Medicine is so much more complex and expensive than it was ten, fifteen years ago. So, doctors today rely on patients to take good care of themselves. That means being fully informed about your health conditions. But, how do you know what online health information is reliable? A new program is aiming to eliminate the guesswork.

Lydia Turri has diabetes, and she's come to the Holladay Library to learn more about it. Trish Hull, a librarian in the Salt Lake County system, is ready to help Lydia find her way through the Utah HealthNet, a website that has compiled links to the most accurate online medical information, both locally, and nationally. It is also the information backbone of the Utah Women's Health Information Network (UWIN). UWIN is a new project aimed at teaching Utah women where to find reliable and accurate consumer health information, and to create partnerships among health care providers, their patients, and local libraries.

Dr. Sarah Woolsey, with the Community Health Centers in Rosepark says making neighborhood libraries part of a patient's health care team is the key to better health care, overall, especially for underserved populations in Utah.

“Information is power,” says Dr. Woolsey. “It's a silly phrase, but the more people know, the better questions they can ask, the more I can spend time partnering with them on solutions versus doing the basic backgrounds. So, if people come to us informed, we can go a lot faster and farther in that 15 minute visit together so it really helps us when they have a base of information.”

Dr. Woolsey says she will give her patients a "prescription for information" and then point them to the vast resources available at their local library - a welcome change for Sally Patrick, Outreach Librarian at the Spencer S. Eccles Health Sciences Library.

“All of the libraries in Utah have high speed internet access for free, and librarians that are happy to help you if you are not familiar with the internet,” says Sally. “So, if you don't have an internet connection at home, and you don't even know how to use the internet, get to your public library and they'll help you.”

For librarians like Trish Hull, having the correct information in writing is the best way to start any information search.

“They love their doctors,” says Trish “but they come away kind of dazed and confused and a couple days later they come into the library ‘I need information on...’ and they can't even remember exactly what it was. Sometimes it’s as simple as diabetes and sometimes they don't know if it's type one or type two. And so the information we're getting from them isn't the best.”

For Lydia, having access to reliable information on diabetes is critical. One recommended website, Medline Plus, has health information in her native Spanish, and 23 other languages, too.

Medline Plus is the website for the National Library of Medicine and contains information on over 800 topics, as well as interactive tutorials and videos of surgical procedures.

For links to the Utah HealthNet and a list of resources, including a prescription for information, visit www.checkyourhealth.org or call the check Your Health hotline at 1-888-222-2542.