Health Literacy: More Important Than Ever

Health Literacy: More Important Than Ever

August 10, 2020

Online Resources from the Library

All the attention is on COVID-19, but that is not our only health issue. Sheltering at home may have led us to ignore ailments like headaches, indigestion, seasonal allergies, arthritis, and other complaints. One of the best things we can do right now is focus on our own wellness and Lackawanna County libraries can help.

On our website, health information is vetted by professional librarians so that you can be assured that what you will find will be good for you.

Here are some of the online health resources at www.lclshome.org, the virtual library of the Lackawanna County Library System.

Gale Health & Wellness Resource Center: Access to full text medical journals, magazines and reference works.  It provides information on diseases, conditions, drugs, medical testing, therapies, treatments, surgeries and more. (LIBRARY CARD REQUIRED.)

HealthFinder.gov: A collection of tools and articles to help you stay healthy with information about nutrition, diseases, health conditions, parenting and more.

Mayo Clinic: A website produced by one of the nation’s leading health care facilities with articles about health conditions, diseases, medical procedures, treatment and research.

Medline Plus: the National Institutes of Health’s Web site produced by the National Library of Medicine, the world’s largest medical library. It provides information about diseases, conditions, and wellness in language you can understand.

Merck Manual: Long considered the bible of health care, the Merck Manual has been an important resource for both health professionals and lay people since 1899. Topics range from symptoms to drug information, news, resources and general medical topics.

National Institute of Health: An essential website if you want to learn about the latest in nationally funded health research and news on health conditions, diseases, wellness and more.

Physicians’ Desk Reference: Yes, you can use the same resource that doctors have long relied on to find up-to-date information on drugs, treatments, dosage and side effects.