Research Guides: HPER 400: Current Issues in Community Health: Online Resources

Online Resources

Public Access Databases

BioMed Central
BioMed Central has a wide range of open access journals.
PubMed Central
A government run database with open access articles.

Websites Worth Exploring

Data - Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration
This link goes to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration's web page for Data. This resource is most likely to come in handy for information about mental health and substance abuse, as you may expect.
Evidence Based Resources - Healthy People 2030
This collection of resources is from Healthy People 2030, a public health initiative by the US Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion. This page has links to resources for almost every topic covered in HPER 400.
Medline Plus
Medline Plus is an online health information resource run by the National Library of Medicine. You should be able to find information on every topic covered in this course by exploring Medline plus.
Network of the National Library of Medicine YouTube Channel
This YouTube channel from the National Library of Medicine has several informative videos about various topics in this course.
North Dakota Health and Human Services
The North Dakota Health and Human Services website is an excellent resource for local information about many course topics.
The World Health Organization
The World Health Organization has so many resources available and can provide a more global perspective on various health topics. While I may link to specific pages in the topic guides, I highly encourage exploring the WHO site for yourself.

Evaluating Sources

When choosing sources to use, it is important to think critically about the information being provided. Don't take the information you read at face value without evaluating it.

There are several popular ways to think about source evaluation, but my favorite is the CCOW method. Created by a librarian at Gonzaga University, CCOW asks you to question your source using a few main concepts..

CCOW stands for Credentials, Claims, Objectives, Worldview.

Credentials: Does the author/creator know what they're talking about? Where is their knowledge/expertise from?

Claims: What are they claiming? How do their claims align with other experts? What are their sources? How old is the information they're working with?

Objectives: What was the creator's goal when the published their information? What's the context?

Worldview: How does the creator's perspective change the way they look at information? How does your perspective change the way you look at the source?

CCOW Research Guide by Gonzaga University