{
  "id": "1996-december-handout-of-the-month",
  "slug": "1996-december-handout-of-the-month",
  "url": "https://dwillis.github.io/uplink/article/1996-december-handout-of-the-month.html",
  "year": 1996,
  "month": "December",
  "monthNum": 12,
  "headline": "Handout of the month",
  "kicker": "Medicine and health resources",
  "author_name": "Barbara Gastel",
  "author_title": "",
  "affiliation": "IRE National Conference",
  "summary": "This article provides journalists with comprehensive resources for researching health and medical topics, including reference books, internet directories, medical databases, and contact information for government health agencies.",
  "keywords": [
    "medicine",
    "resources",
    "journalists"
  ],
  "topics": [
    "Health & Environment",
    "Journalism & Newsroom",
    "Technology"
  ],
  "technologies": [
    "World Wide Web",
    "Internet",
    "gopher"
  ],
  "full_text": "Medicine and health resources\n\nGood reference books:\n\nDorland's Illustrated Medical Dictionary (Philadelphia: W.B. Saunders, 1994 [28th ed.])\nStedman's Medical Dictionary (Baltimore: Williams & Wilkins, 1995 [26th ed.])\nThe American Medical Association Family Medical Guide (New York: Random House, 1994)\nThe Merck Manual of Diagnosis and Therapy (Rahway, N.J.: Merck & Co., 1992 [16th ed.])\nThe Physicians' Desk Reference (Montvale, N.J.: Medical Economics, 1996 [50th ed.])\nThe Control of Communicable Diseases Manual (Washington, D.C.: American Public Health Association, 1995 [16th ed.])\n\nInternet directories\n\nMedical \"nodes\" or \"hubs\" on the World Wide Web can be good starting points for gathering background information. Such sites include MedWeb (http://www.emory.edu/WHSCL/medweb.html), Medical Matrix (http://www.kumc.edu:80/mmatrix/), and Yahoo-Health (http://www.yahoo.com/Health). Of course, medical information on the Web varies greatly in quality; thus, let the browser beware. Among books that may aid in finding Internet resources are Dr. Tom Linden's Guide to Online Medicine (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1995) and The Internet Health, Fitness, and Medicine Yellow Pages (Berkeley, Calif.: Osborne McGraw-Hill, 1995). Given the rapid growth of the Internet, such books cannot be fully up-to-date. However, they may provide at least initial direction.\n\nJournal articles\n\nArticles in medical journals also can serve as useful background. Such articles can most readily be identified through the National Library of Medicine (NLM) database MEDLINE. Sources of access to MEDLINE include medical (and some other) libraries, some commercial online services, and NLM (see http://igm.nlm.nih.gov). To identify articles providing overviews of given areas, you can search MEDLINE specifically for review articles.\n\nAgencies\n\nAmong government agencies, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) is particularly geared to providing health information to reporters. The NIH homepage, through which the homepages of various NIH institutes can be reached, may be accessed at http://www.nih.gov/home.html\n\nPhone numbers of media contacts at selected NIH components are:\n\nNational Cancer Institute, (301) 496-6641\nNational Eye Institute, (301) 496-5248\nNational Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, (301) 496-4236\nNational Institute on Aging, (301) 496-1752\nNational Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, (301) 443-3860\nNational Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, (301) 402-1663\nNational Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases, (301) 496-8188\nNational Institute of Child Health and Human Development, (301) 496-5133\nNational Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, (301) 496-7243\nNational Institute of Dental Research, (301) 496-4261\nNational Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, (301) 496-3583\nNational Institute on Drug Abuse, (301) 443-1124\nNational Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, (919) 541-3345\nNational Institute of Mental Health, (301) 443-4536\nNational Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, (301) 496-5924\nNational Institute of Nursing Research, (301) 496-0207\nOffice of Alternative Medicine, (301) 496-1712\n\nIf unsure which NIH component(s) to consult about a topic, you can search the NIH information index at gopher://gopher.nih.gov:70/11/clin/nih-infobook or call the main NIH telephone number, (301) 496-4000.\n\nOther government information sources include the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (http://www.cdc.gov/cdc.html, media phone number (404) 639-3286) and the Food and Drug Administration (http://fdahomepage.htm media phone number (301) 443-3285). CDC has an automated fax information service providing fact sheets and other documents on diseases and other health topics; for information, call (404) 332-4565.\n\nMedical Librarians\n\nMedical librarians can aid greatly in finding written and electronic sources of information. Such individuals are readily contacted at the libraries of medical schools.\n\nThe National Library of Medicine online database DIRLINE can help identify volunteer and medical associations and government agencies. On the Internet, DIRLINE may be accessed by typing \"telnet locator.nlm.nih.gov\" and then selecting \"Directory of Information Resources\" from the menu; it also may be reached from the NLM Locator page at (http://www.nlm.nih.gov/databases/locator.html). Institutional sources may be identified through the American Association for the Advancement of Science directory \"Science Sources\" (http://sci.aaas.org/sources/). And the standard reference work the Encyclopedia of Associations has a section listing more than 2,000 health and medical organizations.",
  "provenance": {
    "extracted_by": "anthropic/claude-sonnet-4-6",
    "extracted_at": "2026-07-05",
    "verified": true
  },
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