The Oviatt Library has partnered with the National Library of Medicine and National Institutes of Health for this special session of Research Therapy. For more information see ‘Cited at the Oviatt’ blog post 3/6/2013.
Surely you’ve been faced with a women’s health question that needs answering—either in your own life or for a project. Of course, you should ask your doctor if you have a particular ailment that needs attention, but sometimes you want to get some preliminary information online that is free of ads and written by trustworthy health care experts. Or maybe you want to write your final paper on the emotional impact of high school bullying on lesbians, but you know Googling “lesbian teenagers” is probably not going to get you the results you need for a school paper.
So where to start? Take a look at Women’s Health Resources—an online portal to women’s health and wellness information and research funded by the National Institutes of Health. This video will give you a tour:
The information and research found on Women’s Health Resources comes from a number of valuable NIH and NLM collections. Learn more below about three in particular: ClinicalTrials.gov, MedlinePlus, and PubMed.
At ClinicalTrials.gov, you can see the status of clinical trials as well as data from finished studies.
What is a clinical study? A clinical study involves research using human volunteers (also called participants) that is intended to add to medical knowledge. There are two main types of clinical studies: clinical trials and observational studies. ClinicalTrials.gov includes both interventional and observational studies
http://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/about-studies/learn#WhatIs
Image courtesy CDC Public Health Image Library / Amanda Mills
MedlinePlus offers objective up-to-date health information in easy-to-understand language. Get background information on diseases, conditions, wellness, drugs, treatments, and more.
Image courtesy CDC Public Health Image Library / Amanda Mills
Pubmed is a collection of citations from biomedical research in journals, books and more. Connect to CSUN resources (so you can read the full articles) by accessing Pubmed from the Oviatt Library website.
Image courtesy CDC Public Health Image Library / Dr. Libero Ajello
The Oviatt Library also has plenty of women’s health material for your research needs. We offer subject databases and resource guides in Health Sciences, Nursing and Gender and Women’s Studies.
If you are using Google or another search engine to find online resources on women’s health, make sure you check out our session of Research Therapy all about website evaluation. You wouldn’t ask just anyone on the street for health information, so don’t accept it from just anywhere on the internet!
Whether it’s for yourself, a research project, or “a friend”, if you need help finding health information or Women’s Health Resources, contact the following librarians:
Lynn Lampert: lynn.lampert@csun.edu
Marcia Henry: marcia.henry@csun.edu
Anna Fidgeon: annaliese.fidgeon@csun.edu
– Anna Fidgeon
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