Using HealthLinks, Public Health Resources and PubMed or "Google can't be used for everything" HealthLinks

healthlinks.washington.edu Links to: PubMed eJournals Reference: includes Databases, Books, Dictionaries, Statistics, UW Libraries Catalog

Public Health Toolkit

Public Health Toolkit Access to: CDC resources FastStats & other data resources PublicHealthPartners NWCPHP Directories

Healthlinks, Public Health Resources & PubMed

Public Health Web Resources Know Your Public Health Databases!!

BRFSS Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System CHID Combined Health Information Database CCRIS Chemical Carcinogenesis Research Information System DART Developmental & Reproductive Toxicology Data2010 GENE-TOX HSDB Hazardous Substances Data Bank IRIS Integrated Risk Information System ITER International Toxicity Estimates for Risk KaiserEDU LexisNexis Native Health Research Database US health risks data Health and patient information resources Carcinogenicity and mutagenicity data

Literature on developmental and reproductive toxicology Healthy People 2010 objectives Mutagenicity test data / genetic toxicology Toxicity of over 4500 chemicals Human health risk assessment Chemical risk information Data, research, analysis & developments in health policy Federal, state, international & organizational statistics Information services & resources focused on historical & contemporary American Indian & Alaska Native (AI/AN) health/medical issues Metropolitan & micropolitan statistical areas compiled from CDC's BRFSS surveys Toxicology bibliographic information GIS maps of EPA's Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) Toxicology and environmental health databases National Center for Health Statistics http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/ State Health Facts Online http://www.statehealthfacts.kff.org/ Fedstats http://www.fedstats.gov/

SMART Selected Metropolitan/Micropolitan Area Risk Trends TOXLINE Toxicology Literature OnLINE TOXMAP TOXNET

Useful Data Sets & Health Statistics Resources

American FactFinder http://factfinder.census.gov/home/saff/main.h tml?_lang=en Statistical Abstract of the United States http://www.census.gov/statab/www/ FastStats A to Z http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/

Healthlinks, Public Health Resources & PubMed

Other Useful Resources

http://www.biomedcentral.com/ Independent publishing house providing immediate free access to peer-reviewed biomedical research. Includes BMC Public Health. http://pubmedcentral.gov/ NLM's free digital archive of biomedical and life sciences journal literature. http://www.nlm.nih.gov/hsrph.html NLM's Health Services Research & Public Health Information Program Includes databases, outreach, training, projects information

Healthlinks, Public Health Resources & PubMed

Using PubMed Effectively (or More than you ever Thought was Possible to Know about PubMed)
Why Use PubMed? PubMed is your gateway to MEDLINE, the National Library of Medicine's bibliographic database covering the fields of medicine, nursing, dentistry, veterinary medicine, the health care system, and the pre-clinical sciences. MEDLINE contains over 14 million records dating back to the mid-50's, with bibliographic citations and author abstracts from over 4,600 current biomedical journals. PubMed contains citations from peer-reviewed literature. What is MeSH? "Medical Subject Headings" MESH is the controlled vocabulary used by NLM to index journal articles. MeSH imposes uniformity and consistency to the indexing of biomedical literature. Terms are arranged in a hierarchical categorized manner called MeSH Tree Structures and are updated annually. SEARCHERS BEWARE: If you are looking for the most recently published articles, they may not have been indexedsearching with MeSH terms will eliminate any In Process or Publisher Supplied records from your retrieval set! Basic PubMed Searching using Boolean Operators Topic: Are flu shots beneficial to the elderly? 1. Divide the topic into concepts (ex: flu; influenza; vaccinations; elderly; etc) 2. Combine concepts using AND, OR, or NOT and track how many records you retrieve 3. Use the MeSH Database to identify subject headings used to identify these concepts 4. Combine concepts using AND, OR, or NOT and track how many records you retrieve 5. How do the results differ? MeSH vs concepts Searching for records containing either term (OR) retrieves more records Searching for records containing both terms (AND) retrieves fewer records Eliminating terms in one set from a previous set (NOT) retrieves fewer records Remember: PubMed operates left to right so influenza AND vaccine OR vaccination would retrieve articles that had both influenza and vaccine and it would also retrieve all articles on vaccination (pneumonia, measles, tetanus, etc.) experiment with parentheses: influenza AND (vaccine OR vaccination)how do the results differ with and without parentheses? For more on Boolean searching see: Introduction to Boolean Logic. Advanced Searching You will want to use the more advanced searching methods when: you need to combine terms/searches you want to search in a specific field you want to set limits for your search (such as language or publication type)

Healthlinks, Public Health Resources & PubMed

Using the "Limits" feature allows you to preset your search to only look in certain selected areas limit your search by: search field gender publication type human or animal language entrez date subset publication date age Using the "Preview/Index" feature a method of browsing the index presents a list of where a particular term appears alphabetically in the database index and the number of records in which that term appears (eg. Author, MeSH, publication type) Using the "History" feature automatically holds all your search strategies and search results (up to 8 hours following inactivity) search statement numbers can be combined or used with new search queries Topic: Use the MeSH Database to build a strategy to find citations to articles about schizophrenia resulting from prenatal exposure to influenza. (Hint: Schizophrenia and influenza should be the major topics). Step 1: Click on MeSH Database on the PubMed sidebar beneath PubMed Services. Step 2: Enter first term (schizophrenia) in the query box. Click Go. Step 3: Click the Schizophrenia term link to see the Full display for this term. Step 4: Click on the check box next to "Restrict Search to Major Topic

headings only" to restrict the search to only those articles in which schizophrenia is a major topic.
Select Search Box with AND and click the Send to. Step 5: Enter next term (prenatal exposure) in the query box. Click Go. Step 6: Prenatal exposure is not a MeSH term. Note that the MeSH database

retrieves the term, Prenatal Exposure Delayed Effects. Read the definition for the term Prenatal Exposure Delayed Effects to make sure this term correctly represents your concept.
Click the check box next to the term. Next, select Search Box with AND and click the Send to button. Step 7: Enter last term (influenza) in the query box. Click Go. Step 8: Click the influenza term link to see the Full display. Click on the check box next to "Restrict Search to Major Topic headings only" to restrict the search to only those articles in which influenza is a major topic. Select Search Box with AND and click the Send to button. Step 9: Click the PubMed Search button to run the search in PubMed. Other Features (left nav bar) Journals Database: find information about a PubMed journal MeSH Database: use to locate MeSH headings, subheadings and publication types; display MeSH terms in the hierarchy; definitions of terms Single Citation Matcher: find a single citation with an easy, fill-in-the-blank format; also useful to locate a list of items from a particular volume or issue of a journal
Healthlinks, Public Health Resources & PubMed