Finding Reliable Health Information Online

Overwhelmed by the amount of health information on the Internet? Not sure if certain sites are trustworthy? We recommend you begin your search for reliable health information with the National Library of Medicine's comprehensive consumer health site, MedlinePlus.gov.

Follow these quick tips for "healthy" Internet searching:

• don't search the entire Internet - start with MedlinePlus.gov
• evaluate commercial ("dot com") sites carefully for bias and conflict of interest
• check to see if the information is current (less than 3 years old)
• look for the credentials of the author (i.e. doctor, nurse, psychologist) to make sure the information is written by a health professional

Want to learn more?

• The Community Health Library has a series of presentations on how to evaluate health websites and suggested sources of quality health information
  • Evaluating a health website
  • MedlinePlus.gov overview
  • Medication information
  • Other useful web resources
• Use this tutorial about evaluating online health information from  the National Library of Medicine

Additional sources for high-quality health websites:

• Reliable Health Information on the Internet (pdf)*
• Reliable Health Information on the Internet: Cancer Supplement (pdf)*

Contact the Community Health Library staff with questions about finding the best health information for you or request a search by a librarian.

*For best results when printing these brochures, make use of the “booklet” setting under “duplex” if that is available to you on your printer. If you use the duplex option, we also recommend that, for “Page Scaling,” you select “ Fit to Printable Area.”