We are excited to announce that our online community for health professionals, SurroundHealth, has reached a milestone– the 1,000th member mark!

Ever since our launch in April 2011, we have gotten positive feedback from our members — the heart and soul of our community, and are thrilled to be fulfilling many of their professional needs that we first heard about during our initial needs assessment, and then again from our July 2011 member survey.

SurroundHealth is a new kind of healthcare social network where health professionals from different backgrounds come together to learn from one another’s expertise, share resources, and stay current on best practices. It is a one-stop destination for information, and a springboard to get you started on your research.

The most popular topics on our site are health communication, behavior change strategies, health literacy, educational technology, medication adherence, health literacy, and healthcare reform.

One of the fastest growing categories of our membership is healthcare extenders. They include patient-focused professionals as well as public health folks, including certified diabetes educators, nurse practitioners, registered dietitians, certified health education specialists, and social workers, who are all very important to the delivery of positive health outcomes.

To learn more about our site, check out the infographic below.

Adding to the excitement, early this year we were named the best online community of 2011 by Kentico CMS, a Web content management system which powers SurroundHealth.

This year, we are looking forward to seeing how the community will evolve as we continue to get feedback from our members, and enhance the site to best meet members’ professional needs. Some of our plans include providing opportunities for our members to earn honoraria through content contributions for writing blogs and articles and becoming a SurroundHealth Ambassador. Some other features we are hard at work on include the ability for members to set up private communities, enhanced search and organize functionality, and many others.

What an exciting journey it has been, and we are looking forward to seeing where 2012 will take us!

If you’re not a member yet, join us at www.surroundhealth.net. Membership for health professionals is completely free. With your feedback we can create an even better community to meet your needs.