Health Literacy means being able to find, evaluate, and use information to make health-related decisions.
Your degree of health literacy could directly impact the actions you take for your wellbeing, as well as decisions you make for family and friends.
We all search for health information online, so here are some questions you can ask yourself about the credibility of different sites:
Who wrote the information? Are the authors clearly labeled and are they experts in their field? More importantly- can you find this information across many credible sources or is this author the only person making a certain claim?
What is the website offering or promising?
When was the information published or reviewed? Health-related information should be as recent as possible. Even a few years can make a big difference in certain fields.
Where does this information come from? Is it based on scientific research or on feeling/emotion?
Why does this website or app exist? Is it to provide information or to sell you something?
You can read more about evaluating sources at this site:
Finding and Evaluating Online Resources
from the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health
"Domain" refers to the part of a URL that often says ".com", ".gov", or ".edu". The domain tells us who published the website we're looking at. Commercial sites and businensses use .com, government agencies use .gov, and educational institutions use .edu.
When we're looking for credible health information, it's important to look at the URL's domain. Your ECC librarians recommend sticking with .gov and .edu, although you still have to answer the who, what, when, where, why questions listed above.
Sticking with government and educational websites means you're more likely to get information from experts, rather than from businesses, journalists, or bloggers. Of course journalism can be a great source to get health information if you're looking at a credible news source, but ultimately the journalist will be quoting from an expert also.
This library database, called "Gale Health and Wellness" is an excellent place to research health topics. Since this is a library database, chosen by your ECC Librarians and containing scholarly information, you can be sure that the information you're getting has been produced by experts.
Government-supported websites are also a great place to get information. The information published on these sites is not funded by advertisements, so there isn't the temptation to create shocking headlines to get clicks and views. Health.gov is a great portal to lots of different health information, including nutrition, exercise, and recovery.
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