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Your neighbor Bill has had allergies for years. Now he tells you he’s found a cure. Bill got advice from a doctor in a chat room on a Web site to take an herbal remedy along with his over-the-counter allergy medicine. Bill gives you the address so that you can ask for help with your allergies. What do you do?
If you’re thinking, “Well, my allergies have been bad lately. It can’t hurt to try,” stop right there. The World Wide Web can be a great resource for finding health information, but only if you know where to look and what to trust. Taking advice that’s not medically sound can harm you.
Do a Quality Check
“Doing a search on the Web can feel like drinking from a fire hose,” says Mary Jo Deering, Ph.D., director of Health Communications and Telehealth for the Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. “You need to sort out quality from quantity. Be sure to look at the sponsoring information. Government organizations, nationally known medical organizations with good reputations, and academic Web sites tend to be the best,” she says. Deering helps oversee the Department of Health and Human Services’ site. It offers the following tips for people searching on the Web. When assessing a site, ask these questions:
- Does the site get its information from reliable sources? You should be able to find the original sources for articles and see who reviews the information.
- Does the site use up-to-date information?
- Does the site communicate its mission or purpose?
- Does the site offer a way to contact the people who run it?
- Does the site make outrageous claims, offer cures, or tell you what medicine to take? If so, avoid it. “Buying drugs online is not safe without talking to your doctor first,” Deering says.
- Does the site separate sales and ads from health information?
- How will the site use your information? If you can’t find out, don’t type in anything you don’t want to share.
Links to Other Web Sites
Many reliable Web sites are great resources for links to other sites. But be careful when going from one site to another. “Review the Web site’s policy for adding links,” says Gisele Sarosy, M.D., a medical oncologist with the National Cancer Institute (NCI) who helps develop and maintain content on the NCI’s CancerNet site. Sarosy also offers a word of caution about chat rooms. “You are chatting with strangers,” she says. The doctor offering advice in a chat room doesn’t know your health history. Worse, you don’t know if the person is really a doctor.
A good Web site will make it easy to check its reliability. The information you gather from sites you trust can help you be a better advocate for your health. But Web sites can’t replace the advice you get from a doctor who knows you. Remember to share your questions with your doctor. This will help you develop a stronger partnership.
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