Guides and Web Portals:

Searching the Web for Health Related Information (guide to portals and directories). This site is a tutorial/guide for how to find health information on the internet.

1. Public Health Information & Data Tutorial provides instruction for members of the public health workforce on issues related to information access and management. This tutorial is based on Public Health Information and Data: A Training Manual. There are no copyright restrictions on the contents of this tutorial or the training manual, and users are free to adapt or duplicate any portion. The contributors and authors of this tutorial's content represent city, county, state and federal agencies. They establish clear connections to recognized competencies in public health and provide examples representing much of the diversity inherent in the practice of public health."

2. Canadian Health Network (CHN) - "CHN is a national, non-profit, bilingual web-based health information service. CHN's goal is to help Canadians find the information they're looking for on how to stay healthy and prevent disease. CHN does this through a unique collaboration - one of the most dynamic and comprehensive networks anywhere in the world. This network of health information providers includes the Public Health Agency of Canada, Health Canada and national and provincial/territorial non-profit organizations, as well as universities, hospitals, libraries and community organizations." From the main webpage, choose English, Men (sidebar), Guided search(center of page), Sexuality/Reproductive Health (right sidebar)-This site provides information for consumers and for health professionals specific to male sexual and reproductive health issues.

3. Health on the Net (includes media browse) "HON has become one of most respected not-for-profit portals to medical information on the Internet. We are a Swiss foundation, operating out of Geneva with the generous support of local Geneva authorities. Embedded in one of the liveliest, most innovative international centres for R&D in medical informatics and life sciences, HON co-operates closely with the University Hospitals of Geneva and the Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics. Our distinguished Council members and Webteam hail from several European countries and the U.S.A. Among HON's distinguishing features are two widely-used medical search tools, MedHunt© and HONselect©, and the HON Code of Conduct (HONcode©) for the provision of authoritative, trustworthy Web-based medical information."

4. Healthfinder.gov - "healthfinder® is an award-winning Federal Web site for consumers, developed by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services together with other Federal agencies. Since 1997, healthfinder® has been recognized as a key resource for finding the best government and nonprofit health and human services information on the Internet. healthfinder® links to carefully selected information and Web sites from over 1,500 health-related organizations."

5. HealthFinder list of Federal Clearinghouses - this is a list of health information resource links including NIH, CDC, National Cancer Institute, among others.

6. HealthWeb - "HealthWeb is a collaborative project of the health sciences libraries of the Greater Midwest Region (GMR) of the National Network of Libraries of Medicine (NN/LM) and those of the Committee for Institutional Cooperation. Currently there are over twenty actively participating member libraries. This project is supported by the National Library of Medicine (NLM) under contract #N01-LM-6-3523 with the University of Illinois at Chicago." From the main webpage, choose Public Health and then you perform keyword searches or link to other public health resource links for information.

7. Health.gov - "www.health.gov is a portal to the Web sites of a number of multi-agency health initiatives and activities of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and other Federal departments and agencies."

8. Greylit - "[Gray literature] is commonly defined as any documentary material that is not commercially published and is typically composed of technical reports, working papers, and conference proceedings. The greatest challenges . . . are the process of identification, . . . . Added to this is the absence of editorial control, raising questions about authenticity and reliability. Yet despite these considerations, gray literature is continually referenced in scholarly articles and dissertations and therefore remains an issue [in scholarly communication]. Included in this [page] are Web sites that aid in understanding the nature of gray literature as well as various search tools. The focus is upon freely available resources that offer some full-text coverage."