2011 brings changes to The Cancer Letter
AHCJ member Kirsten Goldberg is stepping down as editor and publisher of The Cancer Letter, a position she’s held since taking her father’s place at the helm 20 years ago. Goldberg is headed to the American Society of Clinical Oncology, where she will become, according to the release, “a senior program manager in the Communications and Patient Information Department, focusing on policy communications.”
She has been replaced by Paul Goldberg, a fellow AHCJ member who first worked with the publication in 1986. He has worked there full time since 1992.
The Cancer Letter is an independent publication that covers oncology, drug development and cancer research. It was founded by Jerry Boyd in 1973 and has remained in the family.
Holtz prescribes behavior modification for ‘White Coat Myopia’
Every year end brings a flood of stories about the “Top Medical Breakthroughs.” Over the rest of the year there is no shortage of front page headlines announcing new drugs, devices and clinical trial results.
But independent journalist Andrew Holtz, a member of AHCJ’s board of directors, thinks the intensive cultivation of medical news reports leaves fertile acreage of health stories untilled.
If you expand your perspective from a narrow focus on medical interventions, you will find studies, policies and events that relate to health in ways that connect directly to the daily lives of many more people.
In this article, he suggests fresh stories and approaches to health coverage for the new year, with plenty of resources to help you stick to a resolution of powerful, relevant health coverage. (Note: This article is one of the many resources and benefits available exclusively to AHCJ members.)
Bagram airfield a leading lab for trauma medicine
NPR’s Quil Lawrence reports that Afghanistan’s Bagram airfield, the primary stop for seriously wounded soldiers before they’re stabilized and transported to Germany or America for long-term care, has served as an opportunity for forging broad advances in emergency medicine.
“At the beginning of this conflict, we were taking the best trauma medicine from the civilian sector, and we brought it to Iraq and Afghanistan,” says U.S. Air Force Col. Chris Benjamin, the hospital commander. He says now his doctors tell him it’s the other way around.
“Here we are seven, eight years later, taking what we’ve learned in these conflicts to teach them the advances that we’ve made with this data collection here in theater,” he says.
Thanks to body armor and advances in battlefield trauma like the increased use of tourniquets, more soldiers are arriving alive, but with serious, traumatic injuries. When they pass through Bagram, the volume and severity of their wounds “continues to yield new data that are helping to save lives in ways that were impossible only a few years ago,” Lawrence writes.
Researchers examine long-term effects of vitamins, vaccines on children’s immune systems
Filed under: Children, Europe, Hot Health Headline, Public health
For a 40-minute documentary broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and produced by Anthony Baxter, reporter Richard Phinney visited a small, long-running public health outpost in Guinea Bissau where a team of Danish and African researchers has studied the long-term effects of vaccines and vitamin supplements on the immune systems of children. The team has published reams of research and influenced WHO policy, but Phinney focuses on what he calls their most “explosive” findings.
They show that the world’s most commonly used vaccines can strengthen - or weaken - a child’s immune system in the long term, and affect their ability to fight off disease. The results directly challenge the WHO’s global health advice, followed by most countries in the developing world, and could mean that thousands of young lives, in Africa and beyond, are needlessly at risk.
Programming note: The program will only be available to download worldwide for a few more days.
Update: The audio is no longer available at the earlier link but it is available, in two parts, on this page. Search the page or scroll down for “Vaccine Detectives.”
Some fear DSM update opens door for exploitation
On All Things Considered, NPR’s Alix Spiegel looks to the past and future to ferret out the potential drawbacks and benefits of the expanded psychiatric diagnoses proposed in the upcoming revision of the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual.
Photo by Richard Masoner via Flickr
Spiegel begins with the forceful perspective of Allen Frances, the man who edited the last update of the DSM. From Frances, Spiegel pulls a few cautionary tales of the unintended consequences of changing DSM entries.
The first? Aspergers.
It’s a disease that needed to be diagnosed, Frances says, but it’s now massively overused because of the unforeseen “unintentional incentive” created by schools that offer greatly expanded educational resources to children diagnosed with Aspergers.
“And so kids who previously might have been considered on the boundary, eccentric, socially shy, but bright and doing well in school would mainstream [into] regular classes,” Frances says. “Now if they get the diagnosis of Asperger’s disorder, [they] get into a special program where they may get $50,000 a year worth of educational services.”
Another cautionary tale? Bipolar disorder. The last DSM revision made it a far easier diagnosis to get. In essence, this easier diagnosis opened a gaping door in medicine, one which pharmaceutical companies quickly muscled through.
“Drug companies got indications for treating bipolar disorder,” Frances says. “Not just with mood stabilizers, but also with the newer antipsychotic drugs. And they began very intensive ubiquitous advertising campaigns. So the rates of bipolar disorder doubled. And lots of people got way too much antipsychotic and mood stabilizing medicines. And these aren’t safe drugs.”
For the other side of the story, Spiegel spoke to a psychiatrist who argued that broadening diagnoses means that fewer of the mentally illl go undiagnosed, and that diagnoses are delivered earlier than they would be otherwise. Furthermore, he believes that adding illnesses to the DSM will spark research and investment toward treating those ilnesses.
Data: Hospital performs ‘combination’ CT scans at 10 times national rate
Filed under: Health data, Hospitals, Hot Health Headline
Lisa Chedekel, of the Connecticut Health Investigative Team, used Hospital Compare data from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services to find that patients at the University of Connecticut’s John Dempsey Hospital are getting “combination” CT scans much more that the national average.
Photo by Akira Ohgaki via Flickr
Combination scans mean that patients get two scans which, of course, subjects them to more radiation than a regular scan.
For chest scans, a patient’s radiation exposure from a double scan is 700 times higher than from a simple chest X-ray. For abdominal scans, the radiation dose is comparable to that of approximately 400 chest X-rays.
Nationally, the rate of patients getting a combination scan is 5 percent for chest scans and 19 percent for abdominal scans. At Dempsey, 48 percent of patients receiving chest scans had combination scans. For abdominal scans, it was more than 72 percent.
The hospital’s chief of radiology said he was “absolutely staggered” by the high rates but that “his own internal review last year had flagged a high incidence of the multiple scans – a trend that the hospital is now addressing.”
Related
- Conn. site joins online health journalism world
- In a conference call with AHCJ members, CMS announced the release of the data Chedekel used for this story. A recording of that call is available to AHCJ members.
New health-related state laws for 2011
Filed under: Government, Health care reform, Health policy, Hot Health Headline, Public health
Many thanks to Melissa Preddy for pointing out, in a post on the Reynolds Center’s businessjournalism.org, the National Conference of State Legislatures’ roundup of new laws that have already go into effect in 2011, or will soon. It’s a national list loaded with localization-ready ideas and issues that should be surfacing throughout the year. Hot-button topics include expanding medical coverage and several nutrition-related laws.
Here are a few highlights, taken directly from the NCSL’s list.
Connecticut will soon be requiring health insurance policies that cover anticancer medications to cover the oral drugs at least as favorably as it does the IV ones. The law prohibits insurers from reclassifying anticancer medications or increasing the patient’s out-of-pocket costs as a way to comply.
A new Missouri law requires all group health benefit plans to cover the diagnosis and treatment of autism spectrum disorders. Coverage is limited to medically necessary treatment ordered by the insured’s treating physician. The law also requires the Department of Insurance and other institutions to submit a report to the legislature regarding the implementation of this coverage, including specified costs.
California became the first, on Jan. 1, 2010, to prohibit oil, shortening or margarine containing artificial trans fats in restaurants and other food facilities. Beginning Jan 1, 2011, the original law will extend to other foods containing artificial trans fats, primarily baked goods.
Retailers in Minnesota will now be banned from selling cups and bottles intended for children age 3 or younger that contain bisphenol A (BPA). These same restrictions went into effect for in-state manufacturers and wholesalers on Jan. 1, 2010.
California lawmakers have also enacted a new law requiring free drinking water for students in school cafeterias or food service areas. Schools must comply by July 1, 2011.
California will soon require all children under the age of 18, including patrollers and resort employees, to wear helmets while skiing or snowboarding. Resorts will be required to post notice about the law, including on trail maps and resort websites.
BMJ: Wakefield’s vaccine-autism study fraudulent
Filed under: Children, Europe, Health journalism, Pharmaceuticals, Public health
The Internet and other media are abuzz with the news, published by BMJ yesterday, that the study published in The Lancet in 1998 by Dr. Andrew Wakefield linking autism to the MMR vaccine was fraudulent. The study of 12 children is frequently cited as proof that vaccines cause autism or play a part in the disorder, despite the fact that it was retracted. The BMJ calls the study “fatally flawed both scientifically and ethically” in a new editorial.
Covering Health has compiled some links to interesting reading on this subject, much of it specifically for journalists.
Ivan Oransky, on Embargo Watch, looks at an entirely different facet of the news with “Does a tweet break an embargo? A case study involving the BMJ, autism, vaccines, and an alleged hoax.”
Meanwhile, Gary Schwitzer, publisher of HealthNewsReview.org, writes that the Wakefield MMR/autism dismantling demonstrates what a difference one journalist can make.
CNN’s Anderson Cooper interviewed Andrew Wakefield last night about the charges that his study was flawed. And Brian Deer, the investigative journalist who reported the BMJ story, was interviewed on CNN’s World Report.
Update: Seth Mnookin, who has spent two years looking into vaccine scares, has written an interesting post about the topic, including his view that BMJ over-hyped its story, which almost certainly helped drive media coverage. Mnookin also appeared on CNN.
By sending out breathless press releases and prepping the worldwide media for a series of bombshell stories, the BMJ created the impression that this was fundamentally new news – and it wasn’t. We knew that Wakefield’s work wasn’t reliable or accurate on January 3 – and we still know that today. The stories that are currently running are not really all that different in tone or content than the stories that ran almost exactly a year ago, when a UK medical panel found there was sufficient evidence to justify stripping Wakefield of his right to practice medicine.
Covering Health posts
- Parikh examines media’s role in vaccine-autism link
- CDC: Nearly 1 percent of U.S. kids have autism
- Autism and vaccines: A failure to communicate
- Tribune: Lupron to treat autism is ‘junk science’
- Anger at radio host shapes autism performance
- CDC working to uncover cause of autism
- Newspaper: Landmark autism study used fixed data
- Review finds no link between vaccines, autism
Tip sheets
- Background on autism from Pauline A. Filipek M.D., director of the Autism Program for OC Kids Neurodevelopmental Center and associate professor of clinical pediatrics and neurology at the University of California, Irvine, School of Medicine.
- Investigating alternative treatments for autism: Trish Callahan & Trine Tsouderos, of the Chicago Tribune, wrote “Dubious Medicine,” a look at the world of alternative treatments for autism, treatments that are often risky and unproven.
Contest entries
- Dubious Medicine, Trine Tsouderos and Patricia Callahan, Chicago Tribune
- The Truth About Autism: Scientists Reconsider What They Think They Know, David Wolman, Wired
- Is it Autism?, Norine Dworkin-McDaniel, American Baby
Covering Medical Research
Learn how to analyze and write about health and medical research studies with AHCJ’s latest slim guide. It offers advice on recognizing and reporting the problems, limitations and backstory of a study, as well as publication biases in medical journals and it includes 10 questions you should answer to produce a meaningful and appropriately skeptical report. This guide, supported by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, will be a road map to help you do a better job of explaining research results for your audience.
Nonprofit hospitals pay country club dues for execs
Filed under: Hospitals, Hot Health Headline, Public records
In what would seem a logical follow up to last year’s piece on hospital salaries, KUOW’s John Ryan has used public records to look at the top salaries at Seattle-area nonprofits this year.
This time, he focuses on the job perks given to nonprofit executives as much as he does their paychecks. Among them, Ryan writes, “Eight hospital systems in our region reported paying membership dues for their executives at clubs like the Columbia Tower Club and the Kitsap Golf and Country Club.”
A PDF of the salaries is also available. For more on how Ryan puts it all together, see the how-to he posted with last year’s edition.
Las Vegas Sun caps series by showing solutions
In the Las Vegas Sun reporter Marshall Allen wraps up his wide-ranging Do No Harm series on hospital quality by showing how Nevada hospitals could be approaching medical errors differently.
His focus is the Seven Pillars program at the University of Illinois at Chicago, which should be familiar to Covering Health readers. The key to the program is a commitment to admitting errors and discussing them with patients, an approach that improves the patient experience and reduces the risk of malpractice suits.
To cap off the series, the Las Vegas Sun included the thoughts of Allen’s boss, Publisher and Editor Brian Greenspun.
Related
The Chicago chapter of AHCJ recently hosted a discussion about medical errors and transparency, which included David Mayer, M.D., who, with Tim McDonald, M.D., has co-founded an organization dedicated to the prevention of patient harm. Most recently, McDonald and Mayer were awarded a $3 million federal grant to implement and evaluate patient safety efforts on a larger scale. AHCJ members can read about the discussion and listen to Mayer’s comments.
Editor’s note:
Allen completed part of this series while on an AHCJ Media Fellowship on Health Performance, supported by the Commonwealth Fund
-
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
