New CDC site aims to reduce workplace obesity
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has launched a Web site called “LEAN Works” as part of a campaign to work with employers to reduce workplace obesity. In CDC-speak, LEAN stands for Leading Employees to Activity and Nutrition.
The campaign aims to speak in a language business can understand, emphasizing the negative impact big waistlines can have on a company’s bottom line. They even provide an obesity cost calculator, which will allow any HR department creepy enough to have every employee’s body mass index on file to calculate the precise projected return on investment yielded by an obesity intervention program.
The CDC also gives tips on how to set up a workplace obesity intervention, how to keep the momentum going and how to measure whether or not it’s producing any results.
(Hat tip to the NPR Health Blog)
AHCJ Resource
Covering Obesity: A Guide for Reporters
The prospect of covering such a broad, engaging and important topic as obesity can be overwhelming. This guide, supported by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, is designed to help journalists cover a wide range of stories, whether writing on deadline or researching a multipart series. It offers assistance on calculating body mass index, finding obesity statistics on the state level, gauging the quality of school district wellness policies, finding innovative school nutrition policies and much more. Supplementary material can be found on this page.
Health reform czar was director at troubled firms
Fred Schulte, with the Investigative Reporting Workshop at American University, reviewed government documents to find that Nancy-Ann DeParle, director of the White House Office of Health Reform, “served as a director of corporations that faced scores of federal investigations, whistleblower lawsuits and other regulatory actions.”
Nancy-Ann DeParle meets with Obama in the Oval Office. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)
DeParle, who was in the Clinton administration, has earned more than $6.6 million in the private sector since 2001.
After leaving government, DeParle accepted director positions at half a dozen companies suspected of violating the very laws and regulations she had enforced for Medicare. Those companies got into further trouble on her watch as a director.
In the story, published on MSNBC.com, Schulte details DeParle’s many corporation connections, including those with Guidant, Boston Scientific Corp. and DaVita Inc. While the story acknowledges that board members usually aren’t held legally accountable for illegal dealings by a company’s management, it does find that “served on board committees responsible for monitoring the companies’ compliance with laws and regulations.”
FDA rethinks ‘black box’ warning
Quitting smoking, always nerve-racking, may prove even tougher in the wake of a Food and Drug Administration decision to require its strongest warnings for some drugs popular with folks trying to kick the habit.
Pfizer’s Chantix, GlaxoSmithKline’s Zyban, and Zyban’s generic equivalents will now carry a lengthy “boxed warning” about risks of some pretty serious changes in behavior, including hostility and suicidal thoughts, that could dissuade people from using the drugs.
Photo by flattop341 via Flickr
But a “boxed warning?” Hey, FDA, don’t you mean “black box warning?” That’s the way the agency has long been proud to talk about the toughest warning at its disposal. Well, maybe not so much anymore.
CNBC’s Mike Huckman tweeted during an agency call with reporters about the rowback: “FDA official wants media to stop using term ‘Black Box’ & just say ‘Boxed Warning.’ ‘Black Box carries implication ‘Don’t u dare use this.””
Forbes’s Matt Herper wrote that during the call Robert Temple, director of the FDA’s drug evaluation office said the beefed-up boxed warnings on Chantx and Zyban aren’t meant to stop people from using smoking-cessation drugs. “Smoking is really bad for you,” Temple said. “What you want is that people don’t [use the drugs] casually.”
What’s a reporter to do? U.S. News and World Report health writer Katherine Hobson poked FDA on Twitter, “What’s a better substitute for ‘black box warning’? Gentle reminder?”
How about, “Whoa! You sure you really wanna take this pill?”
Report: $25,000 buys access to Post’s health reporters
Filed under: Conflicts of interest, Health journalism
Mike Allen of Politico.com reports that The Washington Post is offering off-the-record access to its reporters, for a price.
A flier, given to a reporter by a lobbyist, says those who take it up on its offer will get access to its “health care reporting and editorial staff.” For $25,000, sponsors can have “An exclusive opportunity to participate in the health-care reform debate among the select few who will actually get it done” in the first of these “salons.”
The first such event is titled “Health-Care Reform: Better or Worse for Americans? The reform and funding debate” and is scheduled for July 21.
Politico says it has asked The Post to comment and it will post its response.
Update
Politico has now posted text of an internal Post memo from executive editor Marcus Brauchli that went out today. He says “the description of the event preclude our participation.”
We will not participate in events where promises are made that in exchange for money The Post will offer access to newsroom personnel or will refrain from confrontational questioning. Our independence from advertisers or sponsors is inviolable.
A Post spokeswoman tells Politico that the flier that was distributed “went out before it was properly vetted, and this draft does not represent what the company’s vision for these dinners are.” She says the flier came from a business division of the company and the newsroom did not know about it.
Washington Post media writer Howard Kurtz weighs in on the issue as well.
White House spokesman Robert Gibbs discussed the Washington Post situation during a press briefing.
Series on drug sales wins national Murrow award
AHCJ member Kelley Weiss of Capital Public Radio in Sacramento has won a national Edward R. Murrow Award from the Radio-Television News Directors Association. The awards recognize excellence in electronic journalism.
Kelley Weiss
Weiss was honored in the investigative category for her series about the hidden world of illegal prescription drugs sold at swap meets and botanicas.
Weiss won first place in the Awards for Excellence in Health Care Journalism for the same piece. She also was a member of the inaugural class of AHCJ’s Midwest Health Journalism Program Fellows. (Applications currently being accepted for the next class.)
Journal spotlights science journalism
The latest issue of Nature explores the present and future of the relationship between media and science. Coverage includes balanced and constructive critiques of social media and journalists who aren’t themselves scientists as well as some obligatory questioning of the future of journalism as an industry.
In one article, Geoff Brumfiel details the rising role of Twitter-style social media in chronicling and commenting upon scientific conferences, saying that while providing for open and easy exchange of information, it also blurs the line between scientist and journalist. Additionally, the instantaneous and far-reaching broadcast of ideas makes competitive researchers even warier of revealing groundbreaking findings at conferences, on the grounds that they may then be snatched by any rival with Web access.
In another piece, journalist Toby Murcott questions the efficacy of press release-based science journalism and calls for reporters learn the expertise necessary to understand the fields on which they are reporting, and for journals to publish review comments that will provide more context for each article.
In a more focused editorial, Nature calls attention to tuberculosis and suggests that TB sufferers and researchers need to follow the example of AIDS and “capture the world’s imagination and support” by reaching out and finding “highly effective champions.” Globally, 9 million people develop active cases of TB each year.
Other pieces that may be of interest to health journalists:
- Editorial: Cheerleader or watchdog? – Science journalism is under threat. What can scientists do to help?
- Boyce Rensberger tracks the progression of scientific correspondents from cheerleaders to watchdogs.
- Editorial: Raising the standards – A fledgling effort in China will show people what is happening on the environmental front.
- The Arab boom – As research increases in Arab countries, the media is stepping up to report on it. Nadia El-Awady says the local journalism has much room for improvement.
- From the newsroom – The Washington Post’s national environmental reporter Juliet Eilperin and its executive editor Marcus Brauchli discuss the future of science coverage in their newspaper.
Reporters: Obama’s town-hall-style health care reform meeting ‘tightly controlled’
At 1:15 ET, President Obama is scheduled to answer questions about health care reform at a live, online town-hall-style meeting.
In a press briefing preceding the forum, reporters Helen Thomas and Chip Reid questioned White House spokesman Robert Gibbs about how the questions would be solicited and why the event is being so “tightly controlled.”
Gibbs said “a group over at new media is sorting through the questions” and that he thinks “the questions will be a representative sample of the issues in this debate.”
Thomas and Reid objected to the control the administration has exerted over this event, with Thomas noting that it doesn’t match its earlier claims of transparency. (UPDATE: RealClearPolitics.com has video of the exhange.)
The questions for this “town hall meeting” are being submitted through Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. Twitter users can use the hashtag #WHHCQ.
Report, feature focus on state health stats
Filed under: Government, Health care reform, Health data, Tools
The Department of Health and Human Services’ Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality has assembled data from the 2008 National Healthcare Quality Report 
into easy-to-interpret State Snapshots “to help State officials and their public- and private-sector partners better understand health care quality and disparities in their State.”
And, in a feature called “The Health Care Status Quo” on HealthReform.gov, the administration is using state-by-state data to champion it’s efforts to overhaul the system, with statistics for each state that show things like how many people are uninsured, how many children are obese, how many people don’t have access to care and more. The statistics are all previously available but this feature does compile them from the various agencies and gives a profile for each state with numbers showing problems. Downsides: You can’t quickly compare states (just one at a time) and it is overtly political, clearly intended to support health reform.
Let the comparison shopping begin
The august Institute of Medicine is out with academic medicine’s answer to the Billboard Hot 100. A panel of experts has come up with a list of the top 100 health topics that deserve a rigorous comparison of options to determine which are best.
The recommendations, part of a larger report that lays out a blueprint for research, are organized by quartile, and the top 25 would be the ones with a bullet, to stretch the pop music analogy.
Some of the high priorities:
- What are the best strategies to reduce infections spread in health-care settings?
- What’s the best way to use expensive biotech drugs – like Remicade, Enbrel and Humira – to treat inflammatory diseases, such as rheumatoid arthritis?
- How should dental care be delivered to children to most effectively prevent cavities?
Comparing effectiveness is suddenly an idea whose time has come. “Health care decisions too often are a matter of guesswork, because we lack good evidence to inform them,” said Harold C. Sox, editor of The Annals of Internal Medicine, and panel co-chairman, according to The New York Times.
In legislation to boost the economy, Congress set aside more than $1 billion to fund comparisons that would pick health winners and losers. It was the IOM’s job to come up with recommendations on where to start.
For a little peek into how the priorities were chosen, Consumer Reports‘ Health Blog has a Q&A with Consumer Union President Jim Guest, who was a member of the Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research that came up with the recommendations.
The New England Journal of Medicine weighed in with a “Perspective” piece on implications of the report. For more about comparative effectiveness, see this piece from AHCJ board member Andrew Holtz, M.P.H.
Philly VA doc defends himself before Congress
The New York Times‘ Walt Bogdanich has followed up his investigation into a “rogue” cancer unit at a Philadelphia VA hospital with a report on the questioning of one of the alleged rogue doctors, Gary Kao, at a congressional panel headed by Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter. Kao defended himself by claiming that the mistakes he made during a process called brachytherapy (in which tiny radioactive seeds are inserted into a patient’s prostate) were nothing out of the ordinary.
Dr. Kao did not deny placing large numbers of seeds outside the prostate, but he said investigators were wrong to single him out. “It’s a recognized risk of the procedure,” he told the panel.
Dr. Kao’s assertion was disputed by Steven A. Reynolds, who oversees materials safety at the N.R.C., which regulates all nuclear materials. Cases where large numbers of seeds miss the prostate, Mr. Reynolds said, “happen very, very infrequently.”
Kao said he voluntarily appeared before the panel to set the record straight and correct what he called “very serious false allegations” made by Bogdanich’s initial article.
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