Live Well and be healthy in Clark County

Today The Columbian launches Live Well, a new portal for health news and information in Clark County and Southwest Washington! Here you’ll find articles, blog posts and social media updates from our health and fitness reporter Marissa Harshman. You’ll also find a host of other resources including a local health and fitness events calendar, guest articles by our Live Well partners and other community contributors, a database of local health-related businesses, and much more.

We decided to build Live Well after a study we conducted a few years ago on the needs and interests of Clark County residents that found several areas where the interest in information was high but the amount of available information and satisfaction with existing resources was low. Health care was high on that list. This community is hungry for health news and information.

The Columbian is well positioned to meet that need with 2.7 million pageviews per month on our website. We’re the largest source of news for the county. Now that the paper is through its financial difficulties and looking to grow again, we want to fill that need. We started in March by hiring Marissa. She’s establishing connections in the community and starting to dig into important issues. (See her most recent work.)

But we’re approaching the reporting in a little different way than we have in the past. We’re putting more emphasis on interaction and feedback with the community online and offline. That means having much more content online than in the paper, publishing things quickly to the web first, being active in responding to comments and moderating them and staying open and engaged in social media.

It also means being more involved in the community and responsive to its health and fitness goals. We want to help create a supportive community of knowledgeable, passionate, local people who want to be part of the solution.

That’s why we’ve also formed a community advisory board to inform our health coverage and help develop the Live Well site. And we’re actively recruiting community contributors who would like to share their expertise or enthusiasm for health and fitness topics. If you’re interested in getting involved, we’d love to have you. Send me an email: libby.tucker@columbian.com or fill out this online form.

Health begins here!

~Libby Tucker
Web Editor, Live Well content manager