The National Library of Medicine (NLM) provides millions of people access to health information via its portfolio of products and services. But some people may need to access NLM’s resources in special ways, to help support new and innovative projects. Application programming interfaces (APIs) can help you access NLM’s data more quickly and efficiently, especially when integrated into a program or script.

Learn how to use NLM resources to find drug and chemical information through a suite of on-demand classes. Complete all 3 classes for an in-depth introduction to NLM drug and chemical information resources, or complete the class that meets your needs for a specific population or commonly received questions.

This 1 credit-hour on-demand class introduces you to the basic concepts of medical terminologies (including what they are and why they are important), followed by a deep dive into RxNorm, an NLM-authored medical terminology specializing in drug information. Designed for health sciences librarians and other health information specialists seeking to serve more active roles in their health IT team and better support researchers. Expect to spend 1 hour learning through videos and exercises.

How are health communication and health literacy connected? How can you be more effective in providing health information to consumers, patients, clients, library patrons and your community?  This 1 hour webinar introduces the concepts of health literacy and health communication, outlines components of clear health communication, and identifies online resources from NLM, government agencies and other recognized resources for health literacy and health communication. 

This quarterly series of discussions will address environmental health and justice as they relate to technology, sustainability and public health and the role of librarians in addressing these issues.

This journal series relates to the NNLM initiative addressing Environmental Determinants of Health.

This self-paced online class provides an introduction to environmental health and environmental justice and presents three environmental justice resources you can use to find data and statistics about environmental health disparities in your community.

This class will be delivered entirely online through the Moodle course management system. The class is broken up into 5 topics that are presented through a tutorial (SCORM), with narrated demonstrations and knowledge checks. All the topics are open and available for you to work through at your own pace.

As librarians and researchers alike grapple with new technologies and methodologies for collecting, analyzing, and disseminating data, they must also grapple with corresponding ethical issues. In order to assist librarians with these concerns, this mini-course aims to provide an intellectual grounding for the recognition, analysis, and resolution of ethical issues, including but not limited to ethical problems in data visualization, data sharing, and data collection.

This online, self-paced course for librarians and students in health sciences describes different types of health statistics, how they are collected, and where they can be found.

How many Americans are affected by cardiovascular disease each year? Are there geographic gaps in access to health care? How do the leading causes of death in the United States differ from those worldwide? Do mRNA vaccines, like the COVID-19, cause cardiovascular events? Does the use of oral contraceptives (birth control pills) increase the risk of breast cancer?

What is citizen science? How can I get involved? This 2 hour, on-demand, online class from NNLM and SciStarter.org introduces citizen science for librarians, staff, and community-based organization leaders and includes clear, specific instructions and case studies on how a small, midsize, or large library or organization can bring citizen science activities and programs to their community. This tutorial is available in English and Spanish through scistarter.org. 

This presentation meets the NLM/NIH strategic plan goal of building a workforce for data-driven research and health in order to address increasing health equity through information by using the National Library of Medicine’s PubMed bibliographic database and other freely available resources.

This 9-week class covers the basics of programming in Python for data science projects in health sciences. It includes a general look at data science and algorithmic concepts as well as specific topics in coding, namely the understanding and tools needed to clean data, create data visualizations, and share reproducible results. Learners will be asked to perform these tasks for a final project, which focuses on a provided dataset relating to health research.

This online class meets the NLM/NIH strategic plan goal of accelerating discovery and advancing health through data driven research in order to increase health information access and use.

The class is designed to provide information professionals, working in health sciences, with an introduction to research data management. The primary goal of this course is to improve your knowledge and skills in research data management and enable you to add or enhance research data management training and services at your institution.

This 1 hour on-demand class introduces MedlinePlus Connect, and points to resources for implementing MedlinePlus Connect at your institution. MedlinePlus is a website of the U.S. National Library of Medicine, providing high-quality health information written for the general public. MedlinePlus Connect is a tool that enables the integration of MedlinePlus resources into external systems like electronic health record systems, patient portals, and other applications.

Health Bytes with Region 3 monthly webinar series from the NNLM Region 3 features expert guest speakers presenting on topics of interest to all our users, from librarians to public health practitioners, educators, clinicians, and the public. Topics will be scheduled according to audience interest, seasonal applicability, and speaker availability. For more information, contact: NNLM Region 3, nnlmregion3@unthsc.edu.

Health Literacy On Demand is a one-hour narrated tutorial with activities where you can learn about:

• The definitions of personal and organizational health literacy
• Communication practices you can do to improve health literacy
• Three resources that you can use to improve health literacy

Health misinformation is a widespread problem, with false or misleading information about both long standing health concerns like cancer and emergent situations like the COVID-19 pandemic spreading at a rapid pace. Sometimes questionable health information is obvious, but it can also be difficult to recognize and can potentially reach millions of people. 

This presentation meets the NLM/NIH strategic plan goal of building a workforce for data-driven research and health in order to address increasing health information access and use.

This class is designed to evaluate health stories in the media. This course will address how health information is reported in news outlets and popular media and teach you how to analyze these health claims critically. Analysis of news stories involves critical thinking; you will be introduced to a rating instrument and practice exercises to develop this skill.

 Just as no study is perfect, no health story in the news is perfect – but developing this skill will aid you in identifying common reporting issues and teach you how and where to seek more information. 

This series of four classes addresses increasing health information access and use by highlighting information about the National Library of Medicine’s PubMed bibliographic database. 

How PubMed Works is a series of four 90-minute presentations. The individual classes are:

1. How PubMed Works: Introduction
2. How PubMed Works: Selection
3. How PubMed Works: MeSH (Medical Subject Headings)
4. How PubMed Works: ATM (Automatic Term Mapping)

Register for each class separately. 
Each class is eligible for 1.5 MLA CE credits.

Are you new to PubMed? Maybe you'd like a refresher. How PubMed Works On-Demand walks through all the parts of the PubMed interface.

Each class is designed to take approximately 90 minutes to complete, and each is worth 1.5 MLA CE credits. 

You can start and stop at your convenience, and take only the classes that interest you. Each class is made up of a pre and post-test, a recording and an assignment. 

The individual classes are: