In reversal, Mich. agency releases H1N1 documents
Filed under: Government, Health journalism, Public health, Public records
Michigan’s Department of Community Health has reversed an earlier decision to withhold documents about how the state has spent money on H1N1 prevention.
Todd A. Heywood of the Michigan Messenger reports the department had turned down a Freedom of Information Act request from that publication for “information related to a $25,000 budget item for the involvement of the Civilian Air Patrol. It also refused to release information about an exercise which was budgeted at nearly $50,000 and refused to identify which ‘partner agencies’ had received gloves, masks and other supplies purchased by the department.”
In its denial, the department said releasing the information would violate the state’s anti-terrorism laws. Heywood reports the documents that have been released do not appear to have any relationship to terrorism or national security.
“It’s absurd to think that releasing plans for preventing and treating H1N1 would compromise the state’s security or increase its vulnerability to terrorism,” said Charles Ornstein, president of AHCJ’s board of directors and a senior reporter at ProPublica.
“I’m pleased the Michigan Department of Community Health released the requested documents, and I hope reporters in other states will ask for similar information.”
AHCJ has been concerned about the withholding of information about H1N1 around the country. Last fall, an informal poll of AHCJ members and a review of press releases and news reports revealed a wide variation in what information local and state health officials are disclosing about H1N1 deaths.
At the time, Felice Freyer, chair of AHCJ’s Right-to-Know Committee, said, “in some places, officials are withholding more information than necessary, perhaps because of a lack of clear guidelines about what should be revealed. This comes at a high cost; health officials lose the public’s trust when they hide information. Anyone may wonder: If they won’t even say how old the victim was, what else are they concealing about the sicknesses affecting my community?”
After being approached by AHCJ, the Association of State and Territorial Health Officers agreed to organize a group of state officials, public information officers and health-care writers to develop guidelines on reporting deaths that are of concern or interest to the public. We will learn more details soon, says Freyer, a reporter at The Providence (R.I.) Journal, but “we are happy that ASTHO agrees the issue is worthy of discussion and intends to include us.”
In California, Ryan Sabalow of the Redding (Calif.) Record Searchlight put together a local take on ongoing inconsistencies in how local health departments release outbreak-related information to the public. He wrote about examples from local health departments and explained the nuances of when and how certain health departments choose to disclose infections, and how inconsistent those standards can be in practice.
(Hat tip to the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.)
Report: Health care disparities aren’t getting better
In their coverage of AHRQ’s latest annual quality and disparities reports (Quality PDF | Disparities PDF), most outlets focused on disheartening news on health-care-associated infections, but the disparities report also deserves a second look. It’s 302 pages that can be oversimplified as “disparities still exist, they’re not getting better, and they’re worse in some areas than in others.”
Here are a few of the more interesting bullet points, all pulled from the first 16 pages of summary information.
- For Blacks, Asians, and Hispanics, at least two-thirds of measures of quality of care are not improving (gap either stayed the same or increased).
- For Blacks, only about 20% of measures of disparities in quality of care improved (gap decreased).
- For poor people, disparities are improving for almost half of the quality measures.
- The largest disparities for Blacks, AI/ANs, and Hispanics included the rate of new AIDS cases. The rate for Blacks was almost 10 times as high as the rate for Whites, for Hispanics more than 3 times as high, and for AI/ANs 1.4 times as high.
- Asians were 1.5 times as likely as Whites to report they sometimes or never get care for illness or injury as soon as wanted. Poor people were more than twice as likely as high-income people to report this
problem. - Hispanics were 1.7 times as likely as Whites and poor people were 3 times as likely as high-income people to report poor provider-patient communication.
- Blacks, Asians, AI/ANs, and Hispanics all experienced disparities in the percentage of adults age 50 and
over who received a colonoscopy, sigmoidoscopy, proctoscopy, or fecal occult blood test and in
commended hospital care for pneumonia. - Blacks and Hispanics both had worsening disparities in colorectal cancer mortality from 2000 to 2006.
The report doesn’t stop with bullet points, of course. Anyone who takes a few minutes to page through the other 280-some-odd pages will be rewarded with in-depth information on disparities in a number of specific diseases and issues – including breast cancer, diabetes, HIV, palliative care, mental health and access to health care – all buttressed with charts, graphs, explanations and data.
Navratilova, GMA uncritically push screening
In February, Martina Navratilova was diagnosed with ductal carcinoma in situ, the most common form of breast cancer. She has since had a lumpectomy and says she’s doing well and doesn’t expect the cancer to return. But in an interview with Good Morning America during which she announced her diagnosis and surgery, the tennis star stepped beyond the world of sport and into the world of medicine. And there she made the sort of missteps she’s known for avoiding on the court.
“The reason I wanted to speak about this is to encourage these woman to have mammograms,” (Navratilova) said. “I just want to encourage women to have that yearly check-up.”
…
Navratilova said she doesn’t agree with recent recommendations that women between the ages of 40 and 49 should not necessarily get regular breast cancer screenings.“The cancer knows that you’re not 50 yet?” she said. “I can’t speak for the doctors, but in my personal case I’m so glad that I did it.”
In her blog “A Healthy Piece of My Mind,” writer and PR rep Eve Harris pointed out the fallacies lurking in the tennis star’s screening recommendations, beyond the obvious age-related concerns.
First, Harris said, Navratilova exhorts women to scrape together the money to pay for screenings, yet doesn’t mention the many programs available to help uninsured and underinsured women pay for mammograms.
Second, Navratilova claims that she was lucky, and would have been in serious trouble had she not detected the cancer when she did. In fact, Harris writes, there is not enough information about the natural progression of such cancers to make that declaration.
GMA correspondent Robin Roberts, who also has battled breast cancer, failed to point out any of that and, in fact, offered a very simplified interpretation of what the new breast cancer screening recommendations say.
(Hat tip to @lauranewmanny)
Report links Gulf War, illness; calls for more study
The Institute of Medicine has released a report, sponsored by the Department of Veterans Affairs, on certain health issues in Gulf War veterans.
The committee behind the report wrote that insufficient data from immediately before and after deployment made drawing clear conclusions difficult, but called for a commitment to monitoring and caring for what the release called “persistent, unexplained symptoms” in Gulf War veterans. It also said that interaction between genes and the environment was likely a factor in veterans’ “multisymptom illness.”
The key paragraph from the press release (emphasis mine):
Military service in the Persian Gulf War is a cause of post-traumatic stress disorder in some veterans and is also associated with multisymptom illness; gastrointestinal disorders such as irritable bowel syndrome; substance abuse, particularly alcoholism; and psychiatric problems such as anxiety disorder, says a new report from the Institute of Medicine, the latest update in a series of reports on the Gulf War and veterans’ health. There is some evidence that service during the conflict is linked to fibromyalgia and chronic widespread pain, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, sexual difficulties, and death due to causes such as car accidents in the early years after deployment, but the data are limited, said the committee that wrote the report.
Quaid releases documentary about medical errors
Filed under: Health journalism, Hot Health Headline
Those of you who attended Health Journalism 2008 may remember actor Dennis Quaid’s appearance at the event, telling the harrowing tale of the heparin overdoses that almost killed his infant twins.
Dennis Quaid spoke about medical errors at Health Journalism 2008. (Photo: Pia Christensen)
Quaid continues his crusade against medical errors with a documentary that will debut April 22 (and airs on the Discovery Channel on April 24) and co-authoring an article in the Journal of Patient Safety.
The article, which focuses on the use of anecdotes and storytelling to improve patient safety, is not typical journal fare. It’s equal parts how-to manual, anecdotes and sermon, and Quaid’s commitment comes across forcefully.
As you finish reading this narrative and return to your life in health care, we challenge you to think about your own story. If every story has a hero, a victim, a villain, a crisis, and a resolution, we want you to see yourself as a hero. It is time to write your own story. Turn that light into heat and focus it on your villain: the villain that protects the status quo, the way we have always done things. A best friend of this villain is survival-centered, blind cost-cutting that drives enormous safety risk and harm to patients.
Quaid spoke about the topic yesterday at a National Press Club luncheon (video), where he also announced that his nonprofit Quaid Foundation has merged with the Texas Medical Institute of Technology.
Cohn’s reform-minded blog comes to an end
Filed under: Health care reform, Health journalism
The New Republic’s Jonathan Cohn, an AHCJ member, announced Monday that he’s closing up shop at The Treatment, the “crusading” pro-health-care-reform blog he’s run since 2006. Cohn will keep blogging and writing for the magazine, but seems ready to close the reform chapter of his health care reporting and hang a big “mission accomplished” banner across the widely read blog.
Cohn used the occasion of this semi-farewell to reflect on the course journalism has taken during the reform debate, and to contrast it with prior experiences, most pointedly Clinton’s push for health care reform and his own magazine’s notorious role in the debate. In particular, Cohn considers the changes brought on by “new online media” and bloggers like himself and The Washington Post’s Ezra Klein, with whom Cohn says he collaborated as much as he competed.
In addition to The New York Times and CNN, there was the Huffington Post and Talking Points Memo. The change didn’t fully register with me until the night the House passed the Senate health care bill, clearing reform for presidential signature. Sitting up in the House media gallery, next to Politico’s Carrie Budoff Brown, I looked around at my colleagues—and realized how few of them would have been there last time around.
Was this a change for the better? I’m biased, obviously, but with some important caveats I think the answer is “yes.” We (i.e., the new online media) could generally channel policy expertise more quickly. And we could, in some cases, dispense with conventions of even-handedness—conventions that cynics had long ago learned to exploit for their own purposes.
Writing for CJR.org, AHCJ Immediate Past President Trudy Lieberman praised Cohn’s blog, but took the opportunity to remind journalists that, while a reform bill may have passed, that doesn’t mean there aren’t myriad issues related to its implementation that will need intense coverage and scrutiny in the coming years. She also talked to Cohn and found that he isn’t leaving the game entirely.
Cohn told me that when health reform was the political story of the day, the magazine “could afford to let me write on that subject exclusively and dedicate an entire blog to it. Now that it’s no longer topic A, it makes sense for me to write about some other things.” He said he will be doing just that. While the magazine is officially retiring The Treatment as a blog exclusively devoted to health care, Cohn and The New Republic are talking about creating a new blog that will include health care coverage.
Pulitzer winners, finalists share tips with AHCJ
In yesterday’s post about AHCJ members who won or were finalists for this year’s Pulitzer Prizes, we neglected to mention California Watch’s editorial director, Mark Katches.
Katches, as deputy managing editor for projects and investigations at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, was an editor on Raquel Rutledge’s Pulitzer Prize-winning reports on fraud and abuse in a child-care program for low-wage working parents.
AHCJ has temporarily opened up access to articles and tip sheets that recently were written for us by this year’s Pulitzer winners and finalists. Don’t miss this chance to see what AHCJ members have access to every day.
- Mark Katches: Veteran editor offers tips for finding health stories on any beat
- Charles Ornstein and Tracy Weber: How well does your state oversee nurses?
- Sheri Fink: Covering a complex story for the long haul
And, just as a reminder, The New York Times‘ Michael Moss, who won a Pulitzer for his reporting on contaminated hamburger and other food safety issues, will be on a panel about food safety at Health Journalism 2010.
AHCJ member Fink wins investigative Pulitzer
Filed under: Health journalism, Hospitals, Hot Health Headline
Get reporting tips from winners, finalists
ProPublica reporter and AHCJ member Sheri Fink, M.D., won the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting for her recounting of “the urgent life-and-death decisions made by one hospital’s exhausted doctors when they were cut off by the floodwaters of Hurricane Katrina. the days immediately following Hurricane Katrina.” Her piece also earned second place in AHCJ’s 2009 Awards for Excellence in Health Care Journalism.
Read Fink’s article for AHCJ about how she reported the story.
An entry from the Los Angeles Times and ProPublica, written by AHCJ President Charles Ornstein and Tracy Weber (a joint entry), was a nominated finalist in the public service category. Ornstein and Weber reported on “gaps in California’s oversight of dangerous and incompetent nurses, blending investigative scrutiny and multimedia storytelling to produce corrective changes.” AHCJ’s Web site features an extensive tip sheet from the reporters about how to evaluate nurse oversight in any state.
Health Journalism 2010 speaker wins for explanatory journalism
Explanatory Pulitzer winner Michael Moss, who wrote about “contaminated hamburger and other food safety issues that, in print and online, spotlighted defects in federal regulation and led to improved practices” will be speaking about food safety at Health Journalism 2010.
Majority of bloggers call themselves journalists
On his Journalistics blog, Jeremy Porter assessed a recent PRWeek/PR Newswire survey on blogging and online journalism. Attitudes in both arenas are shifting fast, and this year’s results are markedly different than 2009’s. The highlight is that 52 percent of bloggers now consider themselves journalists. It’s not clear whether that’s because more traditional journalists have blogs or because bloggers are wielding more influence and becoming more established.
Porter tried to tease out what made the two identities different.
… 91 percent of bloggers use blogs and social networks “always” or “sometimes” for research (compared to 35 percent for newspapers). Put differently, most blogs rely on other bloggers — and anybody they find on social networks — as sources. This is part of the reason accurate and misinformation spreads quickly online — many bloggers copy each other.
…
Talking specifics, the study found that 64 percent of bloggers and 36 percent of online reporters use Twitter as a research tool for stories, but only 19 percent of newspaper reporters and 17 percent of print magazine reporters use this social medium as a research. Does this signal a lack of sophistication and comfort with social media among traditional journalists, or do they know something bloggers don’t, like the best sources aren’t found in a sea of tweets? It’s probably a mixture of both.
And here’s a quick summary of the more interesting survey results. Sentences have been edited for brevity and coherence, but most of it is taken directly from the press release.
- Over 70% of respondents in this year’s survey indicate a heavier workload as compared to last.
- 62% are required to write for online news sections, with 39% contributing to their publication’s blog.
- 37% of U.S. journalists also now must maintain a Twitter feed.
- 31% of respondents indicated that “staff cuts/layoffs” most affected their jobs over the past three years,significantly higher than 2009 (22%).
- When asked if building a personal brand was a consideration in their work, the majority of U.S. (52%) media (60%) responded either “extremely important” or “important.”
- Only 20% of bloggers derive the majority of their income from their blog work; a 4% increase from 2009.
- While 91% of bloggers and 68% of online reporters “always” or “sometimes” use blogs for research, only 35% of newspaper and 38% of print magazine journalists suggested the same.
- Overall, 33% of respondents indicated using social networks for research, but blogger usage (48%) was greater than newspaper (31%) and print magazine (27%).
- PR professionals still consider e-mail to be the most effective means for pitching journalists (74%), 43% of journalists report having being pitched through social networks compared to 31% in 2009.
Looking up campaign contributions gets easier
Filed under: Government, Health data, Public records
The Sunlight Foundation has launched TransparencyData.com, a tool that allows users to filter and download state and federal campaign finance data from the National Institute of Money in State Politics and the Center for Responsive Politics.
Paul Blumenthal used the tool to examine campaign contributions made by Massey Energy, owner of the West Virgina mine where 25 miners died this week. He looked up contributions from the company’s owner, employees and the company’s PAC. He even discovered that a Massey employee is a state legislator and how much Massey employees contributed to get him into office and get him re-elected.
Sunlight Labs’ director Clay Johnson introduced the tool and there’s a tutorial for using the it on the home page.
Sounds like a tool that could be used to investigate links between legislators and other elected officials and any number of companies and players in health care. The data behind the tool can be downloaded as CSV files so you can do your own analysis as well.
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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
