Research Guides: Public Health: Find Articles

Find Articles

The library features over 200 databases to help you find different type of articles. When using databases look for the following format filters:

Scholarly
Peer-Reviewed
Academic Journals
Magazines
Trade Publication
Newspapers

Recommended Databases

CINAHL Complete (EBSCO) This link opens in a new window
CINAHL Complete is the world's most comprehensive nursing & allied health research database, providing full text for more than 1,350 journals indexed in CINAHL. Of those, 953 are not found with full text in any version of Academic Search, Health Source or Nursing & Allied Health Collection. This authoritative file contains full text for many of the most used journals in the CINAHL index, with no embargo. With full-text coverage dating back to 1937, CINAHL Complete is the definitive research tool for all areas of nursing and allied health literature.
MEDLINE (EBSCO) This link opens in a new window
MEDLINE provides authoritative medical information on medicine, nursing, dentistry, veterinary medicine, the health care system, pre-clinical sciences, and much more. Created by the National Library of Medicine, MEDLINE uses MeSH (Medical Subject Headings) indexing with tree, tree hierarchy, subheadings and explosion capabilities to search citations from over 5,400 current biomedical journals.
PubMed @ HPU This link opens in a new window
PubMed comprises more than 24 million citations for biomedical literature from MEDLINE, life science journals, and online books. Access the database via PubMed @ HPU to see linked full text.
Alt HealthWatch (EBSCO) This link opens in a new window
This database focuses on the many perspectives of complementary, holistic and integrated approaches to health care and wellness. It offers libraries full text articles for more than 180 international, and often peer-reviewed journals and reports. In addition, there are hundreds of pamphlets, booklets, special reports, original research and book excerpts. Alt HealthWatch provides in-depth coverage across the full spectrum of subject areas covered by complementary and alternative medicine. This database features indexing and abstracts going back as far as 1984, and full text going back as far as 1990.
Cochrane Library This link opens in a new window
The Cochrane Library is a collection of six databases that contain different types of high-quality, independent evidence to inform healthcare decision-making, and a seventh database that provides information about Cochrane groups. Includes full-text Cochrane systematic reviews.
GreenFILE (EBSCO) This link opens in a new window
GreenFILE offers well-researched information covering all aspects of human impact to the environment. Its collection of scholarly, government and general-interest titles includes content on global warming, green building, pollution, sustainable agriculture, renewable energy, recycling, and more. The database provides indexing and abstracts for more than 384,000 records, as well as Open Access full text for more than 4,700 records.
ERIC (EBSCO) This link opens in a new window
ERIC, the Education Resource Information Center, provides access to education literature and resources. The database contains more than 1.3 million records and provides access to information from journals included in the Current Index of Journals in Education and Resources in Education Index.
Consumer Health Complete (EBSCO) This link opens in a new window
Consumer Health Complete (CHC) is EBSCO's interface designed for the everyday consumer of health care information. CHC provides convenient access to easily understandable health and medical information. Consumers can search and browse within medical encyclopedias, popular reference books, and magazine articles.
Google Scholar @ HPU This link opens in a new window
Google Scholar provides a simple way to broadly search for scholarly literature. From one place, you can search across many disciplines and sources: articles, theses, books, abstracts and court opinions, from academic publishers, professional societies, online repositories, universities and other web sites. Accessing Google Scholar via this link authenticates your off-campus computer, enabling off-campus access to the Libraries' resources.
Health Source - Consumer Edition (EBSCO) This link opens in a new window
This database is the richest collection of consumer health information available to libraries worldwide, providing information on many health topics including the medical sciences, food sciences and nutrition, childcare, sports medicine and general health. Health Source: Consumer Edition provides access to nearly 80 full text, consumer health magazines.
Health Source: Nursing/Academic Edition (EBSCO) This link opens in a new window
This database provides nearly 550 scholarly full text journals focusing on many medical disciplines. Health Source: Nursing/Academic Edition also features the AHFS Consumer Medication Information, which covers 1,300 generic drug patient education sheets with more than 4,700 brand names.
PsycNET This link opens in a new window
Provides access to PsycINFO (citations and abstracts in psychological, social, behavioral, and health sciences) and PsycARTICLES (full-text journal articles in subject areas such as applied psychology, health, theory, research, social/personality, and more).
ScienceDirect This link opens in a new window
Provides full-text access to scholarly journals in the physical, social and health sciences.
Ovid LWW Total Access Collection This link opens in a new window
Contains approximately 300 full-text nursing and health sciences journals, including Nursing, American Journal of Nursing (AJN), and Nursing Made Incredibly Easy. NOTE: limited to 3 simultaneous users per journal.
SpringerLink This link opens in a new window
Contains full-text Springer ebooks (published from 2005 – 2013) and journals focusing primarily on science, technology and medicine.

For a complete listing of nursing and health sciences databases available, please click on the link below.

Alphabetical list of HPU databases (all subject areas)

Search Tips

Keywords vs Subject

A keyword is a term used to perform a search using natural language. A keyword search will search your terms in the entire record of that item (the title, author, abstract, general description, and subjects). Keyword searches generally return more results.

All databases use the keyword search as the default; if you want to search by subject terms, your need to indicate so in the search field.

A subject term or subject heading is a term selected by indexers or catalogers as a predetermined item description. In other words, a person has looked at the book or article and assigned specific subjects that represent the main topics in that book or article. Therefore a subject term search will only retrieve books or articles assigned to that particular term (similar to what hashtags do). You can find subjects relevant to your topic by looking at the record of the item. A subject search is more relevant and specific than a keyword search.

Boolean Operators

Build complex searches by choosing the Advanced Search option within databases and use Boolean operators. Boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT) are commands that connect two or more terms together.

AND is used to narrow your search. Results return will contain all the terms it connects.
OR is used to expand your search. Results will contain either term it connects.
NOT will limit your search and will exclude terms from your results.

Truncation & Wildcards

Use truncation, wildcards, and quotations to make your search more comprehensive.

Truncation refers to a search with multiple endings. Use to replace one or more characters at the end of the sequence of the word, it is ideal to do so at the root of the word. Most databases, use an asterisk (*) but some databases use a dollar sign or exclamation mark ($ or !) for truncation. For example, searching child* will return results for child, children, childhood, etc.
Wildcards can be used where there are multiple spellings for a word. Use to replace one or more characters within the word. Most databases, use an asterisk (*) but some databases use a hashtag sign or question mark (# or ?) for wildcards. For example, if you were searching col*r, you will retrieve both color and colour.
Quotation marks (" ") allow you to search for exact phrase, such as a title of a book. Use quotation marks to search for those words as a phrase instead of individually. For example a search for “The color purple” will only search for that phrase and not for each word separately, so you will get more specific results.

Limiters & Fields

All databases will allow you to limit your search in various ways, filtering out the sources you don't want. Some of the most common limiters/filters are:

Full-text – Click to limit results to articles with full text.
Peer Reviewed – Limits search results to articles from peer-reviewed or refereed journals.
Journal/Magazine – Enter a journal/magazine name in this field to limit results to articles only from that title.
Date Published – Use this option to search for articles within a specified date range.

If you aren't given limiting options on the basic search screen, try clicking on the "Advanced Search" link. If you start your search without adding limiters, some databases, like EBSCOhost and ProQuest, allow you to apply limiters from your results screen. The more limiters you use, the fewer results you will get.

Additionally, all databases have sets of searchable fields that enable you to search within a specific section of a record. Most common search field include:

Some databases have Field Codes such as the EBSCO databases to search within a specific section of the record. The field code is represented in a two-character abbreviation when inserted into the query. When using field searchers, be sure that the term you're using is on the list of acceptable terms for that field. Some fields use like Subject Terms are pre-populated lists of terms from a thesaurus.