UNIV 348P: Federal Semester Seminar: Federal Health Policy

Professor: Elaine Anderson
Librarian: Judy Markowitz

This guide will assist you in locating resources for your UNIV 348P research paper:
Health/Mental Health Legislation.
For additional information, please contact Judy Markowitz, 301-314-1316, judym[@]umd.edu.

Table of Contents

How a Bill Becomes a Law
Background Information / Getting Started

• Catalog = Books and Other Documents
• Online Sources = (legislative related)
Primary Sources (Legislation and other documents, hearings, reports....)
Secondary Sources

• News and Current Events
• Political
• Social and Health
Public Opinion
Key Players
Research Guides
Citation Guides

How a Bill Becomes a Law

• Government 101: How a Bill Becomes a Law (Project Vote Smart)
  http://www.votesmart.org/resource_govt101_02.php

• The Legislative Process (C-SPAN)
  http://www3.capwiz.com/c-span/issues/basics/?style=legis

Background Information / Getting Started

Catalog = Books and Other Documents

Use the Catalog to locate books on your topic.
Make sure to choose campus and select USMAI all campuses so you can identify and request books from the law libraries or the Health Sciences library in Baltimore.

  SEARCH BY ACT OR PHRASE: (Use quotes and then look for additional subject headings)

"childhood obesity"	"national school lunch program"	"child nutrition and wic reauthorization"
"mental health parity"	"public health service act"	"mckinney homeless assistance act"

SAMPLE SUBJECT HEADINGS:
You can add - united states to most of these subject headings to narrow your search.

health policy	health care costs	health care rationing
medical policy	delivery of health care	medical care
children-nutrition	health insurance	mental health services

ADD SUBDIVISIONS:

law and legislation	legislation & jurisprudence	political aspects
history	government policy	cost control

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Online Sources (legislative related)

• CQ Researcher
  Full-text coverage of the CQ (Congressional Quarterly) Researcher from 1992 to the present that provides comprehensive analysis of each topic, including history and background information, relevant pro & con arguments, current status, bibliographies, contact information, and outlooks on upcoming "hot topics" in current events.

• CQ Weekly
  Weekly legislative news and analysis covering all the major policy issues confronting the U.S. Congress. Full text from 1983 to the present.

• National Journal Group's Policy Central
  Comprehensive full-text searchable collection of resources on U.S. politics and policy, including the National Journal, Hotline, Poll Track, Ad Spotlight, CongressDaily, Technology Daily, and the Almanac of American Politics. All components may be searched at once. Also includes markup reports, public opinion data, and an archive of television campaign ads with streaming audio and video.

• Congressional Research Service (CRS) Reports Search Engine
  The Congressional Research Service (CRS) is the public policy research arm of the US Congress. This legislative branch agency works exclusively for Members of Congress, their committees and their staffs. It issues about 3,000 briefs, reports, short issue papers and longer position papers per year, but it does not make its reports available to the public. However, it cannot prevent members of Congress from giving them out individually and some government agencies from posting reports they find relevant. Perhaps 1/3 of these reports have become available on the web.
  http://zfacts.com/p/576.html
  Reports from the U.S. Department of State
  http://fpc.state.gov/c18185.htm
  Congressional Research Service Reports, Hosted by UNT Libraries
  http://digital.library.unt.edu/govdocs/crs/

Primary Sources (Legislation and other documents, hearings, reports....)

• Lexis-Nexis Congressional
  Comprehensive access to US legislative information including legislative histories and the CIS index of congressional publications from 1970 to the present, including congressional hearing testimonies and the Congressional Record. A separate index, less exhaustive, is also available for previous congressional publications (1789-1969).
  Also includes: "Help Tool Box", "Political News/Hot Topics", "Members" section for biographical information on individual members of Congress, including key votes, floor statements, committee assignments, financial disclosures, and campaign finance information. Check the catalog by SU DOC number (ex: Y4.ED8/1:108-27) for the full-text of reports if not available via the database.

• Thomas
  Library of Congress site with recent legislative history sources. (Inaugurated January 5, 1995, by the Library of Congress at the request of then Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich as the portal for “legislative information on the Internet.”)
  http://thomas.loc.gov/

• CQ Congress Collection
  An analytical survey of the history and development; powers; personalities; current developments; and legislation considered and passed by the U.S. Congress. Includes data on voting alignments, interest group ratings, advanced CQ key vote analysis, and advanced member analysis.

• GPO Access: United States Congress
  Recent legislative history sources plus the Congressional Record Index and History of Bills from 1983 forward, and links to committees' and caucuses' home pages.
  http://www.gpoaccess.gov/congress/index.html

• Congressional Budget Office
  Provides the Congress with analyses needed for economic and budget decisions and with the information and estimates required for the Congressional budget process. Includes full-text online documents such as briefs, letters, studies, reports, technical papers, and testimony.
  http://www.cbo.gov/

• General Accounting Office (GAO) Reports
  The GAO is the audit, evaluation, and investigative arm of Congress and publishes reports, testimony, and legal decisions on a daily basis.
  Find GAO Reports.
  http://www.gao.gov/docsearch/repandtest.html

• US House of Representatives
  Official site with committee information, bill summaries and status, texts of bills and public laws, roll call votes, and calendars.
  http://clerk.house.gov/

• US Senate
  Official site with calendars and schedules, roll call votes, and floor activity descriptions.
  http://www.senate.gov/

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News and Current Events

• Lexis-Nexis Academic Universe
  Mostly full-text access to US and international newspapers, journals, wire services, and news transcripts including the Washington Post, New York Times, Roll Call and The Hill.
  Path = News - words/phrase in Headline and Lead Paragraphs - Dates - Results - Show Expanded List. Limit search: childhood obesity w/10 legislation / focus within results

• Academic Search Premier
  From your results list, click on the tab for "magazines" or "newspapers."

• National Newspapers
  Full text articles from the Wall Street Journal, Christian Science Monitor, The New York Times, The Sun (Baltimore), and The Washington Post.

• Ethnic Newswatch
  Full-text bilingual (English/Spanish) database of 200 publications of the ethnic, minority, and native press.

Politics

• PAIS International (Public Affairs Information Service)
  Journal articles, research reports, and government documents in the social sciences and public affairs fields from 1915 to the present.

• Worldwide Political Science Abstracts
  Abstracts of journal articles and dissertations from over 1,000 sources. Combined database of the former "Political Science Abstracts" and "ABC PolSci." 1975 -.

There are many social and health related databases available. Check Databases by Categories for additional databses.

• Medline
  Covers the field of medicine

• CINAHL (Cumulative Index to Nursing & Allied Health Literature) and Pre-CINAHL
  CINAHL (Cumulative Index to Nursing & Allied Health Literature)covers over 1600 professional journals in nursing and allied health and includes access to healthcare books and book chapters, dissertations, conference proceedings, and standards of practice. Pre-CINAL is a companion database to CINAHL and is intended to provide current awareness of new journal articles, and includes a rotating file of limited bibliographic information (no subject searching),

• Health Source: Nursing
  Nearly 600 Scholarly full text titles covering nursing and allied health, 450 of these are peer-reviewed titles.

• Health Source: Consumer Edition
  Large range of consumer health information/topics. Full text of nearly 300 periodicals such as: Harvard Health Letter, Prevention, Tufts, Johns Hopkins, Vegetarian Times, Women's health Weekly. Also includes a wide range of full text health related pamphlets and reference books, patient education fact sheets from sources such as: People's Medical Society, A.D.A.M., A.A.R.P and Society Publications

• National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) Data Warehouse
  Data on vital events as well as information on health status, lifestyle, and exposure to unhealthy influences, the onset and diagnosis of illness and disability, and the use of health care.
  http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/

• SocIndex
  Contains full text for 242 "core" coverage journals dating back to 1895, and 72 "priority" coverage journals. This database also includes full text for 547 books and monographs, and full text for 6,711 conference papers.

• Social Work Abstracts
  Covers social work and related topics such as aging, AIDS, child and family welfare, homelessness, substance abuse and more. 1977 to the present.

• iPOLL (Roper Center)
  This databank is a comprehensive, up-to-date source for questions asked on U.S. nationwide public opinion surveys since 1935. It provides question wordings, response percentages, and full survey-level citations. RoperExpress, a data access tool for on-demand downloading of data in the Roper Center collection that are in ASCII or SPSS portable formats, is also available.

• Gallup Brain
  Searchable database of the Gallup Poll since 1935 plus "current Gallup Poll News Service articles that feature the latest in-depth poll analyses and replicas of news stories and press releases linked to the surveys."

• National Journal's Policy Central
  Go into "Poll Track."

• Harris Poll. 2005 - present.
  McK Periodical Stacks HM261.A211 (988-2007)
  weekly polls on a wide range of subjects.
  http://www.harrisinteractive.com/harris_poll/

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• CQ Politics in America
  Profiles of all the current members of the U.S. Congress. Information includes biographical data, committee assignments, election results, CQ Key Votes, interest group ratings, CQ Vote Studies, and contact information; campaign finance, partisan caucuses, standing committees; detailed descriptions of each member's congressional district as drawn after the 2000 census, including updated maps and voting trends; and the vote for president in each of the House districts.

• Washington Information Directory
  Contact information, descriptions, and organizational charts for over 10,000 federal, congressional, and state government offices, nongovernmental organizations, policy groups, and foundations. Ability to export contact information into letter templates and other formats, and to create your own profile of saved favorite documents, document history, and searches.

• Congressional Quarterly's Congressional Staff Directory. MCK REF JK1012.C65
  Includes information on members, committees, staffs, and biographies. Earlier editions in MCK PERIODICALS STKS

• Congressional Quarterly's Federal Staff Directory. MCK REF JK6.F43
  
  Includes information on staff in the White House, executive departments, independent agencies, quasi-official organizations, and biographies.Earlier editions in MCK PERIODICALS STKS

• Congressional Yellow Book: Who's Who in Congress, Including Committees and Key Staff. MCK REF JK1010 .C68

• Ness, Immanuel. Encyclopedia of Interest Groups and Lobbyists in the United States. MCK REF JK1118.N47 2000 vol. 1-2
  Includes information on group histories, current and future activities, finances, and bibliographies.

• Political Advocacy Groups
  Kathleen Fountain, a librarian at CSU-Chico, has developed a comprehensive listing of links to U.S. lobbying organizations, arranged by subject area.
  http://www.csuchico.edu/~kcfount/

• Political Science Resources: Think Tank Directory
  "Think tanks" are policy research and advocacy organizations which usually have a political slant. This site from the University of Michigan Libraries gives an annotated list of links to think tank home pages. Most think tanks post research and position papers and other documents on the web.
  http://www.lib.umich.edu/govdocs/psthink.html

• U.S. Government Manual
  "As the official handbook of the Federal Government, the United States Government Manual provides comprehensive information on the agencies of the legislative, judicial, and executive branches. It also includes information on quasi-official agencies, international organizations in which the United States participates, and boards, commissions, and committees."
  http://www.gpoaccess.gov/gmanual/index.html

• Washington Representatives. MCK REF JK1118.D581
  "A compilation of Washington representatives of major national associations, labor unions, governments, U.S. and foreign companies, registered foreign agents, lobbyists, lawyers, and special interest groups, together with their clients and areas of legislative and regulatory concern." Earlier editions in MCK PERIODICALS

• Zuckerman, Edward. Almanac of Federal PACs. MCK REF JK1991.A744
  Published every two years. Includes information about every PAC which contributed $50,000 or more to congressional candidates during the election cycles. Earlier editions in MCK PERIODICALS

• Finding Congressional Hearings
  http://www.lib.umd.edu/UMCP/GOV/hearings.html

• Finding Federal Legislative Information
  http://www.lib.umd.edu/GOV/legs.html

• Finding Federal Regulatory Information
  http://www.lib.umd.edu/GOV/regs.html

• Finding U.S. Government Documents in the University of Maryland Libraries
  http://www.lib.umd.edu/UMCP/GOV/basic.html

• Health and Medical Statistics on the Internet
  http://www.lib.umd.edu/guides/health_statistics.html

• Public Policy Research
  http://www.lib.umd.edu/MCK/GUIDES/pubpol.html

Citation Guides

• Citation Guidelines: Assembling a List of Works Cited in Your Paper (Duke University)
  http://library.duke.edu/research/citing/

• Documentation Guidelines: Citing Sources Within Your Paper (Duke University)
  http://library.duke.edu/research/citing/within/

• Brief Guide to Citing Government Publications (University of Memphis)
  http://exlibris.memphis.edu/resource/unclesam/citeweb.html

• Reading Legal Citations (Boston College Law Library)
  http://www.bc.edu/schools/law/library/meta-elements/pdf/researchguides/citations.pdf

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