The Medical School and Simon & Schuster announced plans yesterday to co-produce a series of health information publications, which will be aimed at a broad audience and circulated in a variety of media.

"This is an historic opportunity for two highly diverse and successful institutions to come together to provide quality health-care information to the lay public," Harvard Medical School Dean Daniel C. Tosteson '44 said in a statement.

In their effort to reach as broad an audience as possible, the new partners will publish consumer health materials in the form of books, newsletters, products on the World Wide Web, audiobooks, video products, on-line products and CD-ROMs.

The first major product to be created by the partnership is the Harvard Medical School Family Health Guide, a family health-care manual that will be published in 1998 as both a book and a CD-ROM.

Future ventures are less clear, but could include health guides aimed at senior citizens and parents, as well as guide books to nutrition and medication. Simon & Schuster Audio will at the same time publish audiobooks designed to promote general health and to reduce stress.

Another function of the partnership will be to increase readership of the Medical School's research newsletters, including "The Harvard Health Letter," by translating them and distributing them to foreign markets.

Jossey-Bass, a subsidiary of Simon & Schuster that publishes books for professionals, will work with Harvard to produce books in the business of health care and medical computing.

Leading the Harvard side of the partnership is Professor of Medicine Anthony L. Komaroff, a specialist in the use of computers to present medical information. Komaroff said in a statement that the alliance is "a truly powerful combination for bringing important and reliable medical information to a wide audience."

He could not be reached for comment yesterday.

The Medical School will be responsible for the content of the jointly marketed products, which will be sold under the school's imprimatur