Aiding Those Facing Health Crises: The Experience of the CHESS Project Robert P. Hawkins, Suzanne Pingree, David H. Gustafson, Eric W. Boberg, Earl Bricker, Fiona McTavish, Meg Wise, and Betta Owens

We describe an interactive computer-based system that provides information, help, and support in a variety of packages to individuals facing a health-care crisis. But before discussing the Comprehensive Health Enhancement Support System (CHESS) project, it may be useful to raise some issues and caveats that apply to all of us. In the book and movie, Field of Dreams, an Iowa farmer plows under a field of corn and builds a complete baseball field because voices whisper to him, "If you build it, they will come." In the story, a dream team of baseball legends does come and play, justifying the farmer's seemingly senseless actions.