the Charlotte K. Roberts Women’s Health Resource Center at Stony Point; and Massey’s Patient Resource Center at Stony Point. These information centers have been successful in multifaceted outreach to minority communities — particularly the African-American and Hispanic communities of Central Virginia — providing access to health care information otherwise unavailable to them.
COIN was one of 10 finalists for the 2006 National Commission on Library and Information Science’s Health Information Awards for Libraries and received a $1,000 prize in recognition of its efforts. CHEC, a 2,225-square-foot multimedia health information center, opened in February 2002 on the ground floor of the VCU Medical Center’s Gateway Building and is one of the largest and most comprehensive hospital-based health libraries for consumers in the U.S.
Get involved
To support this program or get involved as a volunteer, contact John Ulmschneider at jeulmsch@vcu.edu.