AHCJ seeks change in medical meeting policies
NOTE: A previous version of AHCJ’s news release said that eight medical groups have policies that ban photography and recording at their meetings. In fact, only four have outright bans. Other groups have varying levels of restrictions. Please read the updated version of the release.
The Association of Health Care Journalists has asked eight medical organizations to end their policies that bar journalists from recording or photographing the meetings where new scientific research is presented.
Such policies make it difficult for journalists to provide complete and accurate information to the public. Most medical societies do not bar recording and photography – but those that do include such prominent organizations as the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and the American Association for Cancer Research.
“At medical society meetings, speakers often present extensive methods and volumes of data at a rapid pace,” said letters to the medical groups from AHCJ. “It is not physically possible to write fast enough to get it all down. It is easier for everyone, including your staff and presenting researchers, if writers can record and photograph what they need.”
The letters note the difficulties that these stringent policies create for all concerned. Writers have to chase down speakers after the fact, the press room staff has to connect speakers with reporters who need to clarify information, and speakers have to take time to repeat what they had already said.
Researchers analyze media’s cancer reporting
Filed under: Health journalism, Hot Health Headline
University of Pennsylvania researchers reviewed 436 cancer-related newspaper and magazine stories (about 1/5 of the total) published between 2005 and 2007 and found that media tend to overhype aggressive treatments and avoid failures, errors, end of life care and death. Here’s the abstract in Archives of Internal Medicine.
In the press release, the study’s highlights are summarized thus:
- Although 32 percent of the articles focused on survival, only 8 percent covered death and dying; this despite the fact that half of all cancer patients will die of their illness.
- While most stories discussed aggressive cancer treatments, almost none (2 percent) discussed end-of-life, palliative or hospice care.
- 13 percent reported that aggressive cancer treatments can fail, and just 30 percent reported that aggressive treatments can result in adverse effects.
The authors note that the media under-reports palliative and hospice care, as well as outcomes data and other issues surrounding death and dying.
The study notes that unrealistic optimism is presented in most stories about cancer treatment, when in reality half of all cancer patients do not survive, according to statistics from the American Cancer Society.
“The nation’s leading media institutions have set a low bar for routine coverage of the nation’s long-running war on cancer. Hype is the norm,” wrote medical author Merrill Goozner, MS, in a commentary accompanying the article. “The relationship between journalism and medical researchers has been called a complicit collaboration in which both benefit from sensationalized stories. Recent media cutbacks and the evolution of a hyper speed news cycle only made things worse.”
“The tendency of the news to report on aggressive cancer treatments and survival, but not on alternatives, is … noteworthy given that unrealistic information may mislead the public about the trade-offs between attempts at heroic cures and hospice care,” the authors of the study wrote.
Roche linked to doctor praising drug in the media
Filed under: Conflicts of interest, Health journalism
Crikey.com, a news Web site based in Melbourne, Australia, calls our attention to some recent reporting about Mabthera, a drug used to treat non-Hodgkins lymphoma.
Nick Miller, health editor of The Age, recently reported that Mabthera, manufactured by Roche, “has been found to nearly double the number of [leukemia] patients who go into remission.”
In that article, Miller quoted a doctor as saying, “This is the largest single advance in the treatment of this disease in the last 30 years.”
Miller was rebuked by oncologist Dr. Ian Haines, who wrote a letter to the newspaper. Haines points out that the article was “an exaggeration of the benefits of the treatment with no presentation of the downsides … which is that it’s incredibly expensive, it’s not without risk,” according to Flint Duxfield, a student at the Australian Centre for Independent Journalism.
Duxfield goes on to explain how events unfolded and reveals that the promotion of Mabthera is being driven by Roche, which provides financial support to Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre, which employs the doctor who originally touted the drug in Miller’s article.
In fact, sections of the press release issued by the cancer center and the press release from Roche’s public relations company are identical and contain the same comments from the doctor quoted by Miller.
Duxfield also reports that warnings that have been issued for the use of Mabthera that have gone unreported in the print media.
The story says “the engagement of third parties in providing a link between a drug company and the media is all too common in health journalism.”
Veteran health reporter Ray Moynihan agrees: “It happens enormously often because third party endorsements are PR 101 for drug companies.”
Duxfield also points to other examples of these so-called “third=party endorsements” and how they have been reported in the media.
Reports reveal problems in England’s NHS
England’s Care Quality Commission, a regulatory agency, has found that a quarter of the National Health Services hospital trusts fail to meet basic standards of hygiene, according to The Telegraph’s Andrew Hough.
Some of the failures included 36 trusts not providing areas to decontaminate instruments, three trusts failing to regularly flush unused water outlets while more than a dozen trusts failed to keep clinical areas clean.
As Hough reports, the revelations come just days after a BBC investigation found that hospital trusts have given incorrect information on their performance and quality of care.
Related
Conflicting demands on their job and being rushed or understaffed were common problems revealed by a recent survey of employees of England’s National Health System, as The Telegraph’s Rebecca Smith reports.
The NHS, according to its Web site is “the world’s largest publicly funded health service” with more than 1.7 million employees. The survey was done by the Care Quality Commission.
The CQC reports some improvements in job satisfaction, however:
Approximately half of all staff would recommend their trust as a place to work, and just under two thirds are happy with the standard of care provided by their trust. There has also been a substantial rise in the % of staff saying that they have had training in infection control.
Sunshine Week: Proposals would affect access
The Data Mine, a project from the Center for Public Integrity and the Sunlight Foundation that highlights inaccessible or poorly presented information from the federal government, invites readers to participate in Sunshine Week by tipping them to government data, records and reports that should be open to the public.
They also want to hear about federal information that is available but accompanied by restrictions that make it cumbersome or impractical to use.
Bill would require agencies to post public documents online: NextGov.com reports on the proposed 2010 Public Online Information Act.
Access to public records in Florida could grow – or shrink – if Legislature passes these bills: One bill would require Florida’s “Department of Health to establish an interactive online budget, stipulating it be updated each year and trace the flow of all funds appropriated to DOH in the past 20 years,” according to the Orlando Sentinel.
Comparing state FOIA laws: The Detroit Free Press looks at sunshine laws in Michigan, Florida, Ohio, Illinios, Indiana and Wisconsin.
See more Sunshine Week headlines from around the country.
AHCJ resources
- AHCJ calls on new administration to improve access to federal experts
- Major journalism groups demand agency end newsgathering constraints
- AHCJ objects to federal agencies’ handling of story embargo
- AHCJ calls for better information from hospital accreditation Web site
- Health journalists cite uneven disclosure of H1N1 deaths across country
- AHCJ’s right-to-know resources
Lathrop to oversee public databases in Dallas
AHCJ member Daniel Lathrop, who has been the chief digital strategist for InvestigateWest since its July 2009 launch, will be joining the Dallas Morning News on March 22 as its first news applications editor.
Lathrop will help the paper identify and obtain databases of public information. He also will be responsible for producing the interfaces through which readers can use those databases.
Lathrop is co-editor of the just-released book “Open Government: Collaboration, Transparency, and Participation in Practice,” published by O’Reilly media.
Focus on hockey’s head injuries grows
Poynter Institute’s Al Tompkins takes a look at hockey injuries, especially head injuries.
Photo by Alex Kehr via Flickr
He points to an article in the Globe and Mail about the long-term effect of concussions and what Canada is doing to combat the issue, contrasted with what some places in the United States are doing to better treat and prevent concussions.
The article cites a study in the March 2009 issue of Brain that found former athletes were still suffering the effects of their head injuries more than 30 years after their last concussion.
Tompkins also notes the National Hockey League – which had 10 players out with head injuries in November – is confronting the problem by banning “blindside hits” to the head.
Sunshine Week: Some of the latest news
- SPLC open records audit examines suicide expulsion policies
- White House memo of March 16, 2010, encourages agencies to ensure full implementation of the President’s Memorandum on FOIA
- Leahy, Cornyn Commemorate Sunshine Week With Faster FOIA Act Introduction
- Public Online Information Act to be introduced by Steve Israel (D-N.Y)
- Sunshine and Shadows:The Clear Obama Message for Freedom of Information Meets Mixed Results (National Security Archive FOIA Audit)
- AP analysis of Obama FOIA record at a glance
- Introducing the Cycle of Transparency
- Budget cuts, furloughs blamed for denial or delay of official information in Calif.
AHCJ resources
- AHCJ calls on new administration to improve access to federal experts
- Major journalism groups demand agency end newsgathering constraints
- AHCJ objects to federal agencies’ handling of story embargo
- AHCJ calls for better information from hospital accreditation Web site
- Health journalists cite uneven disclosure of H1N1 deaths across country
- AHCJ’s right-to-know resources
Are emergency drivers distracted by technology?
“Driven to Distraction,” a New York Times series that looks at the “dangers of drivers using cellphones and other electronic devices, and efforts to deal with the problem,” turns its focus on first responders, such as police and paramedics.
Photo by rKistian via Flickr
Reporter Matt Richtel points out that emergency drivers are often required to use technological gadgets while driving at high speeds and negotiating heavy traffic to get directions and transmit information about patients.
Data does not exist about crashes caused by police officers or medics distracted by their devices. But there are tragic anecdotes.
The New York City Fire Department says ambulance drivers are not supposed to use on-board computers while driving but “medics and E.M.T.’s in New York and elsewhere say that although they are aware of the rules, they do use their on-board computers while driving.”
Drug firms turn to private doctors for promotion
Filed under: Conflicts of interest, Hot Health Headline
Pharmaceutical companies are turning to doctors in private practice to promote their products as universities have developed conflict-of-interest policies that limit their doctors’ activities, according to the latest report from John Fauber of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
Fauber, who has been covering conflicts of interest in medical research for more than a year, reports that “So much money is at stake that in January one academic doctor resigned his job at Harvard rather than give up his speaking income.”
Medical schools can restrict doctors who work for them from advocating particular drugs and can require that they inform patients of their ties to drug companies, but private physicians have no such obligations.
In previous articles, Fauber has reported on University of Wisconsin doctors who were making six-figure sums from drug and medical firms by serving as consultants or doing promotional speeches.
Critics say the talks can be biased and contribute to spiraling health care costs by promoting the use of expensive brand-name drugs over generics. The practice, according to critics, also leads to more non-approved and potentially harmful use of those drugs, so-called off-label prescribing.
-
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
