National LGBT Health Awareness Week is a way for health librarians and health care organizations to promote lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) health in their communities.

The theme of the 2008 National LGBT Health Awareness Week is Take Action. This is a call to Take Action in improving the health of the LGBT community. Fuller information, resources, contacts and sponsors can be found at National Coalition for LGBT Health site: http://www.lgbthealth.net/awarenessweek08/. There is also LGBT health and wellness information within MedlinePlus, at: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/gaylesbianandtransgenderhealth.html. Go Local has offerings as well. Note those in North Carolina, at http://www.nchealthinfo.org/resources.cfm?info=0,247,102,0,0.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) have established the NIH Intramural Center for Genomics and Health Disparities (NICGHD), a new venue for research about the way populations are impacted by diseases, including obesity, diabetes and hypertension. NICGHD employs a genomics approach, collecting and analyzing genetic, clinical, lifestyle and socio-economic data to study a range of clinical conditions that have puzzled and troubled public health experts for decades. An additional focus of NICGHD will be to provide training opportunities for students and established scientists from developing countries and from minority groups in the United States. Fuller information about NHGRI can be found at its Web site,  http://www.genome.gov.

The trans-NIH center is directed by internationally renowned genetic epidemiologist Charles N. Rotimi, Ph.D., former director of the National Human Genome Center at Howard University. Read the complete NIH News Release at http://www.nih.gov/news/health/mar2008/nhgri-17.htm

The Medical Library Association is hosting its 2nd institute to teach the skills need to develop web-based instruction. MLA is currently accepting applications to this Institute.  The deadline date for submissions is Friday, March 21st.

The MLA CE Institute 2008: Developing Web-Based InstructionBased on a competitive process, twenty MLA-approved continuing education (CE) instructors and NN/LM coordinators will be selected for this learning opportunity.

Who:

What: At the MLA CE Institute, instructors will participate in intensive training and spend time in course development to transfer their existing face-to-face classes into Web-based mentored courses.

Where: Downtown Chicago

When: May 13-16, 2008

Why: To turn your class into an easily accessible Web-based mentored course and make it available as a learning opportunity to MLA members and other health sciences librarians around the world.

How: Submit your application to be accepted into the Institute using the form at http://www.mlanet.org/education/institute/2008/index.html?home_20080221The Finances:  Costs to attend will be shared between the Scholars and the NN/LM. Costs generously provided with funding from the NN/LM include:

• Hotel
• Per Diem
• Institute Registration Fees

Costs to be the responsibility of the Scholars:

• Local Travel
• Round Trip Travel to and from Chicago

This project has been funded in part with federal funds from the National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health.

For more information see MLANET at http://www.mlanet.org/education/institute/2008/index.html?home_20080221

Or, contact Kathleen Combs, mlapd1@mlahq.org, 312.419.9094 x29.

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

Barb Garner has been the editor of Focus on Basics for its entire 11 years. She has turned out over 30 issues, filled with useful, timely and practical articles that bring adult literacy and learning research into the practical arena. Focus on Basics’ materials are available on the Internet and two more issues of Focus on Basics are in the works. The first is on numeracy, and should be available in May, 2008. The second is on literacy and health, and should be available in October, 2008.

All issues of Focus on Basics are archieved on the National Center for the Study of Adult Learning and Literacy (NCSALL) web site at http://www.ncsall.net/index.php?id=15. Click on Focus on Basics on the right side of the home page and you will be linked to the Focus on Basics page. All the issues are listed to the left, by theme and in the body of the site by volume; or, click on the subject index to the right to bring up a list of topics. Click on the topic that concerns you and you will find links not only to the Focus on Basics articles that address the topic, plus other NCSALL publications on the topic.

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

More than 12,000 drug records are available for searching. The search interface is straightforward, requiring only a drug name as a search term, and successful searching is enhanced by the assistance of a spellchecker. 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.

Did you know that the majority of those who die suddenly of heart disease have no previous symptoms? Heart disease is the #1 killer of Americans, claiming more than half a million lives each year.

Check out the MedlinePlus topic pages on Heart Diseases and Heart Disease Prevention. Also read the latest news on heart disease at http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/alphanews_h.html#heartdiseases. For heart disease prevention, go to http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/heartdiseasesprevention.html.

Know the risk factors of heart disease and the signs and symptoms of a heart attack. The Healthy Heart Guide (PDF) from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services provides an action plan for improving your health and outlines four major habits that help prevent heart disease:

• Eating healthy foods
• Getting regular physical exercise
• Maintaining a healthy weight
• Avoiding smoking

Your Guide to a Healthy Heart can be found at http://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health/public/heart/other/your_guide/healthyheart.pdf

Women and Heart Disease: Quick Facts can be found at http://www.cdc.gov/DHDSP/library/fs_women_heart.htm

By Mandy Meloy, community outreach coordinator

Most of us know that Medlineplus.gov is a reliable, up-to-date health information website for consumers created by the National Library of Medicine (NLM). But, did you know that Medlineplus.gov offers resources for health professionals, too?
These resources include:

• Patient Education Materials such as handouts, pictures, easy-to-read resources, and interactive tutorials in English and Spanish.
• Access to images, diagrams, surgical videos, directories, and the latest health news.
• Searches in Pubmed/MEDLINE
• Links to other NLM and National Institutes of Health (NIH) databases including ClinicalTrials.gov, NIHSeniorHealth.gov, DailyMed, Dietary Supplements Labels Database, and Genetics Home Reference
• Links to additional resources including professional organizations and popular topics such as genetic testing and health literacy.

To further help health professionals keep up-to-date, MedlinePlus offers email lists and RSS feeds on general or specific topics and a subscription to the NIH MedlinePlus Magazine. MedlinePlus can also assist health professionals with free materials to empower patients to look up quality information on their own health at www.informationrx.org.

For a MedlinePlus brochure for Health Professionals, please see http://nnlm.gov/training/resources/mp4hptri.doc. This brochure may be freely reproduced and was developed by the National Network of Libraries of Medicine (NN/LM) staff.

http://www.hrsa.gov/healthliteracy/training.htm/

The Health Resources and Services Administration is offering a new, free, online course, “Unified Health Communication 101: Addressing Health Literacy, Cultural Competency, and Limited English Proficiency”. Those taking the course can receive five credits (CEU/CE, CHES, CME, CNE). The course does not offer MLA CE, but is valuable for librarians as they reach out to provide support and information to the public and health professionals and would provide them another option to obtain continuing education units. To take the course, you will need to register with TRAIN, the distance-learning resource for public health professionals sponsored by the Public Health Foundation with support from HRSA.

In addition, The Unified Health Communication course complements The Medical Library Association and National Institutes of Health/National Library of Medicine (NLM) work in literacy research, curriculum design and hospital outreach. Please, freely share this information with other colleagues.

The National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) will offer their Field Guide to GenBank and NCBI Molecular Biology Resources course at UNC-Chapel Hill on March 12 and 13 (UNC Spring Break week). This lecture and hands-on computer workshop on GenBank and related databases will cover effective use of the Entrez databases and search service, the BLAST similarity search engine, genome data and related resources. Registration opens in early February. For more information and registration, see:
http://www.hsl.unc.edu/Collections/Bioinformatics/BBTForum-NCBIFieldGuide-Mar2008.cfm