Government Removes Women's Health Information

It appears that accurate women's health information on government sites has been quietly disappearing (via feministing.com).

My first reaction was to write a post about my outrage and disappointment at this news. But you know what, never mind that. Why waste time and energy stating the obvious. Instead, I can do something more constructive--post a list of useful sites with women's health information. As it happens, I'm compiling just such a list for my book, so I have a ton of good links:

Professional Medical Associations

American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG)

Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG)

American Medical Women's Association (AMWA)

Association of Reproductive Health Professionals (ARHP)

Faculty of Family Planning & Reproductive Health Care

National Association of Nurse Practitioners in Women's Health (NPWH)

American Academy of Family Physicians

American College of Physicians - Internal Medicine - Doctors for Adults

American Psychiatric Association

American Medical Association Home Page (AMA)

The National Medical Association

Non-Governmental Organizations

Planned Parenthood Federation of America

International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF)

Marie Stopes International

The Alan Guttmacher Institute

National Women's Health Resource Center (NWHRC)

Black Women's Health Imperative

The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation

So, there you have it. Some useful links, and I'll post more soon. If this type of data will no longer be available on government sites, no problem. It will be available here!

Medical Search Engines

About 50% of adults in the US are e-patients. E-patients (and/or their relatives and friends) look for online health information or guidance, and use support groups. According to one survey, e-patients ranked online groups higher than either GPs or specialists for convenience, cost-effectiveness, emotional support, compassion/empathy, help in dealing with death and dying, medical referrals, practical coping tips, in-depth information and "most likely to be there for me in the long run" [as well] as the best source of technical medical knowledge.

I think the more [accurate] information a patient has, the better. I'm also looking forward to the emergence of health group blogs. In the meantime, if you're new to this e-patient thing, here are a couple of good specialized health search engines to get you started:

Medem: run by the leading medical societies in the U.S.; has a good Medical Library section.

MedlinePlus: run by NIH's National Library of Medicine; has information on Clinical Trials and Human Research Studies.

PubMed: run by NIH's National Library of Medicine; good for article searches.