Blog outlines differences in two health databases
The Emerging Technologies Librarian blog takes a moment to explain why the government maintains both the MedlinePlus and Healthfinder databases, and the differences between the two systems. MedlinePlus is more of an accessible gateway with a more limited scope and stronger editorial consistency, while Healthfinder is more comprehensive and allows deeper investigation. Health care journalists should be familiar with the advantages and disadvantages of each, as both can be helpful when used in the right situation.
Cable, Web coverage of swine flu increases anxiety
Tim Arango and Brian Stelter of The New York Times report that the “24-hour news cycle of cable news and the Internet have amplified” the swine flu story.
AHCJ resources for covering swine flu, pandemics and preparednessOne Long Island doctors says patients’ anxiety has been raised by watching cable news from their hospital beds.
An infectious disease specialist “complained that the news media have not focused sufficiently on the fact that not a single person had died of swine flu in the United States during the current outbreak and that it could not be contracted from cooked meat.”
Students look at rural health care in north Ga.
Filed under: Conflicts of interest, Health policy, Hot Health Headline, Member news, Pharmaceuticals, Studies, Uncategorized
Students at the University of Georgia spent the past few months assembling a 19-story package on health in six rural counties near the school’s Athens, Ga., campus. The package, done by students from Pat Thomas’ health and medical reporting class and Mark E. Johnson’s documentary photography course, makes extensive use of video and multimedia slide shows.
The stories focus on particular areas of interest in each county and help tell stories ranging from the challenges of starting a family in economically disadvantaged rural areas to the influence of gangs on the lives of folks living in those areas. In other counties, the reporters covered the prison system, the struggles of aging residents and the senior centers that serve them, and emergency services and rural medicine.
The stories show the breadth of reporting possible within the health care beat and paint a picture of rural health using varied approaches to storytelling.
Institute of Medicine prescribes ethics overhaul
A pillar of the medical establishment criticized industry freebies for doctors in a wide-ranging report that calls for an end to practices that threaten to corrode physicians’ independent judgment and public trust in the profession.
The Institute of Medicine, an arm of the National Academy of Sciences, released a long-awaited report Tuesday that says disclosure of potential conflicts is a necessary first step but isn’t enough to safeguard medicine.
Some of the recommendations, if adopted, would eliminate longstanding practices, such as doctors’ use of free samples of brand-name drugs for all but the poorest patients, industry funding of continuing medical education and company ghostwriting of studies published or presented by doctors.
Columbia University’s David Rothman bluntly told the New York Times, “With the I.O.M.’s endorsement, issues that were once controversial now are indisputable. Conflicts of interest in medicine are no longer acceptable.”
You can read the report free online or download the executive summary. Reporters can get the report free from the National Academies press office, according to a news release.
Though many of the recommendations have already gained traction with universities, law makers and companies, some criticized the report as being short on facts to support its recommendations. Thomas Stossel, a Harvard Medical School professor, told The Wall Street Journal, “There is no evidence for the need of these regulation. It’s high-end welfare for the ethicists and maybe job security for the academic administrators.”
Bio Bonus: The report includes bios of committee members, including Peter Corr, formerly a research executive at Pfizer, who still holds stock and options in the drug maker. See the lineup starting on page 331.
Mass. health journalism fellows named
Ten journalists were named to the 2009 class of the Health Coverage Fellowship sponsored by the Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts Foundation.
Fellows include: Jennifer Berryman, WCVB-Boston, Ceci Connolly, The Washington Post; Andy Dworkin, The Oregonian; Latoyia Edwards, New England Cable News; Megan Hall, WRNI-Radio, Providence, R.I.; Josie Huang, Maine Public Broadcasting; Ralph Jimenez, Concord (N.H.) Monitor; Aaron Nicodemus, Worcester, Mass., Telegram & Gazette; Sacha Pfeiffer, WBUR-Radio, Boston; and Lisa Wangsness, The Boston Globe.
The fellows will focus on health care issues ranging from uninsured to mental illness, ethnic and economic disparities and environmental health. They’ll also examine public health scares, such as avian flu.
The program, led by former Globe reporter Larry Tye, runs for nine days starting Friday at Babson College’s Center for Executive Education in Wellesley. Other supporting organizations include Maine Health Access Foundation, New Hampshire’s Endowment for Health and the Northwest Health Foundation.
Style guide encourages accurate coverage of aging
Filed under: Conflicts of interest, Health journalism, Health policy, Tools
The International Longevity Center - USA and Aging Services of California have teamed up to create “Media Takes: On Aging” (56-page PDF), a “Styleguide for Journalism, Entertainment and Advertising.”
The guide provides basic statistics and information as well as primers on elder abuse, age discrimination in the media, covering the “age beat,” and the under representation and mockery of the aged in entertainment media. The guide’s writers warn against specific stereotypes and certain ageist terminology such as “crotchety old man,” “old goat,” “senile old fool,” “sweet old lady,” “ancient” and “one foot in the grave.”
The primer lays out the authors’ version of an accurate portrait of aging in America as a guideline.
- Eighty percent of older Americans are healthy enough to engage in normal activities.
- Sixty four percent of Americans age 65 and older report no limitation in major activities.
- Only 20 percent of Americans age 65 and older report that they need assistance with basic daily activities.
- Rates of disability are continuing to decline for persons 65 and older.
- Many older persons have an interest in sex and continue to engage in sexual activity, which plays an important role in their lives and, in fact, may be more satisfying after age 60.
- Studies have also shown that people who continue to learn and regularly exercise are more likely to maintain cognitive abilities than those who do not.
According to the primer, negative media coverage can have a deleterious effect on the health of the elderly. The authors thus urge reporters to be careful when portraying the aged.
Becca Levy, an associate professor of epidemiology and psychology at Yale University, who studies the health effects of such messages on elderly people, found that little insults can lead to more negative images of aging and, in fact, even worsen functional health over time. Levy’s seminal long-term survey of 660 people over age 50 in a small Ohio town, published in 2002, found that those who had positive perceptions of aging lived an average of 7.5 years longer– a bigger increase than that associated with exercising or not smoking.
The report also includes specific requests for journalists to follow, and should help journalists tackling stories on the “age beat” to ask themselves the right questions and be aware of specific issues affecting the country’s aging population.
Sebelius confirmed as HHS leader
Filed under: Government, Health care reform, Health data, Studies
The Senate approved Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius to be secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services today.
Several AHCJ members and staff visited Sebelius in Topeka on April 21, 2008, as part of AHCJ's Midwest Health Journalism Program Fellowships.
Some previous coverage of Sebelius’ nomination and other issues:
- Sebelius coverage focuses on experience, abortion
- Sebelius confirmation hearing
- Sebelius to testify at Senate committee hearing
- FDA staff calls for end to corruption, wrongdoing
- Debate roils over effectiveness, ‘rationing’
Most say outbreak coverage has been appropriate
Joe Strupp of Editor & Publisher quotes three AHCJ board members about coverage of the swine flu outbreak, all of whom agree that reporters and editors need to take a measured approach. AHCJ president Trudy Lieberman says journalists should be careful not to overplay the danger but also must not minimize it.
AHCJ resources for covering swine flu, pandemics and preparedness“The more history and context you can get, the better. You need to give the how-to advice.”
Ivan Oransky, an AHCJ board member and managing editor for online at Scientific American, says journalists have learned lessons from past scares, such as anthrax and SARS.
Media critic Howard Kurtz writes about swine flu coverage in The Washington Post, saying that “the sheer volume of media attention suggested a full-blown crisis.” Kurtz talks to people from MSNBC and CNN, as well as journalism educators who all seem to back up Kurtz’ assertion.
He does report that flu stories are no longer the exclusive domain of traditional news organizations:
These days, flu stories spread through more than just traditional outlets. Nielsen Online reports that Internet postings about swine flu are nearly 10 times as great as for the salmonella and peanut butter scare last winter, and the subject of nearly 2 percent of Twitter messages.
Gary Schwitzer, a health journalism professor at the University of Minnesota and publisher of HealthNewsReview.org, says he has been “favorably impressed” by most of the coverage, although he says he hasn’t watched television coverage.
The Knight Science Journalism tracker analyzes coverage of the swine flu outbreak so far, finding that “advice in fact sheet and question-answer formats are common” but that there is little coverage of the science. The Tracker does acknowledge that’s to be expected at this early stage but that soon there will be new science to report on.
Kit Eaton of Fast Company reports on the use of Twitter to spread information about the swine flu outbreak. Eaton writes that Twitter seems to be finding use as a live news channel as people use it to report things like passengers at the Atlanta airport using face masks.
However, Eaton points to another issue: “there’s no moderation on Twitter, obviously, so there’s as much a potential for the spread of misinformation as there is for vital or interesting news.”
CNN’s John D. Sutter reports that some people say Twitter has become a “hotbed of unnecessary hype and misinformation about the outbreak.”
Evgeny Morozov, a fellow at the Open Society Institute and a blogger on ForeignPolicy.com, says “there’s incentive for Twitter users to post whatever is on their mind because it helps them grow their online audiences.”
But in an emergency, that tendency means people write about their own fears of symptoms and widespread deaths, which can create an uninformed hysteria, he said.
Al Tompkins, of Poynter Institute, says information about the outbreak needs to be put in context by journalists. Tompkins also says that — so far — television coverage has been responsible.
Update
AHCJ board member and independent journalist Andrew Holtz was interviewed on KCBS radio in San Francisco about media coverage of the outbreak.
Can reader comments be harmful to public health?
Regan Ray raises an interesting question on the Town Hall blog from the Canadian Journalism Project: Should reader comments be moderated more in public health stories?
In an example from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s Web site, a reader complained that the site shouldn’t run a photo of pigs with a FAQ about swine flu. The reader asserts that exposure to pigs isn’t to blame for the current outbreak, even though the FAQ does say that contact with pigs is how the virus is spread.
Ray asks whether there is a danger in readers providing inaccurate information in comments sections and if comments should be rigorously moderated when public safety is at issue.
Debate roils over effectiveness, ‘rationing’
Filed under: Health care reform, Health policy, Hot Health Headline
The Kansas Health Institute’s Dave Ranney attempts to illuminate and explain the fears that research into the comparative effectiveness of health care will lead to a “rationing” system that forces patients toward the cheapest options. Ranney interviewed prominent Kansas sources on all sides of the debate.
U.S. Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., expressed his reservations about the possible consequences of seemingly-innocuous research into comparative effectiveness.
Roberts warned that there’s little to stop the federal government from using the research to figure out which medications or treatments achieve similar results for less cost. When that happens, he said, it won’t be long before Medicare starts cutting costs by steering doctors toward the cheaper alternatives and rationed or cookie-cutter treatments heedless of individual results.
And where Medicare goes, the nation’s health insurers will soon follow.
“This is very dangerous territory,” Roberts said.
In response to Sen. Roberts, Ranney quoted a health policy expert who said such theories are “fear mongering, it’s raising the specter of socialism, it’s telling people they’re going to have some fuzzy-headed bureaucrat telling them what to do, denying them choice.”
Ranney includes the answers that Kansas governor and HHS nominee Kathleen Sebelius gave to similar questions posed by the Senate Finance Committee.
-
Awards for Excellence in Health Care JournalismDeadline: Feb. 3
- How I did it: Falsified charts in nursing homes linked to patient care
- Access Denied: Looking at a lack of health care availability
- Transparency & medical errors: Public reporting of patient harm is a potent force
- Focus on freelancing: Tips for buying liability insurance
- Why do some patients get stuck in hospitals for weeks, months?
- Investigate health professionals and the boards that regulate them
- Presidents of AHCJ, SPJ call for more openness from Obama administration
