240003 “Public Health” in 5 major chiropractic journals: Analysis of search results in PubMed

Monday, October 31, 2011: 1:06 PM

Claire Johnson, MSEd, DC , Editor, Professor, National Univerisity of Health Sciences, Oceanside, CA
Bart Green, MSEd, DC , Branch Medical Clinic MCAS Miramar, Naval Medical Center San Diego, San Diego, CA
Background: Public health in chiropractic is a developing domain. To build a body of literature and include publications in public health education for the chiropractic profession, it is essential that this literature is retrievable using search engines such as PubMed. Objective: This study provides a descriptive analysis of the PubMed search results for “public health” in five major chiropractic journals. Methods: The five chiropractic journals that are actively indexed in PubMed were selected: Journal of Manipulative and Physiological Therapeutics (JMPT), Journal of Chiropractic Medicine (JCM), Journal of the Canadian Chiropractic Association (JCCA), Chiropractic & Osteopathy (C&O), and Journal of Chiropractic Education (JCE). PubMed was searched from January 1, 2005 to December 31, 2010 for total citations for each journal. The same journals were searched for the same dates using the MeSH term “public health”. All languages and article types were included. Results: There were 1223 total articles retrieved. Of this total, only 36 articles were identified using the search term “public health” (JMPT 24/645; JCCA 1/221; JCM 2/165; C&O 6/136; JCE 3/56). It was noted that some articles on public health related topics were not identified with this search strategy, which may reflect the selection of key words in manuscript titles, abstracts, and indexing terms. Conclusion: There are few articles in the five major chiropractic journals that are identified using the MeSH term “public health” in the PubMed search engine. Scholars in this discipline should take note of the wording when writing titles, abstracts, and key indexing terms.

Learning Areas:
Communication and informatics
Other professions or practice related to public health
Public health or related research

Learning Objectives:
1. Recognize the sources and trends of PubMed articles reporting public health in chiropractic journals. 2. Discuss reasons why there may be few articles retrieved using the PubMed search engine. 3. Analyze how the chiropractic journals have made a constructive and positive impact on reporting public health topics in the literature. 4. Discuss the responsibility of the chiropractic researchers to include terms and keywords in various portions of their manuscripts. 5. Recommend future development for how the chiropractic profession can become more involved with publishing public health topics associated with chiropractic care.

Keywords: Chiropractic, Publication

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Qualified on the content I am responsible for because: I have met all 3 of the criteria for authorship: 1) substantial contributions to conception and design, acquisition of data, and analysis and interpretation of data; 2) drafting the article and revising it critically for important intellectual content; and 3) final approval of the version to be submitted. I have a degree in health professions education and have participated in clinical/educational programs that are healthcare related.
Any relevant financial relationships? No

I agree to comply with the American Public Health Association Conflict of Interest and Commercial Support Guidelines, and to disclose to the participants any off-label or experimental uses of a commercial product or service discussed in my presentation.

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