In Honor of Veteran’s Day . . .

In honor of Veteran’s Day, the Lee Graff Medical and Scientific Library staff draw your attention to some materials in our collection, as well as an online resource, that support and highlight the history, experiences, and medical treatment of United States military personnel.

Why Health Literacy is Important to Me

by Laura Brown, MLS, Clinical Librarian

Many years ago, my interest and involvement in patient education activities evolved into a deep seeded concern for health literacy issues.  I was horrified by the statistics. According to The National Assessment of Adult Literacy, only 12% of Americans are fully health literate (defined as having the necessary tools to manage their health care effectively). We, as health care workers, have no way to significantly increase the tool set that our patients bring to this equation.  The only way we can realistically combat this problem is by making the health care system easier to navigate with the tools our patients already have.  There are a lot of creative ideas on how to simplify the equation and last May I was exposed to some of them.

The Institute for Healthcare Advancement’s (IHA) 13th Annual Health Literacy Conference was held May 7-9 in Irvine, CA. I was able to attend thanks to an educational stipend from the National Network of Libraries of Medicine Pacific Southwest Region.  A newsletter article written for their publication tells about what their Consumer Health and Technology Coordinator Kelli Ham and I brought away from that experience (click on the title below to read the article).

Improving Health Literacy: Applying Knowledge Gained from the IHA Health Literacy Conference

News from around the Web

A few interesting tidbits from around the web:

Development of Quality Criteria To Evaluate Nontherapeutic Studies of Incidence, Prevalence, or Risk Factors of Chronic Diseases: Pilot Study of New Checklists
This research report from AHRQ reports the results of a project to develop two checklists to assess the quality of observational studies of incidence or risk factors of disease.

The All Results Journals: Biology
According to an email from editor David Alcantara, The All Results Journals: Biology is a peer-reviewed journal that:

“focuses on publishing the grey literature that has never been published. It is our goal to compile and publish those experiments that led to negative results or to outcomes that were not expected and were not before considered for publication. We of The All Results Journals feel that it is equally important to publish these results together with interpretations of the scientists involved and in this way offer a solution to the problem that publication bias is causing, because of a strong emphasis on positive results.”

It will be fully open access, with no fees to publish or read articles, and will be indexed by PubMed and Web of Knowledge.

Cancer Statistics 2011: The impact of eliminating socioeconomic and racial disparities on premature cancer deaths
According to the abstract,

“Each year, the American Cancer Society estimates the numbers of new cancer cases and deaths expected in the United States in the current year and compiles the most recent data on cancer incidence, mortality, and survival based on incidence data from the National Cancer Institute, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the North American Association of Central Cancer Registries and mortality data from the National Center for Health Statistics.”

Robinson, Karen A. and Steven N. Goodman (2011). A Systematic Examination of the Citation of Prior Research in Reports of Randomized, Controlled Trials. Annals of Internal Medicine 155(4): 50-55.
The authors evaluated 227 meta-analyses published in 2004, which comprised 1523 trials published from 1963-2004. They found that the published reports cited fewer than 25% of preceding trials with potential implications including “ethically unjustifiable trials, wasted resources, incorrect conclusions, and unnecessary risks for trial participants.”

Free 9/11 e-book collection

To mark the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, e-book vend0r Ebrary will provide free access to a small collection of electronic books on the attacks.  Access will be free throughout the month of September.

There’s still time to enter the world’s first cell race!

The first-ever World Cell Race begins at the end of this month, according to a recent article in The Economist.  A different kind of race for the cure, the World Cell Race is intended to further understanding of cell movement and thereby help researchers better understand how cancers spread.