You’ve heard your librarians talk about how the very best place to get consumer information about medical topics is NIH’s MedlinePlus.gov.

But another agency has some consumer information as well: have you looked at the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) new web site lately?

The major topics listed on the home page are:

  • food
  • animal and veterinary products
  • drugs
  • cosmetics
  • medical devices
  • radiation-emitting products
  • vaccines, blood, and biologics
  • tobacco products

Let’s say that you want non-technical, easy-to-understand information about cosmetics. On the FDA home page, click on that word and scroll down to “Resources for You.” The Consumers link has information about tattoos, makeup, and ooh, there’s “tanning products”!

Each of those major topics has “Resources for You” on the bottom of its page.

For clinical medical information, you may want to consult the general research guide for Medicine, Nursing, and Allied Health; for additional consumer health resources, check out the Consumer & Patient Health Information portion of the general guide.


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