Research Guides: Public Health: Websites

Suggested Sites

The web is rich in sites appropriate for public health research topics. Here are some favorite sources of public health data and statistics.

America's Health Rankings
From the United Health Foundation, the longest running annual assessment of the nation`s health on a state-by-state basis.
County Health Rankings
A joint effort of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the U of WI's Population Health Institute, provides a ranking model for all counties of all U.S. states based on a variety of health indicators.
Healthy People 2030
From the Department of Health and Human Services, the Healthy People 10-year projects provide a national health prevention framework for the nation.
Kids Count
From the non-profit Annie E. Casey Foundation, Kids Count is a national and state-by-state effort to track the status of children in the United States.
MN Department of Health Statistics
Includes state-wide and county data for disease and conditions, mortality rates, immigrant health and more.
U.S. Physical Acitivity Data and Statistics
From the Centers for Disease Control, these physical activity data (for states, counties and some cities) are derived from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS), a national telephone survey conducted by the CDC and state health departments.

Grey Literature

Science.gov
"This site searches over 60 databases and over 2200 selected websites from 15 federal agencies, offering 200 million pages of authoritative U.S. government science information including research and development results."
Government of Canada Publications
This database searches a catalog of over 250,000 Government of Canada publications.

Evaluating Websites

Things to Consider:

Authorship (who is responsible for the information)
Accuracy (how accurate)
Currency (how current)
Publishing Body (consider URL such as .com, .org, etc)
Point of View (the bias)
Appropriateness (how will this affect your research)