Beyond Google: Finding Global Health Information Online

(photo credit: library_mistress)

When researching a global health topic, most people start with a web search. That's a decent place to start, but it's easy to get bogged down in the sheer volume of information available. The good sources can be easily drowned out by all the fundraising appeals and PR pieces. Here's what to look for.

First of all, you need to choose reliable sources. Your best options are peer-reviewed journals and UN sources. Government and NGO sources are also reliable, although you need to be aware of biases. Developing country governments may over or underestimate the extent of health problems in their nations for their own political purposes. (see Robert Mugabe re cholera) NGOs have a vested interested in making the severity of problems very clear, to encourage funding to solve those problems.  The WHO and the Centers for Disease Control and protection both have websites with a lot of useful data.

The Lancet and the British Medical Journal are both highly respected journals with a lot of international health content and they both offer free access to content. The demographic and health surveys are a good source for detailed epidemiological information on developing countries.

Once you've chosen your source, you need to choose the right kind of information. You don't want success stories, anecdotes, or funding appeals. They're not generalizable, and they are written for purposes other than advancing knowledge. The most useful documents are peer-reviewed articles. Evidence reviews, like the ones from the Cochrane collaboration, are also extremely reliable. Other good sources are clinical practice guidelines, which go into detail on specific health conditions and how to treat them, organizational guidance on health topics, and survey data.