Popular Hispanic doctor launches website

Posted by Elena del Valle on June 15, 2009

VidaySalud.com homepage

Photos: VidaySalud.com

In early June, Aliza Lifshitz, M.D., known to some Spanish speakers in the United States as la Doctora Aliza, launched VidaySalud.com, a Spanish-language health oriented website. About 20 percent of the content of the website, the Salud de A a Z section, is Spanish language translations from Harvard Health Publications. The remaining 80 percent is original content.

Editor Ana María Hanssen is responsible, with the help of five contributors, Carolina Dueñas, Natalia Jaramillo, Vanina Lombardi, Adriana Lozada and Francisco Stohr, for the editorial content of the portal. The publisher, Carl J. Kravetz, expects that over time the percent of original content will increase as daily articles are added to the website.

Kravetz, Lifshitz’ husband, also serves as the new website’s executive director. The two of them own the portal and portal copyrights are reserved to Cultural Asset Management Inc. The target audience is Latino mothers who are commonly considered the keepers of the health in Hispanic families. So far 60 percent of the registrations on the new website are from women. Sign ups have arrived from the United States as well as every country in Latin America and Spain.

“VidaySalud.com(TM) is the largest source of health information and wellness tools in Spanish on the web. It includes Health A to Z, the Harvard Medical School’s searchable database of symptoms, diseases and treatments, as well as original content, updated daily and created especially with the U.S. Hispanic community in mind,” said Lifshitz. “Our goal is to enhance the relationships between Latino patients and their physicians by giving Hispanics the information, tools and skills they need to better communicate with their doctors, to ensure better compliance with physician instructions and to deliver better health outcomes.”

VidaySalud.com includes channels on kids’, teens’, men’s and women’s health, diet and nutrition, exercise, pregnancy, diabetes, heart health, cancer, stress and mental health, sexual health, health insurance, health and beauty and healthy living. There is also a section on Quackery to inform users about how to protect themselves from unscrupulous promoters of unproven cures, remedies, diets and nutritional supplements. Eleven biweekly email newsletters on a variety of health topics are available through free registration.

“No one is more trusted on health by the Latino community than la Doctora Aliza,” said Kravetz. “With her as editor in chief and with science-based content delivered in the warm, caring style she is known for, VidaySalud.com will be an invaluable resource for Latino families.”

Promotion of the portal, including an active public relations program, will be focused on the site’s main target audience, Spanish speakers living in the United States. The company plans to announce joint initiatives with Ser Padres, People en Español, impreMedia and Univision. Doctora Aliza blogs’ on AOL Latino and Univision Radio link to the new website. The portal has co-branded its Niños (children) and Embarazo (pregnancy) pages with Ser Padres and the two publications will promote them together.

There are also plans for periodic health campaigns in partnership with the traditional media that Dra. Aliza works with. Her articles in impreMedia, People en Español and Ser Padres refer readers to the site. In addition, a partnership for the portal to become a resource for doctors and their Latino patients is in the works.

Aliza Lifshitz, M.D.

Lifshitz, a physician, author and health reporter, is involved with the Univision television network’s Peabody Award-winning health initiative Enterate: Salud es Vida. She also appears on the network’s Primer Impacto program. Her live call-in program, El Consultorio de la Dra. Aliza, airs weekly on the Univision Radio network.

She writes regular monthly columns for People en Espanol and for Ser Padres, and her weekly column is syndicated in Spanish-language newspapers nationwide. Her monthly column in the Vista bilingual supplement runs in 29 newspapers nationwide. In addition to her activities in the media, Dr. Lifshitz maintains a full-time private practice in internal medicine at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles.