General Health Sites

Last update: 28 August 2011,
by Maureen Bell

This is a collection of links which don't seem to fit easily into the more specific subject categories, but which may be of general interest. I've included on this page a section on grey literature

Australian Sources

ACT Government Health Information

An extensive range of online documents is available at the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare site.

Australian Health Trends 2001
Michael de Looper and Kuldeep Bhatia. Canberra : Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, 2001.

Australia's Health
A biennial report produced by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, Australia's Health is a compendium of information on health status, service provision and expenditure. The report and its companion volume, Australia's Welfare, are produced on alternate years.

Australia's Welfare
This biennial report can be used as a specialist reference in a particular field, as a general reference on welfare services in Australia, or as a description of the state of Australian social policy. Companion volume to Australia's Health.

International Health - How Australia Compares (Australian Institute of Health and Welfare 1998)
International Health - How Australia Compares, by Michael de Loop, and Kuldeep Bhatia. Canberra, Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, 1998.

National Delphi Study on Public Health Functions in Australia - Report on the findings - January 2000
The National Delphi Study, involving respondents from a spectrum of public health areas builds on work by the World Health Organisation (WHO), and in the United States, where definitions of core or essential public health functions have been developed and applied in various ways. There is also a separate volume of appendices.

National Health Priority Areas
From the National Health Priorities and Quality Branch.

Public Health Information Development Unit (University of Adelaide) - Publications

Public health publications index - Department of Health - Government of South Australia

Social Capital
A collection of resources from Paul Bullen, Management Alternatives for Human Services.

Overseas Sources

Canadian Institute for Health Information - Publications and Products

Crossing the Quality Chasm: A New Health System for the 21st Century
Committee on Quality of Health Care in America, Institute of Medicine. Washington : National Academy Press, 2001.

Glossary of Health Care and Health Care Management Terms
Definitions have come from a variety of sources including MeSH (National Library of Medicine - Medical Subject Headings); the sources are given in parentheses after the definition. Full references are given at the end of the glossary. Recent additions, as of July 1997, include Evaluation terms.

Health and Behavior: The Interplay of Biological, Behavioral and Societal Influences
Committee on Health and Behavior: Research, Practice and Policy, Board on Neuroscience and Behavioral Health, Institute of Medicine. Washington D.C., National Academy Press 2001. (Advance copy, uncorrected proofs)

Health On the Net Foundation
The Health On the Net Foundation (HON), created in 1995, is a not-for-profit International Swiss Organization. HON's mission is to guide lay persons or non-medical users and medical practitioners to useful and reliable online medical and health information. It has sophisticated search interfaces to allow access to a wide range of quality health material.

Health Topics A to Z
From the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), this site contains a wealth of information about various common, and exotic diseases.

History in Focus: Medical History
History in Focus provides original articles, book reviews, and links to historical sources. This issue (No. 3, Spring 2002) addresses a number of health topics including epidemic disease in London.

International Classification of Diseases (ICD)
ICD-10 is available at this WHO site.

Milbank Memorial Fund Reports
Reports on a variety of health topics many with full text. Hard copies are available free of charge, and can be ordered online.

Mill Hill Essays
The Mill Hill Essays are published annually to promote the public understanding of Science. They were inspired by a series of BBC Radio lectures given by eminent scientists in the 1950s, and subsequently published as a book. They are written by members of staff of the National Institute for Medical Research and guest authors, and are designed to be accessible to anyone with an interest in science and the natural world.

The National Academies Press: Topic Health and Medicine : Public Health and Prevention
The ful text of books and reports from the National Academies Press.

NHS Evidence - National Library for Public Health
Resources from the National Library for Public Health in the U.K.

Public Health Guidance
From the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence in the U.K.

Public Health Image Library
Much of the information critical to the communication of public health messages is pictorial rather than text-based. Created by a Working Group at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the PHIL offers an organized, universal electronic gateway to CDC's pictures.

Reports of the Surgeon General
From the National Library of Medicine, the full text of the reports of the US Surgeon General.

Science.gov Health & Medicine
Science.gov is an interagency intiative of a number of U.S. government science organizations. It allows in depth searching of government scientific and technical information.

UC Berkeley. Public Health Library. Public Health Resources on the Internet
An extensive list of resources, subdivided by topics.

"Virtual" Public Health Center - Martindale's Health Science Guide
A well maintained site with annotated links to a wide range of material. Individual topic sections allow easy browsing.

Grey Literature

The term grey literature refers to research that is either unpublished or has been published in non-commercial form. Examples of grey literature include:

• government reports
• policy statements and issues papers
• conference papers
• pre-prints and post-prints of articles
• theses and dissertations
• research reports
• market reports
• working papers
• geological and geophysical surveys
• maps
• newsletters and bulletins
• fact sheets.

As the growth of the Web has increased opportunities, grey literature is now freely available on many sites. However it is only selectively indexed by database vendors. Many organizations and individuals also provide access to their works online, and most of this material remains unindexed.

What is Grey Literature?
From the New York Academy of Medicine. At The New York Academy of Medicine, there has been a push by public health and health policy researchers for the Academy Library to obtain this type of material and to add it to the catalog (Gray, 1998). As a result, the Library acquires materials from various organizations publishing in these areas and gives them special cataloging treatment.

New York Academy of Medicine - Library - Grey Literature Report
The Grey Literature Report is a bimonthly publication of The New York Academy of Medicine Library alerting readers to new grey literature publications in health services research and selected public health topics.

Grey Matters: a practical search tool for evidence-based medicine.
Produced by CADTH (Canadian Agency for Drugs and Technologies in Health).

GreySource, A Selection of Web-based Resources in Grey Literature
GreySource provides examples of grey literature to the average net-user and in so doing profiles organizations responsible for its production and/or processing. Only web-based resources that explicitly refer to the term grey literature (or its equivalent in any language) are listed. GreySource identifies the hyperlink directly embedded in a resource, thus allowing immediate and virtual exposure to grey literature.

Grey literature in meta-analyses of randomized trials of health care interventions
By S Hopewell, S McDonald, M Clarke, and M Egger. This review shows that published trials tend to be larger and show an overall greater treatment effect than grey trials. This has important implications for reviewers who need to ensure they identify grey trials, in order to minimise the risk of introducing bias into their review.
Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews. 2007, April 18: (2)

MedNar : Deep Web Medical Search
A useful database for searching grey literature - the Advanced Search allows you to target specific organisations and government departments.

OpenSIGLE
Provides open access to SIGLE(System for Information on Grey Literature in Europe) bibliographical references of reports and other grey literature (GL) produced in Europe until 2005. OpenSIGLE covers pure and applied science and technology, economics, other sciences and humanities.