Literature and Systematic Reviews for Public Health

Bibliographic databases are one of the best places to find current, peer-reviewed research on your topic. There are several databases of interest listed on our library's Public Health Resources page, and more still in our A to Z Databases list, but here are some of the most common databases you may want to search for public health information:

Databases don't understand natural language, context, or categories; they can only look for the keyworks you entered. So keep your searches simple and specific, and use keywords instead of phrases.

Let's look at an example search.

Entering a natural-language phrase like racial disparities in maternal health outcomes in Georgia into the search bar in a database does a couple of things. First, the database will look for articles that include every word you've entered in the search bar. Second, the database will only look for the words you entered, so it will search for "disparities" but not the word "disparity."

This example also contains two concepts that are kind of complicated: racial disparities and maternal health outcomes.

• Racial disparities is a complex, broad topic that can be communicated in many different ways. Authors of the articles you're looking for may describe this as inequality, inequities, racism, or diversity. Because this concept is complex, it's probably a good idea to include more keywords, or synonyms.
• Maternal health outcomes is also a broad topic, and covers a number of different types of outcomes: maternal mortality and morbidity, pregnancy complications, birth complications, fetal mortality and morbidity, and more. The database will not understand that you might mean anything under the umbrella of maternal health outcomes; the database will only look for the words "maternal," "health," and "outcomes."

Let's examine a better way to search for articles about this topic.

One way to build a comprehensive search is to break your research question down into its component parts, brainstorm keywords for each concept, and then use Boolean operators to combine the keywords and concepts.

Here is what a list of keywords might look like for the topic of racial disparities in maternal health outcomes in a particular location.

Now, we'll choose some keywords from each column and combine them using OR and AND.

Boolean operators like AND and OR tell the database how to search for your keywords. Use AND when you want to find all of the words you've entered. Use OR when you want to find any of the words you've entered.

This is how we might use Boolean operators for the above search:

Choose one keyword from each column and use the word AND to link them together. This will find articles that use every keyword you choose. You do not have to use every column. For keywords that are phrases, like maternal mortality, use quotation marks to look for that exact phrase.

Examples:

racial AND disparities AND "maternal mortality" AND rural

race AND inequities AND "fetal mortality"

Because this is a complicated topic, you may want to use more than one keyword from each column to broaden your search and make sure you're capturing all the ways authors might be describing this concept. When you choose keywords from the same column, link them together with the Boolean operator OR.

Examples:

race OR racial

disparities OR inequities OR inequalities

"maternal mortality" OR "fetal mortality" OR "pregnancy complications"

Then, put each of those concepts in parentheses and link them together with the Boolean operator AND.

Example: 

(race OR racial) AND (disparities OR inequities OR inequalities) AND ("maternal mortality" OR "fetal mortality" OR "pregnancy complications")

A keyword search using Boolean operators can be used in any database, like PubMed, Embase, CINAHL, Scopus, Web of Science, and more.