MAPPING THE LITERATURE OF HEALTH-EDUCATION

Health education is a relatively new multidisciplinary field concerned with educational programs that empower individuals and communities to play active roles in achieving, protecting, and sustaining their heal th Its practitioners have bachelor's, master's, or doctoral degrees an d work in educational, worksite, health facility, or agency settings. This bibliometric study was part oi: the Medical Library Association ( MLA) Nursing and Allied Wealth Resources Section's Project for Mapping the Literature of Allied Health, It sought to identify the core journ als in health education and to determine the extent to which these tit les are covered by the standard indexing sources, Cited references app earing from 1991 through 1993 in articles of four journals published b y the major professional associations in the field were analyzed. It w as found that only thirteen journals supply one-third of all reference s in the study. Another eighty journals provide the second third, MEDL INE gives the best indexing coverage with nearly 69% of the journals r eceiving indexing for at least half of their articles, followed by EMB ASE (52%) and PsycINFO (43%). Limited coverage is given by the Cumulat ive Index to Nw:sing and Allied Health Literature (16%) and ERIC (14%) . The findings name titles that should be added by indexing services a nd those that should have more complete coverage.