In This Issue:

• Home
  
  
• The Upper Corner
  
  
• Announcements
  
  
• Chic Chat
  
  
• ILLAdvised
  
  
• Public Health Review
  
  
• Tech Time
  
  
• From the NLM Technical Bulletin
  
  
• Links
  
  

Announcements

• New Dietary Supplements Labels Database from the National Library of Medicine
• MedlinePlus Magazine
• NIHNews in Health: November Issue
• NIHSeniorHealth.gov Toolkit for Trainers Released
• Hospital Library Health Literacy Pilot Sites Needed
• AHRQ Releases Toolkits to Help Providers and Patients Implement Safer Health Care Practices

New Dietary Supplements Labels Database from the National Library of Medicine

The National Library of Medicine has released a new resource focused on dietary supplements. The Dietary Supplements Labels Database (http://dietarysupplements.nlm.nih.gov) includes information from the labels of over 2,000 brands of dietary supplements in the marketplace, including vitamins, minerals, herbs or other botanicals, amino acids, and other specialty supplements.

The database is designed to help both the general public and health care providers find information about ingredients in brand-name products, including name, form, active and inactive ingredients, amount of active ingredient/unit, manufacturer/distributor information, suggested dose, label claims, warnings, percentage of daily value, and further label information.

Links to other NLM resources, such as MedlinePlus and PubMed, are provided for additional health information. In addition, links to related Fact Sheets from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration ( FDA), Office of Dietary Supplements (ODS), National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM ), and the National Cancer Institute (NCI) are also available.

MedlinePlus Magazine

Check out the latest issue of the MedlinePlus Magazine! MedlinePlus Magazine is the NLM quarterly guide for patients and families. It brings the latest and most authoritative medical and health care information from the NIH as featured online on the MedlinePlus site. The MedlinePlus magazine is provided to all NN/LM members free of charge. This summer’s issue features articles on stem cell research, beating depression, back pain, sleep deprivation, and obesity and kids. A special section highlights"Understanding Stroke" with an interview with Kirk Douglas.

Sign up for a free subscription to the MedlinePlus Magazine at: http://www.fnlm.org/join.pdf.

NIH News in Health – November issue

The November issue of NIH News in Health is here! NIH News in Health is a consumer health newsletter with practical tips to improve your health. You can find it online at: http://newsinhealth.nih.gov. This month’s issue features “Heft for the Holidays: How to Hold off Those Extra Pounds.” Some quick tips from the NIH for holding off holiday pounds include:

• Be physically active.
• Limit alcohol consumption.
• Limit soda and other sweetened beverages.
• Schedule holiday food celebrations at normal meal times.
• Choose foods with fewer calories.
• Use smaller plates.
• Eat a healthy snack beforehand.
• Weigh yourself daily.

Other articles in this month’s edition address vulvodynia, treatment for depressed teens, and African American’s and kidney disease.

The PDF makes a nice addition your consumer health collection or for hospital waiting rooms.

NIHSeniorHealth.gov Toolkit for Trainers Released

The Toolkit for Trainers, a free, downloadable training curriculum that instructors can use to help older adults find reliable health information online, is now available on the NIHSeniorHealth website. Developed by the National Institute on Aging, the toolkit comes with lesson plans, student handouts, web-searching exercises, and glossaries which instructors can customize to fit students’ skill levels and interests. An introductory video acquaints trainers with the curriculum, and trainer tools help instructors gear their teaching toward the older learner. Designed for beginning and intermediate students of the Web, the curriculum will be a welcome addition to computer classes at libraries, senior centers, community colleges, and lifelong learning centers. Check out the Toolkit for Trainers on the NIHSeniorHealth website at www.nihseniorhealth.gov/toolkit.

Hospital Library Health Literacy Pilot Sites Needed

The Medical Library Association (MLA), under contract and working with the National Institutes of Health/National Library of Medicine (NLM), is looking for eight hospital-based libraries to pilot a new Health Information Literacy (HIL) Curriculum designed to increase health care provider knowledge of health information literacy issues, increase patient and provider use of NLM and other consumer resources, and promote the role of librarians as key providers of health information literacy resources and support.

To become a pilot site, the hospital-based library can be of any size and type, and serve any geographic area. Interested libraries must submit an application form and letter of commitment from their hospital administration documenting organizational commitment to long-term delivery of consumer health information services, via email by January 7, 2008 to Sabrina Kurtz-Rossi. See the Pilot Training Selection Criteria document for a description of the selection criteria, training site expectations, and the support that training sites will receive from the project.

All applicants will be notified of their selection status by January 30, 2008. If you have any questions about this call for pilot training sites, please contact Sabrina Kurtz-Rossi via email.

• Email: sabrina_kurtz-rossi@comcast.net
• Pilot Training Site Application Form
• Pilot Training Site Selection Criteria

For more information about the full project, visit: http://www.mlanet.org/resources/healthlit/hil_project.html

Adapted from the original press release: http://www.mlanet.org/resources/healthlit/hil_pilot.html

AHRQ Releases Toolkits to Help Providers and Patients Implement Safer Health Care Practices

An array of toolkits designed to help doctors, nurses, hospital managers, patients and others reduce medical errors was released today by HHS' Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.

The 17 toolkits, developed by AHRQ-funded experts who specialize in patient safety research, are free, publicly available, and can be adapted to most health care settings. The toolkits range from checklists to help reconcile medications when patients are discharged from the hospital to processes to enhance effective communication among caregivers and with patients to toolkits to help patients taking medications.

"These toolkits build on AHRQ's investment in patient safety research over the past 6 years and support our commitment to research that can be put to use in everyday settings," said AHRQ Director Carolyn M. Clancy, M.D. "These toolkits are a major advance toward putting knowledge into practice and saving lives."

The toolkits were developed through AHRQ's Partnerships in Implementing Patient Safety (PIPS) program. Researchers who developed the toolkits examined best practices in a variety of health care settings, including small rural facilities, large urban hospitals, health clinics, and hospital emergency departments. They also studied patient safety interventions among diverse populations, including children and older patients.

While some of the toolkits focus on identifying high-risk practices, others are designed to help health professionals reduce medication errors or other patient harms. Examples of the kinds of interventions that the toolkits promote include:

• The Re-Engineered Hospital Discharge "Project RED" toolkit standardizes the hospital discharge process through a set of manuals and software designed to improve communication between patients and clinicians.
• The Medications at Transitions and Clinical Handoffs "MATCH" toolkit focuses on identifying patient risk factors frequently responsible for inaccurate medication reconciliation, including limited English proficiency and low health literacy, complex medication histories, or impaired mental status.
• The Preventing Venous Thromboembolisms in the Hospital and the Interactive Venous Thromboembolism Safety Toolkit for Providers and Patients toolkits focus on multidisciplinary approaches to the elimination of preventable hospital-acquired blood clots.
• The ED Pharmacist as a Safety Measure in Emergency Medicine toolkit focuses on improving medication safety and reconciliation through the implementation of a program that places pharmacists in hospital emergency departments.

In addition, the 17 PIPS toolkits correlate with the Joint Commission's National Patient Safety Goals, which promote system wide improvements in patient safety. For more information and a complete listing of the 17 toolkits, visit http://www.ahrq.gov/qual/pips.

For more information, please contact AHRQ Public Affairs: (301) 427-1271 or (301) 427-1865.

AHRQ Releases Toolkits to Help Providers and Patients Implement Safer Health Care Practices. Press Release, December 5, 2007. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, Rockville, MD. http://www.ahrq.gov/news/press/pr2007/pstoolspr.htm