APPENDIX A: Starting to Learn about Your Disease

Appendix A serves as a guide for sifting through medical resources and how to find health related information. Phone and internet resources are available along with suggestions for health search engines. Advice is also offered on how to evaluate the quality of the resource, understand medical language and learn about health risk and statistics.

A small sample of resources from the appendices in the 2010 edition of AfterShock were reviewed and updated in June 2014. No further updates are anticipated.

Sample Resources:

The National Institutes of Health's (NIH) MedlinePlus has information on health topics, medicines, medical terminology and other health related resources. It is a good place to start learning about an illness.

Health Hotlines is a service of the National Library of Medicine offering phone numbers of organizations that offer information for specific diseases.

Healthline is an online search engine that focuses on health topics. Compared to a Google search, it will narrow the search results.

MedlinePlus has a website on how to evaluate health information and determine what information is reliable.

The National Institute on Aging offers a short article explaining health risk statistics, association versus causation and absolute versus relative risk.