In a new program starting this month, the National Library of Medicine is funding seven projects for partnerships between libraries and organizations that have disaster-related responsibilities. The partnerships will work together to improve use of disaster medicine and public health information by librarians, health professionals, first responders, emergency planners and others responsible for disaster preparedness, response and recovery. Projects will increase the use of high-quality online resources on disaster topics, including those from the National Library of Medicine.

PubMed Health is a service provided by the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) at the U.S. National Library of Medicine (NLM). PubMed Health specializes in reviews of clinical effectiveness research, with easy-to-read summaries for consumers as well as full technical reports. Clinical effectiveness research finds answers to the question “What works?” in medical and health care. With the August and September 2011 releases, the PubMed Health homepage was redesigned and the number of items based on systematic reviews increased significantly.

PubMed Health is based on systematic reviews of clinical trials. These clinical effectiveness reviews can show what treatments and prevention methods have been proven to work, and what remains unknown. PubMed Health provides summaries and full texts of selected systematic reviews in one searchable resource. The reviews are generally published or updated from 2003. There is also information for consumers and clinicians based on those reviews. A search on PubMed Health runs simultaneously in PubMed’s “Clinical Queries” Systematic Reviews, using a filter to identify all the indexed scientific articles at the NLM that might be systematic reviews. This search includes articles prior to 2003.

Information partners selected by PubMed Health to contribute their clinical effectiveness information are:

• Agency for Health Care Research and Quality (US) (AHRQ)
• The Cochrane Collaboration (CC)
• German Institute for Quality and Efficiency in Health Care (IQWiG)
• National Health Service (NHS) National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Health Technology Assessment Programme (NIHR HTA)
• National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence guidelines program (NICE)
• Oregon Health and Science University’s Drug Effectiveness Review Project (DERP)
• Department of Veterans Affairs’ Evidence-based Synthesis Program from the Veterans Health Administration R&D (VA ESP)

Other key sections of PubMed Health include England’s Behind the Headlines service from the National Health Service (NHS Choices), medical encyclopedia from A.D.A.M. Education, and medication information from the American Society of Health-Systems Pharmacists.

To learn more about PubMed Health, including details about content and organization of the web site, please read the NLM Technical Bulletin or visit PubMed Health at http://www.pubmed.gov/health/.

Upcoming Webcast

The next UMLS Webcast will be on September 28, 2011 at 2:00 pm ET. The topic is “An Update of RxNorm” presented by Dr. Stuart Nelson, Head of the Medical Subject Headings (MeSH®) Section. The Webcast will cover:

• Inclusion of National Drug Codes from RxNorm content providers First DataBank (National Drug Data File Plus) and Micromedex (RED BOOK®)
• New term types for RxTerms functionality
• Current Prescribable Content Subset

For information on RxNorm, see the RxNorm homepage. For information on the subset, see the Current Prescribable Content Subset homepage.

The Webcast link is https://webmeeting.nih.gov/rxnorm_update. It will be archived and linked from the UMLS Webcasts Web page.

From MEDLARS Management Section

The National Library of Medicine enhanced access to herb and supplement information on MedlinePlus.  On the English and Spanish supplements index pages, links to external sources of herb and supplement information now appear along with the information that we license from National Medicines Comprehensive Database.  These links also appear on MedlinePlus search results pages in the Drugs & Supplements collection.

The screen capture below shows the top of the index page.  The producing organization (Natural Medicines Comprehensive Database, National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, National Toxicology Program, etc.) appears next to each link to distinguish different pages on the same herb.  For example, MedlinePlus provides links to Acai information from both the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine and Natural Medicines Comprehensive Database.

If you have any ques tions, contact the MedlinePlus team by clicking the Contact Us link that appears at the top of every MedlinePlus page.

September 15th through October 15th is National Hispanic Heritage Month. Last year in Latitudes, we featured several health resources aimed towards the Hispanic population. This year, we are providing eBoard slides featuring physiological/medical Nobel Prize winners of Hispanic heritage. Additional Hispanic Heritage Month slides will be available in early October.

eBoard slides are designed to be used as part of a looping slideshow presentation on computer monitors at your institution. (Previous slides are available on NewsBits: eBoard Slides.) Click on the images below to see a preview and download the PowerPoint files by clicking on the name of each file.

Baruj Benacerraf (PPT)	Bernardo Alberto Houssay (PPT)	César Milstein (PPT)

Baruj Benacerraf (1920-2011) was a Venezuelan-American immunologist and joint winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1980 for their discoveries concerning genetically determined structures on the cell surface that regulate immunological reactions.

Bernardo Alberto Houssay (1887-1971) was an Argentine physiologist and winner of half of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1947 for his discovery of the part played by the hormone of the anterior pituitary lobe in the metabolism of sugar.

César Milstein (1927–2002) was an Argentine biochemist and joint winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1984 for theories concerning the specificity in development and control of the immune system and the discovery of the principle for production of monoclonal antibodies.

In March, PubMed Mobile Beta was released. PubMed Mobile provides a simplified mobile friendly web interface to access PubMed. PubMed Mobile includes the same basic search functionality and content as Standard PubMed; that is, all search terms and fields work similarly.

As of last week, any reference to “Beta” is gone, and users visiting PubMed.gov on a handheld device will be redirected to the PubMed Mobile website.

In addition, the PubMed Mobile eBoard slide has been updated to reflect this change and is available for re-download.

NINDS has stopped the combination antiplatelet intervention in the Secondary Prevention of Small Subcortical Strokes (SPS3) trial. This was a randomized, multicenter clinical trial conducted throughout North America, Latin America and Spain, to learn about preventing a second stroke in patients who had a subcortical stroke and to learn how to prevent cognitive problems after a stroke. Visit the NLM website for further information about the trial.

The Introduction to MeSH 2012 is now available, including information on its use and structure, as well as recent updates and availability of data.

The default year in the MeSH Browser remains 2011 MeSH for now, but the alternate link provides access to 2012 MeSH. The MeSH Section will continue to provide access via the MeSH Browser for two years of the vocabulary: the current year and an alternate year. Sometime in November or December, the default year will change to 2012 MeSH and the alternate link will provide access to the 2011 MeSH.

Download 2012 MeSH in XML and ASCII formats. Also available for 2012 from the same MeSH download page are:

• Pharmacologic Actions (Forthcoming)
• New Headings with Scope Notes
• MeSH Replaced Headings
• MeSH MN (tree number) changes
• 2012 MeSH in MARC format

Citing Medicine: The NLM Style Guide for Authors, Editors, and Publishers [Internet], 2nd edition, has been updated! The update includes a number of minor corrections, mostly for consistently, and many new examples. To see a complete inventory of details on what has changed and the locations of the content updates, refer to the Appendix: Content Updates. Citing Medicine is a resource that provides assistance to authors in compiling lists of references for their publications, to editors in revising such lists, to publishers in setting reference standards for their authors and editors, and to librarians and others in formatting bibliographic citations.

On Tuesday, September 13, 2011 HHS Secretary Sebelius, CDC Director Thomas Frieden, CMS Administrator Donald Berwick, and key business, nonprofit and government officials, announced a new effort to fight heart disease, the leading cause of death in the U.S., costing $444 billion annually in lost productivity and medical spending. Million Hearts is a national initiative to prevent 1 million heart attacks and strokes over the next five years. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services are the co-leaders of Million Hearts within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, working alongside other federal agencies including the National Institutes of Health, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, and the Food and Drug Administration. Key private-sector partners include the American Heart Association, and YMCA, among others.

Heart disease and stroke are two of the leading causes of death in the United States. Million Hearts aims to improve heart disease and stroke prevention by:

• Improving access to effective care.
• Improving the quality of care.
• Focusing more clinical attention on heart attack and stroke prevention.
• Increasing public awareness of how to lead a heart-healthy lifestyle.
• Increasing the consistent use of high blood pressure and cholesterol medications.

Million Hearts brings together existing efforts and new programs to improve health across communities and help Americans live longer, healthier, more productive lives. For more information visit the Million Hearts website at http://millionhearts.hhs.gov/.