by Bradley A. Long
Embedded Health Science Librarian
Harrell Health Sciences Library – Penn State College of Medicine
The National Library of Medicine’s MedlinePlus database (https://medlineplus.gov/) is a well-known, high-quality resource for consumer health information, including in Spanish. What is lesser known about MedlinePlus is that it is also a great resource for bilingual consumer health PDFs, covering hundreds of topics (https://medlineplus.gov/languages/all_healthtopics.html ). Included are 57 different languages and dialects (https://medlineplus.gov/languages/languages.html), with corresponding English translations.
However, these resources are not obvious to locate. MedlinePlus is only searchable by either English or Spanish. You would either already know about the multiple language materials, or discover them by happenstance. This article will help you better navigate MedlinePlus, to locate these valuable resources.
Step 1. Click on the “site Map” link, immediately underneath the “Search MedlinePlus” bar.
Step 2. Scroll down the page to the “Multiple Languages” hyperlink.
Step 3. Click on the “Multiple Languages” hyperlink.
Step 4. From the next page, you can select your desired language or dialect.
Step 5. Scroll to select your desired topic.
Step 6. Click on the hyperlink to access the bilingual PDF. Some resource will be single page PDFs with in English text in one column and the text of the other language in another column. Other PDF will be multiple page, with one version in English, and the other version in the desired language of dialect.
In conclusion, Medline Plus can help to address language barriers in health care, by providing native language resources with accompanying English language text.
