CBS questions CDC’s H1N1 prevalence estimates
CBS’s Sharyl Attkisson reviewed state and federal data (collected through FOIA and other open records requests) and found that H1N1 may not be as prevalent as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have estimated. The story turns on a July 24 memo announcing to states that the CDC would no longer count H1N1 cases and statistics from state tests taken before the memo that show that even tests of the most likely patients usually came back negative for H1N1.
The high level of misdiagnosis of “probable” or “presumed” H1N1 could result inaccurate reports of outbreaks as well as in people assuming they’ve survived H1N1 and are now immune when they’ve actually suffered something that may or may not even be influenza.
Related: The CDC talked a bit about reporting and data in its Oct. 20 news briefing. Read the rough transcript of that briefing, provided by the CDC. And, The Associated Press’ Mike Stobbe, an AHCJ board member, offers more explanation about the surveillance of H1N1.
Attkisson’s report:
Cancer society’s messages on screening conflict
Filed under: Conflicts of interest, Hot Health Headline, Public health
The New York Times‘ Gina Kolata reports that the American Cancer Society, a longtime defender of early detection and cancer screening, is planning to release an online message next year “to emphasize that screening for breast and prostate cancer and certain other cancers can come with a real risk of overtreating many small cancers while missing cancers that are deadly.”
“We don’t want people to panic,” said Dr. Otis Brawley, chief medical officer of the cancer society. “But I’m admitting that American medicine has overpromised when it comes to screening. The advantages to screening have been exaggerated.”
The ACS’ change of heart on breast and prostate screening was inspired, in part, by a recent analysis published in JAMA.
In it, researchers report a 40 percent increase in breast cancer diagnoses and a near doubling of early stage cancers, but just a 10 percent decline in cancers that have spread beyond the breast to the lymph nodes or elsewhere in the body. With prostate cancer, the situation is similar, the researchers report.
In an interesting side note, Kolata includes a quote from Colin Begg, a biostatistician at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, that shows a different perspective on media coverage of the screening debate.
“I am concerned that the complex view of a changing landscape will be distilled by the public into yet another ‘screening does not work’ headline,” Begg said. “The fact that population screening is no panacea does not mean that it is useless,” he added.
Kolata’s story was published on Tuesday. On Wednesday, the ACS released a statement from Brawley in which he says the organization stands by its screening recommendations. In the statement, Brawley says ACS “stands by its recommendation that women age 40 and over should receive annual mammography” and that its recommendation that men consult with their doctors to “make an informed decision about whether or not prostate cancer early detection testing is right for them. ”
The LA Times‘ Booster Shots blog has more, as does NPR’s health blog.
They gave us Part D, now protect it from reform
Filed under: Conflicts of interest, Government, Health care reform, Health journalism, Pharmaceuticals
ProPublica’s Olga Pierce reports that at least 25 of the folks who helped push through pharma-friendly Medicare Part D six years ago are back as lobbyists,and this time they’re fighting to make sure the plan isn’t reduced by reform-related budget cuts.
Pierce’s piece can be divided into three sections, each illuminating and alarming in its own way: How this crew of insiders pushed the envelope to force through Part D in 2003 (Hint: A legendary abuse of the legislative process helped), how they’ve returned and who’s paying them (see a nifty chart of those connections here), and what they’re up to this time around (more of the same, only this time they’re wealthier).
Alongside Pierce’s story, she and ProPublica have launched “Eye on the Health Care Reform,” a feature in which Pierce will keep up with the reform effort’s legislative journey.
InvestigateWest receives $40,000 grant
InvestigateWest, a nonprofit investigative journalism site based in Seattle, has received a $40,000 grant from the Bullitt Foundation.
AHCJ members Daniel Lathrop and Carol Smith are among the founders of the site, which “rose from the ashes of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer” in July.
The grant will support in-depth reporting on environmental issues, one of the site’s main focuses. InvestigateWest also reports on social justice and health issues, especially as they relate to the Pacific Northwest and the West.
The Bullitt Foundation’s mission is to “safeguard the natural environment by promoting responsible human activities and sustainable communities in the Pacific Northwest.”
AHCJ lodges protest over handling of embargo
The Association of Health Care Journalists has followed up on concerns about how an embargo was handled earlier this month by several federal agencies and a medical journal.
The organization sent letters this week to several federal agencies and a medical journal objecting to the uneven handling of embargoed news. The letters were addressed to officials at the National Institute of Mental Health, the Department of Health and Human Services, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the American Academy of Pediatrics to protest the recent handling of embargoes on two autism studies. AHCJ is asking the agencies and academy to clarify embargo policies, saying that once an embargo is broken – once the news is out in any public forum, whether it’s a radio report, a public meeting, a Web site or a newspaper – the embargo must be lifted.
Read the full press release and the letters that were sent:
- Letter to National Institute of Mental Health
- Letter to Department of Health and Human Services
- Letter to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
- Letter to American Academy of Pediatrics
Feds take Columbia to task over decade-old study
Filed under: Conflicts of interest, Health data, Hospitals, Hot Health Headline, Nursing, Pharmaceuticals, Studies, Tools
The run of intriguing health journalism from the Huffington Post Investigative Fund continues this week, as Jeanne Lenzer and Shannon Brownlee look at the federal government’s entrance into an internal conflict at Columbia University’s medical center over the legality and morality of a heart-related study that took place from 1999 to 2001, one in which some experts say it was “virtually guaranteed” that some patients would suffer hemorrhaging.
Columbia has already conducted three internal investigations on the matter. Now, the federal government has asked for a full account of what happened to the study’s participants and ordered that Columbia write a letter to the study’s participants and disclose the “true nature” of what some contend was a deceptive study.
NOTE: In addition to the story itself, the reporters have posted a selection of key documents online.
Lenzer and Brownlee explain that the study went wrong when participants (some of whom were “Spanish-speaking patients who lived in low-income neighborhoods near the hospital”) “were not told that they could be given high doses of the fluids or that they faced a risk of serious bleeding.” Then, despite protests from hospital doctors that patients hadn’t been informed of what were serious possible health risks, the local Institutional Review Board allowed the study to continue. This was followed by years of internal fighting, and finally capped by the HHS’ Office of Human Research Protections entrance into the fray.
Trib looks into dangerous nursing home residents
The Chicago Tribune’s Gary Marx and David Jackson examined the effectiveness of Illinois regulations implemented in 2006 to protect nursing home residents from potentially dangerous peers. They’ve pulled together some alarming anecdotes and data that show the law is not as effective as hoped.
For example, the reporters focus on the man with a criminal record who attacked by another resident with an ice pick. Just a year after the attack, he ended up in the same facility as his victim again. This time, he slashed him with a box cutter. Obviously, there was a hole somewhere in the new system. Marx and Jackson lay out the facts:
With growing numbers of mentally ill felons entering Illinois nursing homes, the state in 2006 became the first to require criminal background checks as part of an overall risk assessment of new residents. The screenings by state contractors are used to identify high-risk individuals who should live in private rooms and be closely monitored.
But a review of confidential reports in 45 recent cases shows that in many instances the assessments were incomplete, leaving out some criminal convictions and other crucial details.
The project includes a searchable database of safety reports on nursing homes in Illinois, including information not searchable on government sites. Readers can use the database to find out the number of residents at a facility who are convicted felons and sex offenders, crimes reported at Chicago nursing homes and fines levied because of deficiencies in care. Head over to the investigation’s homepage to follow the story and its results.
Open access to research recognized this week
Filed under: Health journalism, Public records, Studies, Tools
It’s Open Access week! Time to honor the principle that scientific research should be made available for free online immediately upon publication, a principle that’s served health journalists pretty well over the past few years. Universities, government organizations and other groups around the world will celebrate by opening up more information and drawing attention to the principles that drive the open access movement.
Open Access flagship reaches milestone
On Oct. 19, PLoS Medicine, 
a prominent and pioneering open-access journal published by the Public Library of Science, turned five. The Public Library of Science is a nonprofit funded by charging authors publication fees, and by private donors. In addition to PLoS Medicine, it publishes six other journals covering biology and medical science.
PubMed goes Canadian
One of the greatest triumphs of open access has been PubMed Central, in which all NIH-funded research is made available for free, usually within 12 months of publication. Both the U.S. and U.K. have their own PubMed systems, and now Canada’s getting one too. PubMed Central Canada, created by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the National Research Council’s Canada Institute for Scientific and Technical Information, and the U.S. National Library of Medicine, will take its first steps, launching its manuscript submission system as part of the week’s festivities.
Doctor calls for principles in health reporting
Filed under: Conflicts of interest, Health journalism
Nortin Hadler, M.D., in an opinion piece for ABC News, writes about his worries for health journalism. Hadler, who is on the advisory board for the health and medical journalism program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, says that health journalism is threatened more than other reporting specialties by the financial pressures the media industry is experiencing.
He points out that health reporting is a specialty in journalism and calls for appropriately trained, responsible health journalists. He points to AHCJ’s statement of principles and says living up to them is a “challenge that is met unevenly.”
Hadler expresses concern “about the decimation of the ranks of health journalists. I understand the appeal of ‘press releases’ and the greater appeal of such that accumulate on Web sites; convenience can unburden the journalists assigned to cover more than is possible and cost-effectiveness can unburden the publisher whose cash flow is so tenuous.”
Workshop explored issues of aging America
More than 70 people attended AHCJ’s Aging in the 21st Century workshop last weekend, where former HHS secretary Donna Shalala discussed the health reform proposals and former FDA commissioner David Kessler discussed the nation’s obesity epidemic.
Sam Grogg, dean of the University of Miami School of Communication, left, moderates a session with Thomas Prohaska of the Center for Research on Health and Aging at the University of Illinois at Chicago and Sara Czaja of the Center on Aging at the University of Miami. (Photo by Carla K. Johnson for AHCJ)
AHCJ treasurer Ivan Oransky live-tweeted from the workshop, which featured panels about the health care workforce, aging in ethnic communities, brain research, elder abuse and more.
Shalala said she is confident that health care reform will pass and that consensus is within reach. She says the biggest issue remains how to pay for reform and bring down health care costs.
The Miami Herald’s John Dorschner reports that “speaker after speaker laid out a grim scenario” for aging in the United States, with a smalller health care workforce available to care for a growing elderly population.
Presentations from the workshop will be available for members on the AHCJ Web site later this week. A slideshow from the event is now online.
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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
