UA News

Librarians from The University of Arizona and Arizona State University make recommendations of the top consumer health Web sites.

So you have a seemingly random set of symptoms and are ready to call the doctor ... but you reach for the mouse first, right? Access to health information through the Internet has expanded exponentially, allowing all of us to "play doctor" from the comfort – or discomfort as the case may be – of  our desk.

But how do you navigate the myriad sites that can describe the differences between everyday aches and pains and serious conditions? Well, don't just punch up WebMD or Google "arthritis," say two experts on the subject.

Librarians from The University of Arizona and Arizona State University refer to an acknowledged list of the top 10 consumer health Web sites, according to criteria set by the Medical Library Association.

Among the best are MedlinePlus and healthfinder, two federally run sites, and FamilyDoctor.org, run by the American Academy of Family Physicians, according to Jacqueline Donaldson Doyle, head of the Health Sciences Library at the UA College of Medicine-Phoenix in partnership with ASU, and Kathleen Carlson, health sciences librarian at ASU's Downtown Phoenix campus.

"We strongly believe that patients need to be activists," said Doyle. "They need to be involved in their health care, and the more informed they are, the better patients they can be."

The criteria, according to the Medical Library Association, for selecting top sites for consumers includes being authoritative, having attribution, being current and disclosing financial backing. The association also checks the sites' advertising policies. The HON, or Health on the Net, Web site helps you find the most reliable information and uses that checklist in giving its stamp of approval.

When looking at a Web site, Carlson suggests asking yourself: "Do they meet these criteria? Do they have a financial disclosure? What is the advertising policy? Not just for health, it should be for anything you look at, even when you buy something from an online vendor."

Carlson has gone so far as to create a Web site to help consumers evaluate health sites.

Doyle and Carlson also noted two of the best places to start for information in Arizona: AZ Health Info and Arizona Go Local.

The two librarians took part in the most recent edition of "Get Smart," a monthly breakfast series held by the two universities at the historic Tom's Tavern in downtown Phoenix on the third Wednesday of each month.

Doyle, who has a master's degree in library science from California State University, Fullerton, has worked in a variety of libraries, including public, academic, public health and hospital libraries, and is past president of the Medical Library Association.

Carlson is a veteran of the news media, having earned her degree in mass communication from the University of Minnesota. She has worked for ABC, NBC and CNN, as well as Asia TV in New York before embarking on her second career, spending 11 years as a hospital librarian. She has earned two Emmy awards for her work.