Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) can be incorporated into your search strategy in combination with other keywords to increase precision and relevance. MeSH terms can be used in Medline databases such as PubMed and Ovid Medline.
Examples:
Health Behavior [Mesh] AND African Americans AND hypertension
Health Knowledge, Attitudes, Practice [Mesh] AND childhood obesity AND nutrition
Attitude to Health
Public attitudes toward health, disease, and the medical care system.
Community Health Planning
Planning that has the goals of improving health, improving accessibility to health services, and promoting efficiency in the provision of services and resources on a comprehensive basis for a whole community.
Epidemiologic Factors
Events, characteristics, or other definable entities that have the potential to bring about a change in a health condition or other defined outcome.
Health Behavior
Behaviors expressed by individuals to protect, maintain or promote their health status. For example, proper diet, and appropriate exercise are activities perceived to influence health status. Life style is closely associated with health behavior and factors influencing life style are socioeconomic, educational, and cultural.
Healthcare Disparities
Differences in access to or availability of medical facilities and services.
Health Communication
The transfer of information from experts in the medical and public health fields to patients and the public. The study and use of communication strategies to inform and influence individual and community decisions that enhance health.
Health Education
Education that increases the awareness and favorably influences the attitudes and knowledge relating to the improvement of health on a personal or community basis.
Health Knowledge, Attitudes, Practice
Knowledge, attitudes, and associated behaviors which pertain to health-related topics such as pathologic processes or diseases, their prevention, and treatment.
Health Literacy
Degree to which individuals have the capacity to obtain, process, and understand basic health information and services needed to make appropriate health decisions.
Health Promotion
Encouraging consumer behaviors most likely to optimize health potentials (physical and psychosocial) through health information, preventive programs, and access to medical care.
Policy Making
The decision process by which individuals, groups or institutions establish policies pertaining to plans, programs or procedures.
Primary Prevention
Specific practices for the prevention of disease or mental disorders in susceptible individuals or populations. These include health promotion, including mental health; protective procedures, such as communicable disease control; and monitoring and regulation of environmental pollutants.
Social Determinants of Health
The circumstances in which people are born, grow up, live, work, and age, as well as the systems put in place to deal with illness. These circumstances are in turn shaped by a wider set of forces: economics, social policies, and politics (http://www.cdc.gov/socialdeterminants/).