Tag Archives: health

Library Hosts Free Health Insurance Enrollment Sessions

Chatham Community Library will host free health insurance enrollment sessions beginning Tuesday, November 6, from 9:15 am – 2:15 pm, continuing each Tuesday through December 11th (not available on Tuesday, November 20). Meet one-on-one with local enrollment Navigator, Martha Samaniego, of NC Legal Aid.

Nine out of ten North Carolina residents who enrolled last year received financial help in paying for their coverage. If you enrolled last year, it’s important that you check out your options again this year. New plans and prices are available that may better fit your needs and budget.

Appointments are required and can be made by calling 1-855-733-3711 or by registering online at www.getcoveredamerica.org/Connector.

Enrollment appointments will take place in the Library’s double-study room.  Chatham Community Library is located at 197 NC Hwy 87 N on the Chatham County campus of Central Carolina Community College.

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Resource of the Month: Go Ask Alice!

Go Ask Alice

Have a burning health question you’d like to anonymously ask a medical professional? Want to see what others have asked in your situation? Then check out Go Ask Alice!, available through NC LIVE. Go Ask Alice! is a health question-and-answer (Q&A) Internet resource produced by Alice! Health Promotion at Columbia University, a division of Columbia Health.

Worried about the reliability of information found on an Internet website? Very smart of you to be wary, dear reader, but in this case you need not fear. Go Ask Alice! is run and supported by “a team of Columbia University health promotion specialists, health care providers, and other health professionals, along with a staff of information and research specialists and writers.”

To access this resource, navigate to the library’s website (www.chathamlibraries.org), click on Online Resources, and click the large NC LIVE link at the top of the resulting page. When you land on NC LIVE’s main page, you can access Go Ask Alice! several different ways. However, the easiest method is to click Browse Databases from the menu bar at the top of the page, then navigate to the resources beginning with G. You will not need your library card to access this resource outside the library.

Once on the site’s main page, you can ask your own question by clicking the Ask Your Question box. You can also see others’ answered questions by clicking Health Answers on the main menu bar and choosing the relevant section (such as Nutrition & Physical Activity). If you need assistance with this resource, feel free to contact the reference desk at 545-8086.

Resource of the Month: Proquest Family Health

2014-09-03_0927In January 2015, many of our online resources currently available through NC LIVE will change. One new resource we’ll be offering is ProQuest Family Health. This database includes magazines and journals covering consumer health topics such as sports injuries, women’s health issues, children’s health, food and nutrition, midwifery, eye care, dentistry, and much more. As with some other databases in NC LIVE, ProQuest Family Health gives you the option to limit your search results to only full text articles, only peer reviewed articles, and other specifications.

ProQuest Family Health is useful for nursing students and those in related health professions. It is also invaluable for families looking for accurate, in-depth information about a variety of health issues. As you probably know, the internet is not always a reliable source of information about health issues, particularly those that are controversial or little-understood. Families who are trying to learn about issues such as ADHD, diabetes, or just what to look for in a pediatric dentist will find that ProQuest Family Health offers a sensible and reliable alternative to much of the “chatter” you might find when looking for information on the world-wide web.

To access this resource, visit www.nclive.org. Scroll down and click on the “Nursing & Allied Health” link. Click on “ProQuest Family Health” (you will be prompted to choose your library and provide your library card number).

Click here to see a complete list of our new databases.

Free eBook Friday: Food Politics

Food Politics, by Marion Nestle:

We all witness, in advertising and on supermarket shelves, the fierce competition for our food dollars. In this engrossing exposé, Marion Nestle goes behind the scenes to reveal how the competition really works and how it affects our health. The abundance of food in the United States–enough calories to meet the needs of every man, woman, and child twice over–has a downside. Our over-efficient food industry must do everything possible to persuade people to eat more–more food, more often, and in larger portions–no matter what it does to waistlines or well-being.

Like manufacturing cigarettes or building weapons, making food is big business. Food companies in 2000 generated nearly $900 billion in sales. They have stakeholders to please, shareholders to satisfy, and government regulations to deal with. It is nevertheless shocking to learn precisely how food companies lobby officials, co-opt experts, and expand sales by marketing to children, members of minority groups, and people in developing countries. We learn that the food industry plays politics as well as or better than other industries, not least because so much of its activity takes place outside the public view.

Editor of the 1988 Surgeon General’s Report on Nutrition and Health, Nestle is uniquely qualified to lead us through the maze of food industry interests and influences. She vividly illustrates food politics in action: watered-down government dietary advice, schools pushing soft drinks, diet supplements promoted as if they were First Amendment rights. When it comes to the mass production and consumption of food, strategic decisions are driven by economics–not science, not common sense, and certainly not health. No wonder most of us are thoroughly confused about what to eat to stay healthy.

An accessible and balanced account, Food Politics will forever change the way we respond to food industry marketing practices. By explaining how much the food industry influences government nutrition policies and how cleverly it links its interests to those of nutrition experts, this path-breaking book helps us understand more clearly than ever before what we eat and why.

***

Every Friday, we highlight an eBook from our collection at
http://e-inc.lib.overdrive.com
.  Let us know what you think of these selections, and tell us about eBooks you’ve enjoyed – we may feature them here!

Resource of the Month: Drug & Herb Information

ConsumerHealthCompleteAre you looking for reliable information on prescription drugs or medicinal herbs?

The Consumer Health Complete database is a great resource for this topic. The Drug and Herb Information section features concise and clinically-relevant drug monographs for all U.S. prescription drugs, hard-to-find herbal and nutritional supplements, over-the-counter products and new and investigational drugs. It also includes revised information on FDA changes.

Using the search bar, readers can find drug and herb information related to a specific illness, or they can find articles about a particular drug or herb. The page also has links to the results of Top Searches, which recently included:

  • Cholesterol medications
  • Diabetes medications
  • Heart medications
  • Pain medications
  • St. John’s Wort
  • Stroke medications
  • Vitamin B
  • Zinc

Reference sources on the site include Peterson Field Guide to Western Medicinal Plants & Herbs, AHFS Consumer Medication Information, and Complete Guide to Prescription & Nonprescription Drugs.

To access this resource, go to www.chathamlibraries.org and click on the Online Resources link on the left.  Scroll down and click the blue Health & Wellness Information Center button.  (You can also go directly to www.nclive.org and click on the Health & Wellness heading.)  In the top right box, click on Consumer Health Complete. From there, click on Drug & Herb Information.

Many of the resources in the Health & Wellness Information Center are provided by NC LIVE, so you will be asked to sign in using your library card number if you are accessing these resources outside of the library. 

Resource of the Month: Health & Wellness Information Center

HealthWellnessLooking online for health information can be frustrating.  It’s hard to tell if you can trust the advice you find, and some websites obscure their information with pop-up ads and other distractions.  Though we all want to stay healthy, few among us have the time or budget to subscribe to multiple medical journals.

The Health & Wellness Information Center, available through NC LIVE, offers videos, eBooks, journal articles, and links to reliable local health and wellness resources. Through this portal, patrons can:

  • find a local doctor or research health issues unique to North Carolinians via NC Health Info, a UNC Health Sciences Library Service,
  • access in-depth, peer-reviewed scholarly articles via EBSCO Host,
  • stream videos from NOVA, Frontline, and others via NC LIVE’s video collection,
  • browse health and wellness subjects on Healthfinder.gov, a federal government website managed by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services,
  • and more!

To access the Health & Wellness Information Center, go to www.chathamlibraries.org and click on the “Online Resources” link.  Scroll down, and click the big blue “Health & Wellness Information Center” button.  (You can also go directly to www.nclive.org and click on the “Health & Wellness” heading.)  Many of these resources are provided by NC LIVE, so you will be asked to sign in using your library card number.  Once you are signed in, you can browse to your heart’s content, or research medical terms for the contents of your heart!

Note:  The prominently displayed “Search NC LIVE Health and Wellness Resources” field searches the EBSCO databases only.  To see all the resources the portal offers at a glance, click the italicized link on the homepage that says “See all Health & Wellness Resources”.