New Feature: e-HealthBeat

This is the first in a series of articles about web sites that provide reliable, up-to-date information on health-related topics. If you use the Internet to find health information, you have access to literally millions of web pages. These pages include scientific reports about biomedical research, advertisements for drugs, doctors, hospitals and advocacy organizations, as well as personal accounts of illness and treatment.

The challenge is to find web sites that provide accurate, objective information. e-HealthBeat will feature sites that consistently provide reliable information, based on criteria described in the article in the center column of this page, "Evaluating Health Information on the Web."

Some featured sites will provide general medical references, while other sites focus on specific illnesses or conditions, such as diabetes or mental illness. Another category of web sites targets certain populations, e.g., women's health. All featured sites will be added to the Helpful Links pages in PEF Health Benefits.

The fact that a site is featured here is not an endorsement. All information should be evaluated and corroborated by comparing it with advice from other sources, including your own provider. 

Featured Web Site: HealthWeb (www.healthweb.org)

 HealthWeb is a collaborative project of over twenty health sciences libraries in the United States. It is designed to provide organized access to evaluated, non-commercial, health resources on the Internet. While it lacks the electronic glamour of many commercial sites, HealthWeb contains solid information that is easy to navigate. 

HealthWeb features a comprehensive list of topics including some not found on commercial sites: Alternative Medicine, Evidence Based Health Care, Genetics, Minority Health, Nutrition, Preventive Medicine, Speech-Language Pathology, Transplantation and Urban Health, to name a few. Each topic has a page of reference links to facilitate searches. The site also contains User Guides which can help consumers use online resources more effectively, and practical information about evaluating web resources.