HEALWA and you: Evidence-based resources right at your fingertips!

Have you ever wondered where to find evidence-based guidelines for a quality improvement project? Or perhaps you’re caring for a patient with a diagnosis you normally don’t see and you want to get up to speed. Maybe you are looking for quality patient education and don’t want to turn to Google.  Did you know you can find all of those things and more by using HEALWA?

What is HEALWA?

HEALWA “assures affordable, anytime, online access to current, authoritative clinical information and educational resources to eligible health care practitioners in Washington State.” (HEALWA mission statement).

IS HEALWA free?

HEALWA is funded by licensure fees, with $16 allocated to maintain the HEALWA database and its staff, which include a principal investigator to provide elbow support for clinical queries. As of 2024, only 16.6% of RNs and 6.2% of LPNs are registered to use HEALWA, meaning most of us have not yet checked out this amazing resource.  (APRN percentages are not broken out.)

What does HEALWA provide?

The 2025 HEALWA focus areas include the following: primary care provider resources, equal access to healthcare information, resources and programs for opioid use disorder treatment, and behavioral health integration in primary care.  
Recent updates to HEALWA in 2025 included a website redesign, Care Provider Toolkit, and continued work with community partners, such as Columbia Basin College, Northwest University, Foundation for Health Care Quality, Institute of Translational Health Sciences, Lake Washington Institute of Technology, and others.

Current databases and resources available include:

• Health information in multiple languages (via NIH and internet archive), patient education resources from Medline Plus and the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health.
• Research databases: Ethnomed, ClinicalKey, Dynamex, CINAHL Ultimate (nursing research database), NutriHealth, Medline with full text, NatMedPro (alternative medicine/supplement database), and more.
• EBSCO e-book collection, selected-resource e-books specific to the following: emergency department, cancer pain, infusion nursing, emergency psychiatry, school health, correctional nursing, long-term care, med-surg nursing, telehealth, nursing education simulation scenarios, end-of-life care, transgender health, and more.
• Nursing and medical journals (including AJN, Nursing Outlook,  JAMA, and NEJM).
• Evidence-based resources on palliative care, gerontology, integrative medicine, pediatrics, and other specialties.
• Nursing calculators.

The HEALWA database is managed by the UW Health Sciences Library, so a UW NetID is required. These are free and available to RNs and other health professionals in Washington state, even if you are not affiliated with UW. You register using the credential number listed on your Washington state license.