Find Websites - Biology 440/442 - Microbiology (Abraham) - Research Guides at Folsom Lake College

Health Science and Medical Websites

The Internet can be a valuable source for supplementing information gathered from books and periodicals.

While the links below are provided by the U.S. National Libraries of Medicine and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, you should still use good evaluation practices to determine if the information is reliable and useful to your research.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
CDC is the nation's health protection agency, working 24/7 to protect America from health and safety threats, both foreign and domestic.
National Notifiable Diseases Surveillance System Data Tables
Up to date statistics on reportable infectious diseases.
Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR)
Often called “the voice of CDC,” the MMWR series is the agency’s primary vehicle for scientific publication of timely, reliable, authoritative, accurate, objective, and useful public health information and recommendations.
World Health Organization (WHO)
WHO is the directing and coordinating authority for health within the United Nations system.
WHO Health Statistics
Health statistics and information systems reporting epidemiological data.
NCBI Bookshelf
Bookshelf provides free online access to books and documents in life science and healthcare. (National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) is part of the United States National Library of Medicine (NLM), a branch of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
MedlinePlus
MedlinePlus is the National Institutes of Health's Web site for patients and their families and friends. Produced by the National Library of Medicine, it brings you information about diseases, conditions, and wellness issues in language you can understand. MedlinePlus offers reliable, up-to-date health information, anytime, anywhere, for free.

Consider the following:

Anyone can build a website, experts and non-experts alike.
Some information may be outdated or even hazardous to the reader.
Web searches often retrieve more than 1,000,000 results, many of which are irrelevant to your research.
Website publishers may be biased and have an agenda, or may be trying to sell you something.
Since no one supervises the Internet, there's a lack of basic quality and usability standards.
Website information is not reviewed the same way as published works (books, scholarly articles, encyclopedias).
The Internet often functions as a place for people to share their unfiltered opinions.
Scholarly sources are rarely available for free. The library subscribes to research databases that provide access to high-quality research at no cost to you.