Evaluating Online Health Information

There is so much false information about health online!

As librarians, our role is help you find reliable health information. We can also help you decide whether the information that you find online is true and useful to you.

We follow the  HON code principles by asking certain questions when we look over a website, before we put it on our webpage:

Source: HON Code website (2022)

Your privacy is very important. Some free health websites can collect and use information about you, without your permission. They may sell the personal information about you that they learn from your searches to other companies. These companies will then target you with advertising.

To learn more, you can look at the following websites:

 Online Health Information Aid - Québec/McGill

 Trust it or Trash it

 Evaluating Health Information - MedlinePlus (US)

 Find Good Health Information - For Consumers and Patients - Medical Library Association (US)

 How to Find Cancer Resources You Can Trust - US National Cancer Institute 

 Evaluating Cancer Information on the Internet - Cancer.net (American Society of Clinical Oncology) 

In addition, we also created a training presentation for the nurses at the JGH:

 Finding information to share with patients (2019 presentation)

The JGH librarians have found many reliable health websites for patients. Please click here to view them.

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