Library News

The Built Environment Assessment Tool (BE Tool) from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) measures the core features and qualities of the built environment that affect health, especially walking, biking and other types of physical activity. The built environment includes the physical makeup of where we live—our homes, schools, businesses, streets and sidewalks, open spaces and transportation options.

The core features assessed in the BE Tool include:

• Built environment infrastructure—such as road types, curb cuts and ramps, intersections and crosswalks, traffic control and public transportation.
• Walkability—for example, access to safe, attractive sidewalks and paths with inviting features.
• Bikeability—such as the presence of bike lane or bike path features.
• Recreational sites and structures.
• Food environment—such as access to grocery stores, convenience stores, and farmers markets.
• Users can add questions or modules if more detail about an aspect of the built environment is desired (e.g. nutrition environment or pedestrian environment.)

There is a new feature available in uCentral called Notes. To use, highlight any text in uCentral and select the Note option from the pop-up menu that appears. Notes can be color coded, and are accessible from the uCentral Home Screen. See the Unbound Medicine video for more information.

Resources available through uCentral include: 5 Minute Clinical Consult, Control of Communicable Disease Manual, Davis’s Drug Guide, Evidence-Based Medicine Guidelines, Harriet Lane Handbook, The Merck Manual Professional Edition, and Washington Manual of Medical Therapeutics.

Embase is back! Embase is a biomedical database which includes over 25 million indexed records and more than 7,600 currently indexed peer-reviewed journals. This database is international in its coverage and is a good source for Evidence Based Medicine (EBM) and systematic reviews.