Women’s Health Resources from the National Library of Medicine

A new Web resource providing scientists and consumers with the latest information on significant topics in women’s health research from scientific journals and other peer-reviewed sources is now available through the National Library of Medicine (NLM). The NLM Division of Specialized Information Services, Office of Outreach and Special Populations has partnered with the NIH Office of Research on Women’s Health (ORWH) to create this one-stop resource.

The 2008 National Institutes of Health (NIH) Research Priorities for Women’s Health were used to identify overarching themes, specific health topics, and research initiatives in women’s health. Within each section of the Web site are topics with links to relevant and authoritative resources and research initiatives for women’s health.

Women’s Health Resources from the NLM Web site can be found at: http://sis.nlm.nih.gov/outreach/womenshealthoverview.html

Women’s Health Resources from the ORWH Web site can be found at: http://orwh.od.nih.gov/nat_lib_med.html

The National Library of Medicine has released the NLM Drug Information Portal http://druginfo.nlm.nih.gov . This resource provides the public, healthcare professionals, and researchers with a gateway to current and accurate drug information from the National Library of Medicine and to other key government agencies.

The Drug Information Portal offers a varied selection of resources and focused topics in medicine and drug-related information, with links to individual resources with drug information and summaries tailored to various audiences. General drug categories from MeSH are also included in the Drug Portal records.

More than 15,000 drugs are available for searching. The search interface requires only a drug name; a spellchecker is provided. Information buttons and balloon pop-ups guide the user by providing helpful hints or a description of the resource and links to the source website.

Search results include links to related drug information in MedlinePlus®, AIDSinfo®, Medline/PubMed®, LactMed, HSDB®, Dietary Supplements Labels Database, TOXLINE®, DailyMed®, ClinicalTrials.gov, PubChem, NIAID Anti-HIV/OI Database, ChemIDplus®, Drugs@FDA, DEA, and USA.gov .

The February issue of NIH News in Health, the monthly newsletter bringing you practical health news and tips based on the latest NIH research, is now online at http://newsinhealth.nih.gov/. In this issue:

Preventing Cancer: Learn How to Lower Your Risk
If you think there’s nothing you can do to prevent cancer, you’d be wrong. Learn about the steps you can take to reduce your cancer risk.
full story

Soothing the Sting of Shingles: When a Childhood Virus Comes Back to Bite You
Even when chickenpox is gone, the virus that causes it stays with you for life, hidden and inactive in your nerve cells. As you get older, the virus may make a second, unwelcome appearance and cause a painful disease called shingles.
full story

Health Capsules:

· Brain Injuries and PTSD Risk

· Sealing Out Tooth Decay

· Featured Web Site: My Family Health Portrait

You can also click here to download a PDF version for printing.

Clinical Trials.gov has a new user interface. Learn more about it in the NLM Technical Bulletin.

This article describes the new features, including highlighted search terms, more display options, and additional capabilities for viewing studies and search results by topic. Improvements were also made to “Advanced Search” and the display by location on the world map.

On Wednesday, October 24th, the Middle Atlantic Region sent over 340 hospital librarians an e-mail message encouraging them to talk with their hospital administrators about MLA’s Health Information Literacy Survey for Hospital Administrators and Health Care.

The Medical Library Association (MLA) in cooperation with the American Hospital Association (AHA) Society for Health Care Advocacy (SHCA) has distributed a Web-based Health Information Literacy Survey to hospital administrators and health care providers throughout the country. The survey will help ascertain administrators’ and health care providers’ awareness and understanding of health information literacy, its value in support of patient care, and the role that librarians and libraries can play in promoting health information literacy. The survey was developed in collaboration with the National Library of Medicine, TAP Consulting, an outside research firm, and MLA’s Health Information Literacy Project Coordinator, Sabrina Kurtz-Rossi.

A non-active copy of the survey is available for review at <http://www.zhost.com/mla/adminLong1.html>

The overall goal of the MLA research project is to increase awareness of health care providers’ knowledge of health information literacy issues as well as the NLM tools and resources for increasing health literacy levels that are available to them and their patients. For an overview of the full project, visit <http://www.mlanet.org/resources/healthlit/hil_project_overview.html>.

If you have questions or need further information, please contact project coordinator Sabrina Kurtz-Rossi, sabrina_kurtz-rossi@comcast.net.

On October 11, 2007, the National Library of Medicine (NLM) released a new search engine for MedlinePlus, MedlinePlus en español and the NLM Web site. NLM selected search engine software from the Pittsburgh-based company Vivisimo®. Vivisimo is also the current search solution for the www.usa.gov site (formerly FirstGov).

The new search results feature enhanced relevance rankings and bold-face search words in context to help you select the best Web document for your query. An integrated spell checker suggests alternative search terms and spelling corrections. The new search engine also expands queries using synonyms specific to the sites and medical synonyms from the NLM Unified Medical Language System®.

MedlinePlus Searches

The default display for MedlinePlus searches is a comprehensive list of “All Results” from all areas of the site. Users can also focus their search on one part of MedlinePlus by navigating to these individual collections of results:

• Health Topics
• External Health Links
• Drugs and Supplements
• Medical Encyclopedia
• News
• Other Resources

For MedlinePlus searches that retrieve one of the 700+ English language health topics, the relevant topic is spotlighted at the top of the screen with an image, an excerpt of the health topic summary and links to the topic.

Read more about the new search engine:

*New Site Search Engine Allows Easier, More Efficient Navigation of MedlinePlus and NLM Web Site

http://www.nlm.nih.gov/news/searchengine_vivisimo.html

*NLM Technical Bulletin, Sep-Oct 2007, NLM Launches New Web Search Engine: NLM Web Site, MedlinePlus, MedlinePlus Español

http://www.nlm.nih.gov/pubs/techbull/so07/so07_nlm_search_engine.html

The October issue of NIH News in Health, the monthly newsletter bringing you practical health news and tips based on the latest NIH research, is now online at http://newsinhealth.nih.gov/. In this issue:

Feature Stories:

• The Perils of Peers — How Social Networks Affect Your Health
• Giving Germs the Slip — Soap and Shots Can Protect Your Health

Health Capsules:

• Early Childhood Program Shows Benefits

• Seeking Health Information

Featured Web Site:

• Household Products Database

If you’re an editor who wishes to use NIH News in Health material in your publication, please see http://newsinhealth.nih.gov/about.htm for information.

Toxie, the ToxMystery guide cat, has gone back to school and can now speak Spanish. ToxMystery gamers can now move between English and Spanish as they explore the ToxMystery “house of hazards.”

The new ToxMystery en español has a “Para los padres” page giving parents more detailed information about potential household hazards. The “Para maestros” page is for teachers and has lesson plans and downloadable classroom activity pages in Spanish. ToxMystery can be used in science, health, and even for teaching in Spanish and English language classes.

ToxMystery (http://toxmystery.nlm.nih.gov) is purrfect for 7-11 year olds (and fun for all ages) to learn about possible chemical hazards around the home. ToxMystery is an e-learning game that uses animation, sound effects and positive reinforcement to teach students about environmental health hazards around the home.

Come play with Toxie and see if you can find the hazards in English and en español!

Today NLM released the “What’s New on MedlinePlus” page, available at http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/whatsnew.html. Visit the page to stay up to date on new MedlinePlus topics, podcasts, featured sites, and new issues of the NIH MedlinePlus Magazine. The “What’s New” items will display for three weeks and are also available through an RSS feed. The “What’s New on MedlinePlus” page and corresponding RSS feed are available in both English and Spanish.

This page and RSS feed compliment the already-available MedlinePlus Health News RSS, which delivers press announcements and HealthDay news stories. The News RSS is available in both English and Spanish. You can access the “What’s New on MedlinePlus” RSS and the MedlinePlus Health News RSS from the E-mail Lists and RSS Feeds page at http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/listserv.html.

The September issue of NIH News in Health, the monthly newsletter bringing you practical health news and tips based on the latest NIH research, is now online at http://newsinhealth.nih.gov/. In this issue:

Feature Stories:

• Is Baby Babbling on Schedule? — Milestones in Speech and Language
• Spotting Autism Spectrum Disorders — Early Detection Important for Outcome

Health Capsules:

• Can You Listen to Two Things at Once?
• Mourning the Death of a Spouse

Featured Web Site:

• Cancer Risk: Understanding the Puzzle