http://www.healthjournalism.org/blog Keeping journalists informed – and connected. Thu, 02 Sep 2010 13:09:31 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en A focus on "ethnic disparities" can obscure the fact that racial designations are so broad that the disparities within them are just as great as those without. The latest example? The paper "Barriers to healthcare among Asian Americans," [press release] by two SUNY Buffalo sociologists. The paper takes on the myth ... http://www.healthjournalism.org/blog/2010/09/myths-obscure-lack-of-health-care-for-some-asians/ The Indianapolis Star's Daniel Lee reports that, according to the state's newly released 2009 numbers, preventable medical errors are down in Indiana. There were 94 reported errors last year, down from 105 each in 2007 and 2008. Part of the decline can be attributed to the health department's Indiana Pressure ... http://www.healthjournalism.org/blog/2010/09/indiana-numbers-show-preventable-errors-down/ After years of failing to prevent preventable inmate deaths, the California Department of Corrections health system was placed under a federal receivership in 2005. Soon after, state officials claimed that the system had reached an "acceptable standard," and that they were ready to take control back from the feds. Over the ... http://www.healthjournalism.org/blog/2010/09/is-californias-prison-health-system-really-fixed/ Medtronic is back at the FDA, asking for approval of another spine fusion product. Not coincidentally, the Journal Sentinel's John Fauber is also hard at work, this time exposing the conflicts of interest and off-label applications which helped make Medtronic's first spine fuser, Infuse, into a dubious blockbuster. First approved for ... http://www.healthjournalism.org/blog/2010/09/conflicts-of-interest-off-label-use-blockbuster/ In her blog on CJR.org, AHCJ Immediate Past President Trudy Lieberman updates what is becoming an annual franchise: Her summer man-on-the-street column gauging popular opinion on health reform. Just like last year, Lieberman found her subjects on the streets of Columbia, Mo., a town that's about as close to ... http://www.healthjournalism.org/blog/2010/08/main-street-informed-skeptical-on-health-reform/ R. W. Donnell, an Arkansas hospitalist with a long-running blog and a few burrs in his saddle, has outlined what amounts to an exam for health care journalists. It's based on the assumption that journalists should have some prerequisite knowledge before tackling difficult scientific issues. But, instead of just grumbling ... http://www.healthjournalism.org/blog/2010/08/hospitalist-what-health-journalists-should-know/ Peggy Peck of MedPage Today found that research presented as new at the European Society of Cardiology's annual meeting this weekend was actually published in July, despite the society's requirement that information submitted for presentation must be new, unpublished data. When asked by MedPage Today to point out the "news" in ... http://www.healthjournalism.org/blog/2010/08/society-%e2%80%98snookered-by-research-that-isnt-new/ Thanks to an awards announcement from the National Lesbian & Gay Journalists Association, we just noticed Jen Colletta's story in the Philadelphia Gay News about the exclusion of gays from clinical trials. Colletta won an Excellence in News Writing Award. The exclusion of gays in clinical trials is an issue ... http://www.healthjournalism.org/blog/2010/08/gays-excluded-from-clinical-trials/ In a recent post, Not Exactly Rocket Science's Ed Yong tried to break down Atul Gawande's work and figure out why it can be so darn compelling. Yong and many thousands of others (myself included) were riveted by Gawande's latest New Yorker piece, a treatise on palliative care. Atul Gawande in ... http://www.healthjournalism.org/blog/2010/08/dissecting-gawandes-narrative-structure/ In The New York Times, Gardiner Harris  outlines the problem of medical tubing that looks very similar – leading to medical errors – then deftly works his way up the chain in an attempt to find the source of device regulator's failure to solve a problem that seems entirely solvable. Medicine ... http://www.healthjournalism.org/blog/2010/08/identical-tubing-demonstrates-fdas-inaction/