Looking for indigenous health information? Indigenous health information: databases, hedges, & international options. Kathy Murray, BA, MLS. Univ. of Alaska Anchorage.
Purpose: This paper will describe strategies for finding indigenous health information from various resources available in the US, Canada and across the circumpolar north countries.
Setting/Participants/Resources: Withheld Library has worked with the National Library of Medicine to create a website for health information for individuals living in the far north. Work on how to search PubMed to find indigenous health information has been done by librarians in the US and Canada and their discoveries will be shared.
Brief Description: While the website began as a way to improve access to quality health information for Alaska Natives, it has since grown to include publication and research databases, multimedia, climate change, and traditional healing. Content has expanded beyond Alaska and now covers the circumpolar north. Finding published and gray literature for indigenous peoples is made more difficult by the lack of good indexing terms in PubMed. This paper will describe: databases from New Mexico to Alberta and across the globe to Norway which should be considered when looking for health information for indigenous groups and others living in the far north, hedges used to pull information from PubMed, and why the Arctic Council should be added to your list of great resources. Future opportunities for librarian involvement with the Arctic Council will be shared.
Results/Outcome: The growth of this website from local information to both national and international content makes this a good starting point when looking for health information for individuals living in the circumpolar north.
