LibGuides: Public Health: Web Sources

US Health-Related Agencies

Please be advised that following the series of executive orders issued by the incoming administration on January 31, 2025, many of these websites have taken down large amounts of information, or in some cases disappeared entirely. If you need to access versions of these pages that existed prior to January of 2025, you can use the Internet Archive's WayBack Machine, which can be found here: https://web.archive.org/

USAID
USAID is the lead U.S. Government agency that works to end extreme global poverty and enable resilient, democratic societies to realize their potential.
Centers for Disease Control
CDC works to protect America from health, safety and security threats, both foreign and in the U.S. Whether diseases start at home or abroad, are chronic or acute, curable or preventable, human error or deliberate attack, CDC fights disease and supports communities and citizens to do the same.
National Institutes of Health
The National Institutes of Health (NIH), a part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, is the nation’s medical research agency and has 27 different institutes and centers.
Veterans Health Administration
Division of the US Department of Veterans Affairs providing health services to veteran populations
Health and Human Services
Official website of the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services (HHS)

Donor Organizations

Gates Foundation
Focuses on improving international health and alleviating hunger and extreme poverty.
NIH Reporter
Projects and publications funded by NIH grants
World Health Organization (WHO)
WHO is the directing and coordinating authority for health within the United Nations system. The WHO website provides information about global health initiatives and country-specific health issues.

General Resources

IssueLab
Sponsored by the Foundation Center, IssueLab provides free access to thousands of case studies, evaluations, white papers, and issue briefs resulting from grant-sponsored research.

Health Organizations and Resources

World Health Organization (WHO)
WHO is the directing and coordinating authority for health within the United Nations system. The WHO website provides information about global health initiatives and country-specific health issues.
Office of Global Affairs (US)
This office of the US Dept of Health and Human Services coordinates with partner agencies on the US role in global health policy.
Duke Global Health Institute
DGHI was established to coordinate, support, and implement Duke’s interdisciplinary research, education, and service activities related to global health
Kaiser Global Health
Johns Hopkins Public Health: Research
Guttmacher Institute
Leading research and policy organization committed to advancing sexual and reproductive health and rights in the United States and globally

In a nutshell

You need to apply a critical eye to information you find on the web. There are many evaluation criteria, but these 2 are most important:

Authorship: People or organizations qualified to know the topic
Currency (of the document itself): Recent info is usually best

Info from websites: Can you trust it?

To increase the chances of finding information to use that is true, complete, easy-to-use, up-to-date, not biased, and not a hoax, try these steps:

Probe for bias: Ask yourself if the person or organization responsible for the information could have an interest or agenda that is motivating the writing.
Compare: Don’t use just one source. Use multiple sources and compare the coverage.
Corroborate: If your topic is controversial or includes numbers and statistics, see if you can find another source to back it up that has the same numbers, or similar evidence.
Use your background beliefs: Check information against what you already know and understand. The more outlandish a claim is, the more research you will need to do to make sure it is true.