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Community Health: Finding Reliable Information

Before You Google

Before you Google for medical information, consider this:

Not all of the search results found by Google contain correct information.

For example, see the report linked below for the reported findings from a study conducted by a team of medical professionals.

 

Keyword Advice

In some cases, each database may use their own controlled vocabulary, which makes finding the correct search terms challenging.

To help find additional keywords, databases offer help by providing links to browse for subject terms or links to similar subjects and articles within your search results.

Some databases may also provide a link to MeSH (Medical Subject Headings) to browse NLM's subject headings.

 

Evaluating Health Information

There is a lot of health information available on the Web. The following guides and tutorials will help you distinguish between the really good websites with reliable information and those that are "quack" websites containing horribly wrong medical advice.