Consumer Health Web Resources

Good Questions for Your Health -- Every time you talk with a doctor, nurse, or pharmacist, use the Ask Me 3 questions to better understand your health. The site gives tips to help people who are preparing for a visit to a health professional or clinic. There are printable brochures
A User's Guide to Finding and Evaluating Health Information on the Web -- This guide (from the Medical Library Assn) outlines the collective wisdom of medical librarians who surf the Web every day to discover quality information in support of clinical and scientific decision making by doctors, scientists, and other health practitioners responsible for the nation's health.
National Library of Medicine Guide to Finding Health Information -- The National Library of Medicines is the World's largest medical library and part of the National Institutes of Health.
See also the Pathfinder Index for HealthInfoQuest, which uses selected topic questions to demonstrate a guided search for online information.
And, check out MedlinePlus Evaluating Health Information and
10 Things to Know About Evaluating Medical Resources on the Web.
For information in languages other than English, see Special Groups.

Medspeak -- An online brochure from the Medical Libraries Association that puts in plain language some of the terms often used in the healthcare field.
MedicalGlossary.org -- a free online medical dictionary with 26,000 medical terms
Glossary of Health Care and Health Care Management Terms -- from the University of Washington School of Public Health and Community Medicine
Medical Glossaries -- The Adam Health Illustrated Encyclopedia contains over 4000 articles, photographs, and illustrations.

National Library of Medicine's MEDLINEplus -- An excellent one-stop site for health topics from the country's leading institution for health information. Links are provided to health libraries, periodical databases, publications, organizations, dictionaries and many other useful tools. Much of the information is also in Spanish MedlinePlus Espanol Información de Salud
Healthfinder™ -- Healthfinder™ is a consumer gateway to health information from the U.S. government. It can be searched by category or specific words for information from online publications, other web sites, non-profit agencies and support groups. This site is a good place to search for basic consumer health information. Take special note of just for you sections on men's, women's, and minority health.
National Guideline Clearinghouse™ -- Created for healthcare practictioners to provide guidelines for treatment of disease, this database can be useful to healthcare consumers as well. Guidelines are arranged by disease or treatment, and guidlines can be compared electronically. Also, many of the guidelines are available in full-text versions.