The Circumpolar Health Bibliographic Database (CHBD) is a free electronic database of abstracts, citations, geographic and subject indexing, library codes and their links to full text publications, both peer-reviewed and gray literature. Established in 2007, it contains more than four thousand records that describe human health in the circumpolar region. The CHBD is a circumpolar chronic disease prevention project of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research

Canadian Institutes of Health Research

Canadian Institutes of Health Research is the major federal agency responsible for funding health research in Canada. It is the successor to the Medical Research Council of Canada. It aims to create new health knowledge, and to translate that knowledge from the research setting into real world...

. It is maintained by the University of Calgary

University of Calgary

The University of Calgary is a public research university located in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. Founded in 1966 the U of C is composed of 14 faculties and more than 85 research institutes and centres.More than 25,000 undergraduate and 5,500 graduate students are currently...

 in Calgary

Calgary

Calgary is a city in the Province of Alberta, Canada. It is located in the south of the province, in an area of foothills and prairie, approximately east of the front ranges of the Canadian Rockies...

, Alberta, Canada.

The CHBD was initially constructed with records from the Arctic Institute of North America

Arctic Institute of North America

The Arctic Institute of North America is mandated to study the North American and circumpolar Arctic in the areas of natural science, social science, arts and the humanities. In addition, it acquires, preserves and disseminates information on environmental, physical, and social conditions in the...

's database. These were mainly northern Canadian

Northern Canada

Northern Canada, colloquially the North, is the vast northernmost region of Canada variously defined by geography and politics. Politically, the term refers to the three territories of Canada: Yukon, Northwest Territories, and Nunavut...

records. It is expected to take several years to add non-Canadian records to the CHBD. The Circumpolar Health Observatory, proposed in May 2008 in Norway, would disseminate its data through the CHBD.

Funding for the database increased by 50% for the period of 2008-2009.