A few years ago, I was co-teaching a consumer health class to library school students. In addition to the traditional health websites, my colleague presented a few examples of user-generated content—sites where ordinary people were posting stories about their own health conditions on discussion lists or on their personal blogs for anyone to see. One particular example involved a young woman who had a suspicious mole that turned out to be a type of skin cancer. She posted her story and pictures on her blog, which elicited a flood of responses from people with their own stories. Another example was Ronda’s Migraine page, a support community that offers a journal area where people can post their own stories, a live chat area and discussion forums. This site was started in 1996 and is still going strong! (more…)

MedlinePlus continues to improve! (more…)

Older Adults and Health Information

Do you provide consumer health services and resources in your library? Specifically, are you providing health information to seniors? Many older adults are interested in finding health information on their own, but they may lack the necessary computer or Internet searching skills. If you have ever wanted to provide training to this user group, read on for some exciting news! (more…)

On May 7, 2008, a new feature became available on MedlinePlus, which provides access to high quality health information in languages other than English and Spanish. The new service benefits people who prefer to read health information in their native language. It also helps the information professionals and health care providers who serve them. The collection contains over 2,500 links to information in more than 40 languages and covers nearly 250 Health Topics. (more…)

This fall is a busy time for consumer health activities, especially state library association conferences! (more…)

We are pleased to announce “Health e-Shows”, a new webcast series developed by Kelli Ham, NN/LM PSR Consumer Health Coordinator, in collaboration with Infopeople. Kelli will be presenting consumer health topics every other month that will be timely and relevant for anyone who provides health information to patients or the public. October 22nd marks the launch of the series with the webcast “A Younger Generation of Older Adults: Health Information for Boomers”. Please join us if you can! (more…)

Editor’s Note: We have extracted and reprinted the following article about health literacy from SEA Currents, the newsletter of the NN/LM Southeastern/Atlantic Region. We acknowledge the author of this article, Beth Wescott, and recognize her for receiving the MLA President’s Award at the 2007 MLA meeting for her exceptional work in health information literacy. (more…)

In June 2007, Kay Deeney and Kelli Ham went off to the wilds of Tucson, Arizona, to teach a course in the School of Information Resources & Library Science (SIRLS) at the University of Arizona called, Consumer Health in Diverse Cultures & Communities. (more…)

Usability studies identified several areas for improvement in the old design of Health Topic pages. Recommendations included adding a summary of the topic, better navigation, making the page visually appealing, and creating subcategories to aid in finding specific information. The team at MedlinePlus recently unveiled the new design for individual Health Topic pages. If you haven’t had a chance to see the new features, here is a quick guide. (more…)

NIH MedlinePlus Magazine is a new quarterly publication which brings the latest and most authoritative information from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to patients and their families and to other health care consumers. Free PDF copies of each issue may be directly downloaded to a desktop computer from the web site or free mail subscriptions are available. Issues typically run about 30 pages, and many articles feature prominent links to the MedlinePlus web site for additional information. (more…)