Medical Writing: Best Web sites for your Online Research

Internet is a good research tool even for your writing projects. However, never start with a search engine--you might get a lot of bad information.

Instead , start with a source that you know provides reliable information and which can direct you to other reliable sources of information. For example:

• The National Library of Medicine’s Medline Plus is one of the best places to begin a search about health matters. www.nlm.nih.gov/portals/public.html
• The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is the lead federal agency for protecting the health and safety of people–at home and abroad. Its Web site provides a wealth of information about health, travel, the environment and disease prevention. www.cdc.gov
• The National Institutes of Health is the steward of medical and behavioral research for the US. A great deal of information on health issues can be found at health.nih.gov as well as at the Web sites of the 27 Institutes and Centers, www.nih.gov/icd.
• The World Health Organization (WHO) is the United Nations agency for health. A global perspective on many health issues may be found there. www.who.int
• American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) covers a wide range of information about children’s health. www.aap.org
• Tufts University Child & Family WebGuide was developed by a group of faculty to create an evaluation instrument for information about children. The site is divided into various categories of information: family/parenting, education/learning, typical child development, health/mental health, resources/recreation and medical pages. www.childandfamily.info

Do you have a Web site to recommend? Let me know!