Welcome!
This page has been put together by the librarians for this course. It contains hand-picked resources which will be useful in your research. There are also some handy tips here. We encourage you to contact us directly for research help! We are available during the semester whenever you need us.
Diane Sredl (sredl@fas or 6-6936)
Finding What You Need
Research Articles
- HOLLIS offers easy searching of all the materials that Harvard owns - books, journal articles, images, etc. Sign in, enter your search term(s), and go. Then you can limit your search in various ways, including by peer-reviewed journals. (Don't forget to sign in so that you have access to everything the university pays for!)
- PubMed is the primary database for medical literature, including health policy. Enter your search term(s) and take advantage of the many limits such as Article Type (e.g., Review), publication dates, etc.
- Web of Science is a general science database, also with social science information. Expand it using All Databases and focus your results by Sorting, Refining, selecting Document Types etc. You can also look at the results by the number of times other articles have cited them (Times Cited), and this may indicate articles that are considered the most important on the subject.
- Google Scholar is another way to gauge which articles are important for a subject using its the relevancy ranking, but it is less precise than either PubMed or the Web of Knowledge.
Key Web Resources for Nutrition:
- United Nations System Standing Committee on Nutrition. The mandate of the SCN is to promote cooperation among UN agencies and partner organizations in support of community, national, regional, and international efforts to end malnutrition in all of its forms in this generation.
- International Union of Nutritional Sciences. promotes advancement in nutrition science, research and development through international cooperation at the global level.
- Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN). Their mission is to “reduce malnutrition through food fortification and other strategies aimed at improving the health and nutrition of populations at risk.”
- International Nutrition Foundation. "Advancing nutrition, improving lives."
- The Nutrition Source. HSPH site with detailed information on healthy eating.
Key Resources for Health Policy
- PAIS International indexes the public and social policy literature of public administration, political science, economics, finance, international relations, law, and health care.
- PolicyFile indexes policy reports and studies published by think tanks, university research programs, research organizations that include the OECD, IMF, World Bank, the Rand Corporation, and a number of federal agencies.
Statistics
- World Health Organization (WHO) - Nutrition.
- World Health Organization Nutrition Databases. The World Health Organization is the United Nations specialized agency for health.
- World Bank. The World Bank produces many different publications relating to health and health care. The “Data and Research” tab allows you to access data by country or topic. There is a category for “Health, Nutrition and Population.” World Bank data is also available through the E-resource World Development Indicators Online.
- United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund (UNICEF). The main UNICEF website publishes health-related data in the form of country tables. You may also search by indicator.
- Demographic and Health Surveys - DHS provide national and sub-national data on a variety of topics including nutrition.
- Gapminder. Interactive presentations of development and global health issues.
- International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). The IFPRI has a number of resources related to food security and the world food crisis including the Global Hunger Index.
- USAID. U.S. Agency for International Development. Includes detailed foreign assistance data by country and program.
- HealthMap. A tool that gathers data in real time about disease outbreaks around the world. Want to know where there are chikungunya outbreaks right now? HealthMap will show you and when you click on a location it gives you details and references. Curious about what diseases are current in a particular country? Choose the country!