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In addition to the key databases listed on the Get Started page, these are additional databases for health and biomedical sciences.
Public health is an interdisciplinary field. It crosses many subject areas. Search several different databases for the most comprehensive search results. Choose databases from the categories below:
- Medicine, Environmental Health
- Social Sciences, Religion, Interdisciplinary
- Health Policy, Business, Legal
- Engineering, Computer Science, Technology
Think about telehealth, it might involve policies, technology or engineering, usability studies and of course health outcomes. Coverage on telehealth could be found in publications for each of these disciplines, therefore multiple databases may be needed.
Below are a few of the common databases for these subject areas.
Preparing for your search
Starting your search effectively means taking some time before you start to plan your strategy.
- What is your topic? Can you define it with a question? (example to come)
- In order to decide which database to search you will want to think about what subject/category/health condition or problem it includes.
- Select the database to search based on the subjects it covers.
- Are you looking for medical treatment? PubMed, which contains Medline, would be a good choice.
- Are you looking for information related to school based programs? ERIC and Education Source might be appropriate. If you are interested in the intervention and results of a study on these programs then Medline may be the right place. Or both.
- What about behaviors related to opioid addiction treatment or organ donor decision making? Medline, CINAHL, PsycInfo are all possibilities.
- In public health Medline will cover many of the areas you will research. However, with over 700 databases to choose from you might find there is another one that contains articles from a specific discipline that is not covered there.
NEW AI Resource: Scite.ai
The library licenses Scite.ai in the spring of 2024. It's resources are heavily STEM related. One key feature is the analysis of articles/publications that have cited a particular work. The results will show supporting or refuting the original article. Scite Assistant interfaces with a ChatGPT feature to help answer questions related to the included content.
Try it out and read more from scite.ai by following the links below.
- Scite.ai This link opens in a new windowAn AI-powered research platform that analyzes and provides citation context for scientific papers, helping researchers evaluate the credibility and impact of scholarly articles. Account registration is necessary for some features.
Behaviour, education,tests
- Social Sciences Premium Collection (Proquest) This link opens in a new windowpolitics and public policy, sociology, social services, anthropology, criminology, linguistics, information sciences and education
- PsycInfo (EBSCOhost) This link opens in a new windowincludes citations and abstracts of peer reviewed articles, books, and dissertations. Coverage from 1888 to the present.
- ERIC (Education Resources Institute) This link opens in a new windowscholarly articles, professional literature, education dissertations, and books, plus grey literature
- Education Research Ultimate (EBSCOhost) This link opens in a new windowPeer-reviewed journals in education... all educational specialties, such as multilingual education, health education, and testing.
- HAPI (Health and Psychosocial Instruments)(EBSCOhost) This link opens in a new windowInformation about behavioral measurement instruments, abstracted from hundreds of leading journals covering health sciences and psychosocial sciences.
The Measurement of Health and Health Status by Call Number: EbookISBN: 9780128015049Publication Date: 2016presents a unifying perspective on how to select the best measurement framework for any situation....It especially emphasizes the measurement of health and health states (quality-of-life), giving significant attention to newly developed methods.
Policy, business
- Business Source Ultimate (EBSCOhost) This link opens in a new windowScholarly, peer-reviewed articles and professional association news and information, the majority in full text. Some video.
- Health Administration Database (Proquest) This link opens in a new windowCollection of 800 key journals plus dissertation and other publications covering the field of health administration: management, insurance, ethics, and more. Mostly full text or with links to full text for Northeastern-subscribed materials.
- HeinOnline This link opens in a new windowHeinOnline is available courtesy of the Northeastern School of Law Library.
Full text legal documents including regulations and other government publications, reports, Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS) and UN Treaty series, and law reviews and journals. - PolicyFile This link opens in a new windowU.S. foreign and domestic policy papers and gray literature, PolicyFile is updated weekly with abstracts and links to the latest reports, papers, and documents from think tanks, research institutes, and agencies.
- Policy Commons This link opens in a new windowReports, working papers, policy briefs, data sources, and media drawn from a directory of more than 21,000 IGOs, NGOs, think tanks, and research centers.
Multi and Interdisciplinary
- Web of Science, All Databases This link opens in a new windowUse this link for access to citation tracking and subject searching of scholarly literature. Data visualizations, alerts, and journal impact factors. Includes the Web of Science Core Collection. One of the largest curated databases of scholarly research, with citations in some subjects from 1900 to the present.
- Academic Search Ultimate (EBSCOhost) This link opens in a new windowScholarly, peer-reviewed articles and professional association publications, about half are peer reviewed, covering all academic subjects including STEM fields
- CQ Researcher This link opens in a new windowIn-depth, authoritative reports on political and social-policy issues extending back to 1923. "award winning in depth, unbiased coverage of health, social trends, criminal justice, and more
Environmental and chemical
- GreenFILE (EBSCOhost) This link opens in a new windowDrawing on the connection between the environment and disciplines such as agriculture, education, law, health and technology, GreenFILE is an informative resource containing nearly 300,000 records, with full text for selected titles, and searchable cited references with library links for more than 200 additional titles
- SciFinder-n (CAS) This link opens in a new windowSciFinder-n provides access to the worlds most comprehensive and reliable collection of scientific research information, including millions of records and up-to-date patent and chemical information curated and aggregated by a global network of expert scientists. Links to patents and Northeastern-subscribed materials.
*Looking for health and toxicology studies on PFAS chemicals?
Northeastern has:
- a PFAS Project Lab and hosts the PFAS-Tox Database, a living systematic evidence map and database of studies. The PFAS-Tox Database was developed by a multi-institutional group of researchers, funded and supported by several organizations, including Northeastern University's Social Science Environmental Health Research Institute.
- Our library guide for basic information on PFAS and literature searching.
- PFAS Topic Guidefor PFAS searching tips and additional resources
- PFAS Project LabNortheastern University
- PFAS-Tox Databasehealth and toxicology data on PFAS
Special Focus
- AgeLine (EBSCOhost) This link opens in a new windowAgeLine focuses on those aged 50+ and the literature of social gerontology. Covers aging-related content from the health sciences, psychology, sociology, social work, economics, and public policy.
- What this includes: over 600 journals, books, book chapters, reports, dissertations, consumer guides, and educational videos..
- GenderWatch (ProQuest) This link opens in a new windowFull articles from women's studies magazines and newsletters (including some that are hard to find in print), as well as some scholarly journals. Some articles go back to the 1970's.
- PTSDPubs This link opens in a new windowPTSDpubs helps you find information about post-traumatic stress, related effects of trauma, and mental health sequelae. It is sponsored by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.
- What this includes articles from journals, books, pamphlets, dissertations, and technical reports. 1871 to present.
- Gale In Context: Global Issues This link opens in a new windowCourtesy of the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners and the Massachusetts Library System
Global Issues in Context offers international viewpoints on a broad spectrum of global issues, topics, and current events.
Technology, Engineering
- Engineering Village This link opens in a new windowCombines the citations and full text links of Compendex and Inspec with full text books from Knovel, for a more comprehensive search on computer science and engineering topics.
- Computers & Applied Sciences Complete (EBSCOhost) This link opens in a new windowCitations and abstracts for more than 1,800 academic journals (730 in full text), professional publications, and other reference sources from a diverse collection relating to computer science. Links to full text for Northeastern-subscribed journals.
Public Health Evidence Based Resources
A free resource to help you choose programs and policies to improve health and prevent disease in your community. Systematic reviews are used to answer these questions:
- Which program and policy interventions have been proven effective?
- Are there effective interventions that are right for my community?
- What might effective interventions cost; what is the likely return on investment?
- Guide to Community Preventive ServicesThe Guide to Community Preventive Services (The Community Guide) is a collection of evidence-based findings of the Community Preventive Services Task Force (CPSTF). It is a resource to help you select interventions to improve health and prevent disease in your state, community, community organization, business, healthcare organization, or school.
- Health EvidenceMcMaster University site: Our Mission: To make evidence easily accessible while developing organizational and individual capacity for evidence-informed public health decision making.
- BibliomapBiblioMap, the EPPI-Centre database of health promotion research, contains over 14,100 records at present. The studies included in Bibliomap have been compiled over a number of years as a result of searching and coding research for inclusion in systematic reviews at the EPPI-Centre. All studies are coded for specific characteristics of health focus, population group and study type.
- Cochrane Public HealthCochrane Public Health is involved in the production of a wide range of publications related to Cochrane, review methodology and evidence generation.
And even more
- Find other databases at NU LibraryBrowse the full list of databases.
Options to choose grouping by subject or type.
Access the A to Z databases list here or find on the library website.
Please note: Use of databases from off-campus requires logging in with your myNortheastern account user name and password.