Join Washington’s Network of Health Information Ambassadors

The National Library of Medicine in Washington

The health information landscape is in constant flux. Whether individuals are navigating care plans from their healthcare providers via electronic health records, seeking wellness advice from influencers on TikTok, or simply looking for good recipes for healthy meals, the inputs are endless. As library workers, of course, we know that information quality is just as important as quantity. This is where the National Library of Medicine (NLM) comes in—and our invitation to you to participate in the Network of the National Library of Medicine.

The NLM was founded in 1836 and is the largest biomedical library in the world. NLM’s outreach program is known as the Network of the National Library of Medicine (NNLM). NNLM is charged with improving public health by providing all U.S. health professionals with equal access to biomedical information and improving the public's access to information to enable them to make informed decisions about their health. NNLM fulfills this mission through a national network of seven Regional Medical Libraries—one of which is in our own backyard.

The University of Washington Health Sciences Library has served as one of NNLM’s Regional Medical Libraries since the late 1960s. (The NNLM is funded through cooperative agreements between the NLM and academic health sciences libraries, in five-year cycles.) Our Region 5 team of eight currently collaborates with library and health information workers in Alaska, California, Nevada, Hawai’i, Oregon, U.S. territories and freely associated states in the Pacific, and Washington. With such a large reach, we rely heavily on our user community of health information ambassadors to guide our work and deepen our impact.

NNLM Region 5 in Washington

Washington-based libraries and other organizations are active in the NNLM through programs such as membership, funding, outreach, training, and the Public Health Digital Library.

Organizations who are interested in the mission of the NNLM are invited to participate in NNLM’s free membership program. Member organizations are listed in NNLM’s public Members Directory, allowing for consistent outreach from NNLM staff and facilitating networking opportunities among members. Not sure if your library is already a member? You can search the Members Directory by your library’s name, city, or zip-code. All member organizations have a listed liaison, so if your library is already a member, connect with your liaison to learn more about their health information priorities for your library! And if your organization is not already a member, please join us. It’s free, and you get a fantastic Weekly Digest of curated health information for your own programming and outreach. There are currently 190 NNLM members in Washington, representing a wide range of community-based organizations, libraries, academic institutions, and more.

A bar graph that represents NNLM Region 5 Members in Washington by organization type. Community Based Organizations and Public Libraries are the most common organization types. — Figure 1: NNLM Region 5 Members in Washington

One of the primary benefits of membership is that members are eligible to apply for funding from their NNLM region. Funded awards improve access to health information through expanding professional development opportunities, creating programs to encourage use of reliable health information, providing technical infrastructure to support information access, expanding library collections on health topics, and more. Since the beginning of our current cooperative agreement in 2021, NNLM Region 5 has funded thirteen awards in Washington, totaling $98,300. Funded awards include five professional development awards, four collection awards, three outreach awards, and one technology award. Awards are offered annually, and a call for proposals is issued each winter.

Currently, Region 5 is funding an outreach award to the University of Washington Addictions, Drug & Alcohol Institute to produce a collection of humanizing stock images for use in health information about substance use, harm reduction, treatment, prevention, and recovery.

Region 5’s collection awards have also been popular in Washington. These $1,500 awards provide funding for library collection development on health topics, with a focus on serving diverse communities. To date, Everett Public Library, Walla Walla Rural Library District, Clover Park Technical College, and Upper Skagit Library have received collection awards, which have been utilized for ongoing outreach. Materials purchased by libraries through this award are listed in the free Diverse Voices in Health & Medicine Collections Toolkit to further support collection development on health and medical topics that reflect the communities served. We encourage library staff to familiarize themselves with the subjects and titles in this toolkit if you’d like to update your own consumer health collection, or simply become more familiar with the health information needs facing communities, like addiction and recovery, sexual and reproductive health, and mental health.

The NNLM Reading Club is another popular outreach resource for library staff. Every month, NNLM staff curate recommended titles on specific themes, like aging, disability health, and rural health. We post discussion guides, free promotional graphics, and related resources on the Reading Club website, and maintain an evergreen archive of all past topics. Reading Club materials are fantastic for ready-to-go programming in your community!

Because we want to make it easy to disseminate quality health information, participation in the NNLM is not limited to organizations. NNLM’s online classes and webinars are open and free to all, and easily discoverable via our events calendar. Topics include consumer health, health literacy instruction, community health outreach, research data services, and more. We provide regular training on several products from the National Library of Medicine, such as the article index PubMed, the health information website MedlinePlus, and clinical trials registry ClinicalTrials.gov. Some of our most popular trainings include our How PubMed Works live webinar series and our self-paced MedlinePlus Tutorial for Librarians and Health Educators. These (and other) training sessions are excellent for individual or team professional development, and our staff is always happy to make recommendations from our extensive class catalog!

Improving access to evidence-based research for health professionals is a key piece of the NNLM mission. Libraries in Washington should be aware of two programs doing this work locally, the Public Health Digital Library and HEALWA. The Public Health Digital Library (PHDL) is a subscription-based collection of e-books, journals, and databases curated for public health departments. PHDL subscriptions and support are coordinated by the NNLM’s National Public Health Coordination Office. Since 2015, the Washington State Department of Health has paid for access to the PHDL, providing their employees and employees of county health departments in Washington with access to the collection. The University of Washington Libraries partner in the PHDL by providing interlibrary loan services to PHDL users in Washington. Libraries in Washington can refer state and county public health workers to their employer for more information about how to access the PHDL and interlibrary loan services.

If you receive medical questions from healthcare workers who are outside of the public health workforce, they might have access to the HEALWA collection. HEALWA provides access to databases and e-books for some healthcare professionals in Washington. HEALWA is not affiliated with the NNLM—this program is funded by Washington State. See heal-wa.org for more information, including eligible professions, database and resource lists, and HEALWA staff contacts.

Community Feedback Guides Our Work

Everything from the training we offer, the funding we award, and the outreach programming we provide is shaped by our user community. We have established many channels for this input - including virtual Town Halls, a digital suggestion box, and training surveys. Region 5 includes advisory committees of representatives from member organizations. Library workers from Washington serve on our Executive Committee and Community Engagement Committee. We are so grateful for the ways Washington libraries show up to shape our work, and would love for you to join us!

Conclusion

Our staff provides free consultations to individuals interested in integrating health resources into their work. One of the questions we often ask the users we connect with is, “What’s unique about the community you serve?” No two answers are the same! Our users serve adults and children in public libraries, patients and providers in hospitals, researchers in clinical laboratories, scientists in biotech, and more. NNLM Region 5’s community of health information ambassadors—our member organizations, our individual users, and the unique constituencies you serve—collectively advances the National Library of Medicine’s vision of equal access to biomedical information for all. We quite literally couldn’t do it without you! If you’d like to get more involved in our work, please consider the following actions.

Create a free NNLM.gov user account and sign up for training(s) that interest you.
Check your organization’s member status in our Members Directory. Consider having your library join the network as an organizational member if it has not already.
Reach out to Region 5 staff for a consultation about your library’s health information priorities and to learn more about how we might support your work. You can reach us at [email protected].

We look forward to expanding our network of health information ambassadors through Washington’s amazing library community!

Liz Morris engages the camera with a slight smile. She wears a flower-pattern blouse and a bright blue blazer with shoulder-length brown hair. Liz is posing in front of white peonies.

Liz Morris, MLIS, University of Washington Health Sciences Library/NNLM Region 5

Liz Morris discovered her love of libraries as a tween when she checked out Mariah Carey's "Butterfly" album for approximately fifty years. When she is not singing the praises of evidence-based health information, Liz is likely reading speculative fiction, practicing yoga, or listening to pop-culture podcasts. She loves her Merlin Bird ID app with the passion of a thousand suns.

Emily Hamstra smiles big at the camera. She is wearing a grey shirt and has shoulder-length brown hair. She poses in front of some foliage.