Providing Health Information/Evaluating Health News
Resources for this Podcast:
The mission of HealthNewsReview.org is to improve the public dialogue about health care by helping consumers critically analyze claims about health care interventions and by promoting the principles of shared decision-making reinforced by accurate, balanced and complete information about the tradeoffs involved in health care decisions. HealthNewsReview.org evaluates health care journalism, advertising, marketing, public relations and other messages that may influence consumers and provides criteria that consumers can use to evaluate these messages themselves. Improving the quality and flow of health care news and information to consumers can be a significant step towards meaningful health care reform.
- https://medlineplus.gov/
- Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
- National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH)
- NCCIH – Know the Science
- Is Gwyneth Paltrow Wrong About Everything?: When Celebrity Culture and Science Clash
Produced by the National Library of Medicine. Public librarians can use this resource to locate information to provide to patrons as well as to recommend as a resources for patrons to use themselves. It is an authoritative, current, and freely available resource for all kinds of information including drug information, health conditions, and learning about how to evaluate websites. Strict guidelines for inclusion of resources must be met including no advertisements.
Online health evaluation tools (for websites, print material, and health news) as well as understanding medical research:
- PubMed Health is a National Library of Medicine resource for both professionals and consumers. Under the heading “Understanding Clinical Effectiveness” library staff and patrons can use the resources in the drop down menu to learn about health statistics, why randomization is important, and how to read health news.
- MedlinePlus includes tutorials on Evaluating Internet Health Information and Understand Medical Words as well as health topic pages on Evaluating Health Information and Health Fraud
- NIH National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health as interactive modules called Know the Science to learn about health research and health news and more.
- Though this is titled Evaluating Health Websites, these tips could also apply to health news. These tips are often called The ABCs of Website Evaluation and are available on the National Network of Libraries of Medicine main website.
- This infographic from the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) is used to spot fake news but could easily apply to health news.
And here are links to an informative video about celebrities involvement in health news and the article it is associated with:
- Celebrities https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SkXqXjwwNo and this is the article Steven Hoffman wrote and who is featured in the video http://www.bmj.com/content/347/bmj.f7151
