LibGuides: SDV 101: Orientation to Healthcare: Websites

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For individual research help, schedule an appointment to meet with a librarian.

Medline Plus MedlinePlus is the National Institutes of Health's Web site for patients and their families and friends. Produced by the National Library of Medicine, it brings you information about diseases, conditions, and wellness issues in language you can understand.
CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention)
Healthy People 2030 Healthy People provides science-based, 10-year national objectives for improving the health of all Americans.
Mayo Clinic Authoritative information from a non-profit medical practice dedicated to the diagnosis and treatment of virtually every type of complex illness.
World Health Organization (WHO) WHO is the directing and coordinating authority for health within the United Nations system. It is responsible for providing leadership on global health matters, shaping the health research agenda, setting norms and standards, articulating evidence-based policy options, providing technical support to countries and monitoring and assessing health trends.
Medscape from WebMD Timely, integrated, and credible health information, educational tools for managing health, and support for specialists, primary care physicians, and other health professionals.

Evaluate websites that have information you would like to use in your assignments.

Look on each website for an "About Us" page to answer some of the following questions:

	("affordable care act" OR obamacare) AND seniors site:.gov
	174,000 results

	How does the affordable care act effect seniors?
	3,150,000 results

Here's how to craft a better search to get fewer and more relevant results:

Identify the main ideas in your research question.
How does the affordable care act effect seniors?
Connect the main ideas with AND.
affordable care act AND seniors
Use quotation marks around 2 or more words that need to be together.
"affordable care act" AND seniors
Use OR between synonyms/related terms.
("affordable care act" OR obamacare) AND seniors
Limit your search to a specific domain, such as .edu, .gov, or .org.
("affordable care act" OR obamacare) AND seniors site:.gov

How Wikipedia CAN be useful in the beginning stages of research:

	A basic overview of your topic.
	Important names, vocabulary and keywords related to your topic.
	Table of contents for some entries, helping you to understand how your topic can be organized.
	References and other websites that may be helpful (though you will need to evaluate them to be sure).

Why NOT to use Wikipedia for academic research:

X The accuracy and authority of a Wikipedia article cannot be verified.