¡Bienvenido a MEDLINEplus en español!
By April Cunningham
Graduate Student, UCLA Department of Information Studies
[Editor's Note: April Cunningham was the PSRML Intern during Summer Quarter 2002; she is currently in her second year at UCLA's Department of Information Studies. For her internship project, April prepared several publicity items about MEDLINEplus en español; this article was designed for a newsletter. These will be available from the PSRML web site in the future. Network members may use or adapt the text of this article for their own institutional newsletters and other media.]
The authority and reliability of the MEDLINEplus web site is now available in Spanish. The launch of MEDLINEplus en español at http://medlineplus.gov/spanish/ offers the wealth of the National Library of Medicine's (NLM) excellent consumer health information to the growing number of bilingual and monolingual Spanish-speaking Internet users. MEDLINEplus en español—along with allowing a broader segment of the population to access timely and critical health information—will be a new tool for health care providers to communicate with Spanish speakers about prognoses, treatments, and medications.
In the relatively short time since its launch in 1998, the original MEDLINEplus has been widely praised as one of the most comprehensive consumer health information sites on the Internet. The Health Information Resource Center, Consumer Reports, and the Wall Street Journal have each recognized MEDLINEplus as an outstanding example of health information delivered on the Internet. MEDLINEplus is offered free of charge and without advertisements by the world's largest medical library, the US National Library of Medicine.
Users can search in Spanish and find more than 400 health topics, over 40 interactive health tutorials, and a Spanish language health encyclopedia. This site fills the growing demand for health information on the Internet for a population that is going online more and more rapidly. A Pew Internet Project report, "Hispanics and the Internet" available at http://www.pewinternet.org/reports/toc.asp?Report=38, found a 25% increase, from March 2000 through February 2001, in the number of Hispanics adults who have used the Internet. According to the report, 50% of Hispanics age 18 and over have been online.
The number of health topics covered by MEDLINEplus en español will continue to rise as the site develops. At the same time, the original MEDLINEplus remains an important resource for locating English language materials about issues in Hispanic health.
The report for Healthy People 2010, an initiative to improve the nation's health, identifies health communication as an important element for a healthier community. According to the report, improved health communication boosts health promotion and disease prevention. Access to health information means that consumers who do not have access to health professionals can still educate themselves about their own health and the health of their families. Disparities in the availability of health insurance plague U.S. communities, but access to quality health information can be made more equitable by taking advantage of the reach of the Internet.
Quality health information on the Internet empowers users. Patients can prepare themselves with information prior to visiting healthcare professionals, can verify or validate information after it has been dispensed, and can get up-to-date information that is not as easily available elsewhere. MEDLINEplus en español is designed to maximize the strengths of the Internet by providing materials that are accurate, current, valid, appropriate, intelligible, and free of bias-the elements of a good health information site as defined by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. In addition, MEDLINEplus en español is free to users and completely confidential.
For more information and assistance in using these resources contact PSRML at 1-800-338-7657 or on the web at http://nnlm.gov/psr/.