Public Health

Finding Full Text: in many of our databases (like PubMed and Web of Science), you will see this button . It is used to find the full article in our online collections, or if we don’t have it, link to Interlibrary Loan. In other databases (like CINAHL, PsycINFO, and in Discovery Search), if it can‘t find a way to directly connect to full text, the option is .

If an article or book is unavailable at UMass Amherst, you can get it using our Interlibrary Loan service. There will be a link to Request this resource through Interlibrary Loan on the window that opens after you click the UMass search button.

• Here's a screenshot as an example of you might see after clicking the UMass search button.

More about Interlibrary Loan

To log into Interlibrary Loan use your UMass NetID and password (same as what you use for SPIRE and Moodle or Blackboard).

The first time you use Interlibrary Loan, you will be prompted to fill out a profile form, so we know who you are and how to contact you when your item arrives.

• NOTE: In the Delivery Preferences section of the profile form, you must choose a Loan Delivery Method and a Pickup Location. All article requests are delivered electronically, so these options do not apply to articles.

After completing the profile, you should then see a pre-populated article request form. Make sure all the required fields are completed (sometimes they don't all transfer to the form), then submit it and usually in 1-2 business days you'll get an email that your article has arrived! The email will include a link into the Interlibrary Loan system, where your article PDF will be available to print or download.

Many of your assignments will require you to locate articles from Peer Reviewed journals. Some databases include an option to limit your search results to only articles from peer reviewed journal.

Other databases, like PubMed, do not. There are several ways you can find out if a journal is peer reviewed.

• One of the easiest ways is to look the journal title up using the eJournals link on the UMass Amherst Libraries home page. Above the journal title, it will say peer reviewed if it is.

  Or, you can look it up in the Ulrich's database (linked below). Peer reviewed (also called refereed) journals will have this symbol next to the title:

NOTE: Due to Presidential Executive Orders issued in early 2025, most of the U.S. government agency websites listed below have removed or will be removing data on a wide range of health issues, focusing on those that look at disparities based on race, sexual orientation, and gender identity. Due to the outcome of multiple lawsuits, many of the webpages have been or will soon be restored to how they appeared on Jan. 29, 2025.

There are many initiatives to protect these data and continue to make them accessible. The first link below is to Data Lumos, one of the sources that has lots of health-related data. 

If you need help finding data, please don't hesitate to contact me!

Here are some places where you might find existing tests, surveys, instruments or other measurements to use or adapt for your research.

Find CRS (Congressional Research Service) reports on current Public Health topics using the ProQuest Congressional database.

Use the advanced search feature to limit to just CRS reports.

ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst is a digital repository for the research and scholarly output of members of the University of Massachusetts Amherst community, administered by the UMass Amherst Libraries.

It contains selected works from faculty members as well as theses and dissertations.