IDAHO
The Idaho Health Information Association planned its
annual meeting in association with the 66th Annual Idaho Hospital
Association Convention. It was held Monday October 4, 1999 and
Tuesday October 5, 1999 in Sun Valley Idaho.
The new President, Marcy Horner from Kootenai Regional Medical Center in Coeur d'Alene, took office after the educational session on Tuesday. Nancy O. Press was the speaker for the group of Idaho Medical Librarians discussing competencies for Medical Librarians.
The Internet has some wonderful resources for health information as well as some very questionable items. I was recently sent an email with this as the subject: "Fw: Information for All the Women in my Mailbox". A very long list of names and email addresses followed and the body of the message contained a message about breast cancer. "The leading cause of breast cancer is the use of anti-perspirant." The text goes on to describe how the toxins build up in the underarm region causing the underlying lymph nodes to lead to cell mutations and cancer.
As a Medical Librarian, I knew how to research this claim. I did a Medline search and as you can guess, nothing has been published in any of the Indexed Medical Journals. I went to the American Cancer Society Website and in their information on causes of breast cancer found a paragraph on Internet rumors about underwire bras and anti-perspirants as a cause of breast cancer. They confirm there is no causal relationship. The American Cancer Society also has a link for email on "Chain Email" and sent me a very well written email response on how to support legitimate cancer research, including information on how to donate money to the ACS.
I sent a reply to the sender of the rumor with this information and also sent a broadcast message on our inhouse email system about this rumor, encouraging all staff to look carefully at the source of information. I also posted the addresses for credible sources of cancer information and suggested they bookmark the ACS at http://www.cancer.org and our hospital's own cancer services link at http://www.eirmc.org which has links to other quality resources such as the National Cancer Institute. I also encouraged staff to come to the library and find more quality health sites that we have bookmarked on our end user station.
This oddball email gave me a great library marketing opportunity. I immediately had responses from several staff members thanking me for the "heads up" and the URLs of reliable quality health information.
submitted by Kathy Nelson