What Is Good Health Information on the Internet

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What Is Good Health Information on the Internet

Using a Search Engine To Find Good Health Information

Good Places To Start

Healthy Sexuality: Taking Care

PMS: Premenstrual Syndrome

Sthings That You Need To Think About Just For Health

Preparing for a Doctor's Appointment

Your Rights and Responsibilities as a Patient

Ways To Find Good Health Information on the Internet

What Is Good Health Information on the Internet


Before you start looking for information you need to know how to decide what information is reliable, and what information is not. This is even more important when you will be using the information to make health decisions.

See the handout “Is this what I want?” for help evaluating information, or try the following resources online:

A User’s Guide to Finding and Evaluating Health Info on the Web Medical Library Associationhttp://www.mlanet.org/resources/userguide.html
Information about finding, evaluating, and understanding health information on the internet. Includes MLA “top ten recommended sites” lists, and links to “real language” definitions of medical terminology.

How to find the most trustworthy health information web sites Canadian Health Network http://www.canadian-health-network.ca/
Choose English or French, then go to Help (just above the search box), then click on “How to find the most trustworthy health information web sites.” It is a “checklist for a great health promotion web site” – a list of questions to help you decide if a site makes a good source for health information or not.

Just the facts ma’am…; A Women’s Guide to Understanding Evidence about Health and Health Carehttp://www.cewh-cesf.ca/PDF/health_reform/evidenceEN.pdf
A booklet covering some questions women should ask about health care evidence: Who carries out, funds and benefits from the research? How is the research problem defined? Who and what is counted? What is missing? Who are the “experts”? How does evidence inform health care decisions and health policy? What other factors are at work?

NOAH (New York Online Access to Health) – Understanding and Evaluating Medical Informationhttp://www.noah-health.org/en/ebm/
Information about what Evidence Based Medicine is, evaluating health information, evidence for consumers, patient safety, evaluating medical news, etc.

Tips for Healthy Searching Online http://www.ihealthcoalition.org/content/tips.html
Good advice for anyone looking at health information on the internet, and elsewhere. Created by the Internet Healthcare Coalition, whose mission is “quality healthcare resources on the internet.” Also see their eHealth Code of Ethics.

How to Evaluate Health Information on the Internet: Questions and Answershttp://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/factsheet/Information/internet
The title says it all. From the National Cancer Institute.

Web Sites You Can Trust: The CAPHIS Top 100 Listhttp://caphis.mlanet.org/consumer/index.html
100 health information sites recommended by the Consumer and Patient Health Information Section of the Medical Library Association.

Evaluating Health Information on the Internethttp://www.bchealthguide.org/healthfiles/hfile84.stm
Criteria for evaluating information plus links to other sources, and to the BC HealthGuide Online.

Health on the Net Code of Conducthttp://www.hon.ch/HONcode/Conduct.html
The criteria by which the Health on the Net Foundation evaluates health information web sites.

The Quality Information Checklisthttp://www.quick.org.uk/menu.htm
Intended for kids looking at information on the internet. Easy to understand, with examples, nice “click-through” format.

Medterms.com http://www.medterms.com/script/main/hp.asp
Real language dictionary of medical terms from medicine.net.