Prevention vs. treatment in global health
AHCJ members Christine Gorman and Maryn McKenna participated in a blog experiment, in which a group of people decide to blog about the same topic at the same time - similar to a blog carnival. The experiment, focused on global health and “prevention vs. treatment,” generated posts from a variety of viewpoints:
- Prevention vs. Treatment: A False Choice
- The gradual abandonment of anti-tobacco/anti-smoking programs in the U.S.
- Why we tend to value current health more than future health“
- The need for a vaccine against methicillin resistant staph aureus
- Why prevention vs. treatment is the wrong way to think about drug resistance to malaria
- Proving prevention works is a lot harder than you might think
- HIV Information for Myanmar offers a few words on the greater good from the late Bogyoke (General) Aung San, who led the fight for Burmese independence after World War II.
- Whether concerns over health reform in the U.S. will crowd out discussion of global health
- On why good decisions in public health “are about balance, and looking for long-term systemic solutions instead of the quick fix“
- And, from a public relations perspective: differences between ’selling-in’ stories that have a prevention angle over those that emphasise treatment“
Analysis shows pitfalls of observational studies
Filed under: Health journalism, Hot Health Headline, Studies
How much of a chance are you willing to take on a chance finding? That’s the question raised in a British scientific journal after a study published last year suggested that the breakfast cereal eaten by 740 pregnant moms somehow determined the gender of their babies.
As it turned out, 56 percent of the women who consumed the most calories before conception gave birth to boys, compared with 45 percent of those who consumed the least. Of 132 individual foods tracked, breakfast cereal was the most significantly linked with baby boys. Snap, crackle, pop, right?
Not so fast, points out Melinda Beck in a health column in The Wall Street Journal. She rightly notes this was an observational study and the cereal findings are symptomatic of serial conclusions that such studies somehow offer consistently reliable and insightful evidence of a trend.
“Behind the cereal squabble lies a deep divide between statisticians and epidemiologists about the nature of chance in observational studies,” Beck writes. “Statisticians say random associations are rampant in such studies, which is why so many have contradictory findings [ ... and that] only strict clinical trials with a control group and a test group and one variable can truly prove a cause-and-effect association. [But] epidemiologists argue that … controlled clinical trials are costly, time-consuming and sometimes unethical.”
At issue, of course, is the extent to which such studies should be believed and reported before repeated findings offer something more conclusive. What do you think, though? Should observational studies of this sort make headlines or are they a cheap way to attract an audience?
Registration for Health Journalism 2009 is open
Planning for AHCJ’s annual conference - in Seattle, April 16-19 - is moving full-speed ahead. Check out the Web site for a list of expected events and panels, field trips and more.
There are several fellowships available to help journalists with the costs of attending the conference. Additionally, AHCJ has not raised registration fees. In addition to informative panels, press conferences, networking, access to the latest resources and story ideas, registration also includes your choice of field trips or a multimedia workshop on Thursday, a Freelance PitchFest on Friday, the awards luncheon and evening receptions.
People who want to go on one of the field trips need to register for the conference early because there are limited seats available and the field trips always fill up fast.
We hope to see you in Seattle!
Reviewers find increase in five-star health stories
Is the quality of health journalism improving? Apparently it is, according to the HealthNewsReview.org project, which was created nearly three years ago to review and evaluate health news stories around the country.
In a note on the organization’s Web site, Gary Schwitzer, a University of Minnesota health journalism professor who launched and runs the project, wrote that, “of the first 710 stories reviewed on HealthNewsReview.org, only 88 – or 12 percent - have received a five-star score.” But five of the first 12 stories reviewed this year got top scores - a five-star review, which he calls “unprecedented.”
However, “it’s not about the stars,” Schwitzer tells us. “The star score is converted from a grade three reviewers (out of a team of several dozen) give each story for how it does on 10 standardized criteria. The same 10 standardized criteria are applied to each story. So, while there’s an element of subjectivity
in any grading system, this is as objective and standardized as we can get.” To learn more about the ratings and criteria involved, you can look here and here.
Just the same, Schwitzer wonders whether the site is making a difference and if it’s helping journalists do a better job. “We can’t be sure of the impact we’ve had,” he writes on the site, “but a recent analysis of many of the first stories we reviewed back in the Spring of 2006 compared with some of the most recent stories we reviewed in the Winter of 2008 suggests that the quality of health journalism is improving – despite all of the difficult economic times in newsrooms across the country.”
But if numbers tell the story, keep checking the site for insights and trends.
What do you think about the quality of health journalism - are you seeing more thoughtful and accurate stories? Do you visit HealthNewsReview.org and use its criteria when you write about health?
Wyeth-funded course promoted hormone therapy
Filed under: Health journalism, Hot Health Headline
John Fauber and Susanne Rust of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel continue the paper’s examination of the influence that drug companies and device manufacturers have on patient care with a story about a University of Wisconsin-Madison course funded entirely by Wyeth Pharmaceuticals.
The course promoted hormone therapy and started just months after a clinical trial was ended early because researchers found that women who took hormone therapy drugs were at increased risk for breast cancer, heart disease, stroke and blood clots.
For six years, “thousands of doctors from around the country took the online course that was funded entirely by a $12 million grant from Wyeth Pharmaceuticals, which makes the hormone therapy drugs used in the study, Prempro and Premarin.”
The paper reports that “Even after the course was no longer available, the Web site and course material remained on the Internet, accessible to consumers and doctors. The university dropped the site Jan. 15, one day after the Journal Sentinel began questioning UW officials about the propriety of the program.”
Consider source when reporting hospital rankings
HealthGrades, a health care ratings company, has released a report (PDF) that says “Medicare patients treated at top-rated hospitals nationwide across the most common Medicare diagnoses and procedures are 27 percent less likely to die, on average, than those admitted to all other hospitals.”
The report also names the hospitals that HealthGrades has deemed “Distinguished Hospitals for Clinical Excellence.”
That study (PDF) and the designations for hospitals are prompting a number of news articles reporting that local hospitals have been named as “top hospitals.”
But there are some things to think about when examining hospital rankings. For one thing, hospitals pay HealthGrades to use its information as promotional material. In addition, the data HealthGrades uses can be out of date and is based only on Medicare patients. A 2002 review found that “ratings on individual hospitals were often misleading.”
Charles Ornstein of ProPublica wrote a thorough tip sheet about how to cover your local hospital, including information about HealthGrades and other hospital rankings.
For a more balanced comparison of local hospitals, consider using the Hospital Compare patient survey data from the Department of Health and Human Services. AHCJ has made it easier for journalists to compare hospitals in their regions by generating spreadsheet files from the HHS database, allowing members to compare more than a few hospitals at a time, using spreadsheet or database software.
AHCJ provides key documentation and explanatory material to help you understand the data possibilities and limits. Need help analyzing Excel files? AHCJ offers a tutorial about investigating health data using spreadsheets.
Employee benefits reference free for journalists
Health journalists will be able to get their hands on a traditionally strong reference book for free. The first complete update of EBRI’s Fundamentals of Employee Benefit Programs since 1997 is just out. The Employee Benefit Research Institute (EBRI) is a nonadvocacy research institute that does not take policy positions and does not lobby.
According to a press release (PDF), the new edition of the nearly 600-page book includes:
- An overview of employee benefits in the United States , including detailed chapters on Social Security and Medicare.
- Retirement benefits, covering defined benefit (pension) and defined contribution (401(k)-type) plans, individual retirement accounts, cash balance plans, and much more. An appendix explains the automatic enrollment provisions of the Pension Protection Act of 2006, the most important recent federal law affecting retirement plans.
- Health benefits, including chapters on drug, dental, and vision plans, retiree health benefits, and managing health care costs (among other topics).
- Other benefits, such as leave, workers’ compensation, and d omestic partner benefits.
- Public-sector benefits, covering both health and retirement benefits in the public sector, regulation of public-sector retirement plans, and benefit cost comparisons between state and local and private-sector employers.
To request a free copy of the book, contact Alicia Willis at EBRI, 202-659-0670, or at publications@ebri.org.
Writer cites health coverage in women’s magazines
Sheila Weller, writing for The Huffington Post, has a bone to pick with Caroline Kennedy over a disparaging comment she made about “women’s magazines.”
Weller specifically cites health as being an issue that has gotten cutting-edge coverage in women’s magazines, pointing to Self magazine’s coverage of breast cancer, obesity and “the impact of Bush’s funding cuts to international health clinics that supported abortion.”
In fact, Self has won several Awards for Excellence in Health Care Journalism over the past several years for its coverage of sperm banks, chiropractic neck adjustment and health care providers declining to provide care because of doctors’ personal beliefs.
Weller also mentions articles in Glamour, including a piece about addiction to Paxil; one that looked at how local, state and federal policies were affecting women’s health care; how the military first accepted Plan B and then withdrew it; and contraceptive equity in insurance coverage.
In the Fall 2007 issue of HealthBeat, Traci Angel wrote about an analysis of how 44 stories were framed in 10 women’s magazines. The researcher, Barbara Barnett of the University of Kansas, found that articles can provide valuable information overlooked by the mainstream press. But, she said, the coverage women receive from them often focus on superficial topics and reinforce women stereotypes as caregivers, she says. As far as health coverage in such magazines, “She concluded that health stories in these publications motivated women to keep well so they could tend to their families.”
What do you think? Are so-called “women’s magazines” a good source of information about health?
Social networking could improve FDA response
Pete Blackshaw, on the ConsumerGeneratedMedia.com blog, critiques the FDA’s Web site and provides some ideas about how the FDA could use social networking and digital media to better reach and educate consumers about the recent Salmonella outbreak.
He points out that this is a timely issue “as we have a new administration that’s already set a high bar on creative, if not breakthrough, use of the web as a communications channel, loyalty builder, and rapid-response tool.”
Among his suggestions:
- Use video to connect with and reassure consumers
- Include links that make it easy for people to share the content through e-mail and social networking sites
- Create a presence on social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace
- Create widgets that can be used on other Web sites to help share FDA information
- Build a blog that provides a steady stream of information about the recalls
- Use photos of product involved in the recall
What other government agencies might be better served by a new look at their online presence and strategy?
Kleyman joins New America Media
After 20 years at the American Society on Aging, Paul Kleyman has left his editorship of Aging Today.
He has joined the staff of New America Media to help develop an age beat for ethnic media as associate director, elders newsbeat.
Paul Kleyman (Photo: Frank Klein)
He says his team will be writing original stories, providing links and news digests, glossaries and more as part of the online news service for almost 3,000 ethnic media outlets.
“It’s an exciting and challenging move for me,” Kleyman says. He adds that, because the Journalists Exchange on Aging is an independent entity, he hopes to reconstitute his Age Beat Online newsletter soon.
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Health Journalism 2010, AHCJ's annual conference, features a world-class program with story ideas, sources, stronger reporting skills, chances to meet newsmakers and network with other journalists.
- Health and education: Covering these intersecting beats
- Reporting on the business of health care
- Health reporting resources for journalists on state and local government beats
- Shortened Lives: How location, lifestyle affect health
- Covering a complex story for the long haul
- Aging in the 21st Century: Presentations and tip sheets
- AHCJ calls for better information from Joint Commission Web site
