Open AccessBook Review: Promoting Individual and Community Health at the Library
Author(s) -
Ellen L. Rubenstein
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
reference and user services quarterly/reference and user services quarterly
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.443
H-Index - 34
eISSN - 2163-5242
pISSN - 1094-9054
DOI - 10.5860/rusq.58.1.6847
Subject(s) - medical library , health information , health care , statement (logic) , library science , medical information , section (typography) , public relations , public health , gerontology , medicine , political science , sociology , business , family medicine , nursing , law , advertising , computer science
Interest in consumer health information has been steadily growing since the mid-twentieth century. As author Mary Grace Flaherty notes in her second chapter, Dr. Benjamin Spock published his book on baby care in 1946, and in 1973, the Boston Women’s Health Collective introduced Our Bodies, Ourselves; both of these supremely popular books offered accessible medical information to the general public and were revised and reprinted many times. In 1996, the Medical Library Association’s Consumer and Patient Health Information Section generated a policy statement addressing how librarians could be involved in facilitating access to consumer health information, and the Institute of Medicine began studying health care delivery in the United States, subsequently affirming that understandable consumer health information is integral to successful medical treatment.