Journalists visit CDC to learn latest about flu
Filed under: Government, Health journalism, Public health
Fourteen journalists, sponsored by AHCJ, are wrapping up a two-day workshop at the CDC about covering influenza. The workshop included a series of on-the-record sessions with CDC experts to prepare front-line journalists for the upcoming flu season. Public health experts are providing a primer on the flu, examine how it is being tracked, expectations for vaccines and antivirals, and what communities can do to deal with the fallout.
Speakers included CDC Director Thomas Frieden and Anne Schuchat, M.D., director, National Center for Immunization & Respiratory Diseases, as well as a number of other experts.
The AHCJ-sponsored journalists are:
- Diane Chun , health and science writer, The Gainesville (Fla.) Sun
- Tom Corwin, science and medicine reporter, The Augusta (Ga.) Chronicle
- Dawn Davis, writer, Caribbean Today
- Dana Felty, features reporter, Savannah (Ga.) Morning News
- Karen Garloch, medical writer, The Charlotte (N.C.) Observer
- Joe Goldeen, health-care reporter, The (Stockton, Calif.) Record
- Nina Hemphill Reedern, health and fitness editor, Upscale Magazine
- Sandy Kleffman, health care reporter, Contra Costa Times/Bay Area News
- Valerie Lego, health reporter, WZZM-Grand Rapids, Mich.
- Andy Miller, independent journalist, Atlanta
- Sonia Morgan, assistant editor, CN Media
- Shanderia Posey, healthscene editor, The (Jackson, Miss.) Clarion-Ledger
- Cynthia Roby, journalist, South Florida Times
- Olivier Uyttebrouck , health/general assignment reporter, Albuquerque Journal/Albuquerque Publishing Co.
Some of the journalists have already written about the seminar and they all will take what they learned this week home to help them report on influenza for their local readers and viewers.
- Flu vaccine no longer just for “high risk” groups, Dana Clark Felty, Savannah (Ga.) Morning News
- CDC: Flu vaccine development needs to improve, Valerie Lego, health reporter, WZZM-Grand Rapids, Mich. Lego has been tweeting from the seminar.
CDC used flawed data on lead in drinking water
Filed under: Hot Health Headline, Member news, Public health, Studies
The Washington Post’s Carol Leonnig reports that an investigation by the House Committee on Science and Technology’s Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight has confirmed what The Washington Post first reported last year, namely:
Photo by blandm via Flickr“The nation’s premier public health agency knowingly used flawed data to claim that high lead levels in the District’s drinking water did not pose a health risk to the public… And, investigators determined, the agency has not publicized more thorough internal research showing that the problem harmed children across the city and continues to endanger thousands of D.C. residents.” Those who need a refresher on the issue can refer to the Post’s timeline and story archive.
The larger issue here is that the committee and the Government Accountability Office are looking into how the CDC’s National Center for Environmental Health/Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry evaluates public health issues.
Subcommittee Chairman Brad Miller (D-NC) had some harsh words for the department:
“We need more honesty and transparency and less attitude from these offices. When you work at a public health science agency and the words most frequently used are ‘haphazard,’ ‘hit-or-miss’ and ‘ad hoc,’ maybe you should pause and reflect.”
Little recent progress on foodborne illnesses
The CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report contains some early numbers on foodborne illness rates in 2009. The data, NPR health blogger Scott Hensley writes, aren’t promising, and it looks like most infection rates haven’t really improved since 2004. A transcript and audio of the April 15 media briefing is available.
The report comes with data for the 10 states monitored by the CDC’s Foodborne Diseases Active Surveillance Network; they’re also broken down by age. To demonstrate just how variable the infection rate is, we’ve pulled numbers for two of the most common foodborne illnesses, salmonella and campylobacter.
AHCJ resources
Tip Sheets
- Lifting the shroud: Using multiple-cause-of-death data (03/17/07)
- Melamine: A primer on the contamination of food (09/25/08)
Article
- Fatal Food: A study of illness outbreaks (02/19/07)
Web sites
AHCJ Award winners
- A Body’s Burden: Our Chemical Legacy (03/01/06)
- Border Health Series (03/01/06)
Health News
- Loophole allows E. coli-tainted meat to be sold (11/15/07)
- Meat, dairy products transported in unsafe temperatures, overlooked by inspectors (11/15/07)
- Airlines delay testing of onboard water (02/20/08)
- Salmonella outbreak: A selection of recent stories (06/24/08)
- N.Y. school districts not meeting federal guidelines on cafeteria inspections (09/26/08)
- Private companies, not the FDA, increasingly perform food safety inspections (09/26/08)
CDC health overview: Diagnostic scans tripled
Filed under: Health data, Hot Health Headline, Studies
The CDC has released the 2009 version of Health, United States, their annual summary of health numbers and trends. It’s an epic heap of data; get the full PDF here.
For a 574-page, 10.22 MB government document, it’s surprisingly easy to navigate. There’s a table of contents, links and a nifty little feature which allows you to pull up a spreadsheet of the data from any chart or graph. In addition to the lead story on medical technology and scanning, the report includes 150 data tables. That’s a bit too much to summarize here, so we’ll settle for the CDC’s version of the highlights:
- … the rate of magnetic resonance imaging, known as MRI, and computed and positron emission tomography or CT/PET scans, ordered or provided, tripled between 1996 and 2007.
- The rate of adults aged 45 and over discharged from the hospital after receiving at least one knee replacement procedure increased 70 percent from 1996 to 2006 (26.5 per 10,000 population in 1996 to 45.2 per 10,000 in 2006).
- From 1988-1994 to 2003-2006, use of antidiabetic drugs among adults aged 45 years and over increased about 50 percent, and the use of statin drugs to lower cholesterol among this age group increased almost tenfold.
- The number of new organ transplantations per 1 million people increased 31 percent for kidney transplants (43.7 per 1 million in 1997 vs. 57.2 in 2006) and 42 percent for liver transplants between 1997 and 2006 (15.6 per 1 million in 1997 vs. 22.2 in 2006).
- Life expectancy at birth increased more for the black than for the white population between 1990 and 2007, thereby narrowing the gap in life expectancy between these two racial groups. Overall U.S. life expectancy in 2007 was 77.9 years.
- In 2007, 20 percent of U.S. adults were current cigarette smokers, a slight decrease from 21 percent in the previous three years. Men were more likely to be current cigarette smokers than women (22 percent vs. 17 percent).
- In 2005-2006, 30 percent of adults often or almost always had trouble sleeping in the past month.
- In 2007, 20 percent of adults 18 years and over had at least one emergency department visit in the past year, and 7 percent had two or more visits.
- The percentage of the population taking at least one prescription drug during the previous month increased from 38 percent in 1988-1994 to 47 percent in 2003-2006, and the percentage taking three or more prescription drugs increased from 11 percent to 21 percent.
OIG: Are we ready for a flu pandemic?
The Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Inspector General has released two reports assessing just how prepared Americans are for a flu pandemic. Their findings? Communities are on the right track when it comes to preparing for a surge in patient numbers, but they’re not as ready as they could be. Likewise, there’s still more to be done before local organizations will be ready to distribute vaccines and antiviral drugs.
A surge of flu victims
In the Southern Hemisphere, where the flu season has already struck, the biggest systemic issue was lack of space in intensive care units overwhelmed by H1N1 victims. Are American communities doomed to more of the same? After reviewing the coordination, volunteer recruitment/organization, medical equipment, alternate care and triage and admission guidelines of 10 localities as of late summer 2008, the OIG’s answer is a resounding “not quite.” (Get the full 37-page report here.)
The OIG’s to-do list for the assistant secretary for preparedness and response?
- Keep emphasizing those five areas that we evaluated
- Make sure that, when states and localities do medical surge preparedness exercises, they then document and address the lessons they learned from those activities.
- Those lessons everyone just documented? Make sure they share them with everyone else too. Preferably through the CDC. Then the feds can work to address specific local issues.
- Consider working with states (or even the federal government) to “develop appropriate legal protections for medical professionals and volunteers who respond to public health emergencies and who may need to alter standards of care.”
Getting vaccines/antivirals to the right place, at the right time
According to HHS, “even a mild pandemic could cause between 2 million and 7.4 million deaths worldwide” and H1N1 looks to be a “moderate” one. Vaccination is a key component of the prevention plan, which is why the OIG evaluated the pandemic flu plans of 10 communities in the categories of “Receiving & Staging, Dispensing, Tracking, Vulnerable Populations, Priority Groups, Security, Storage, and Transportation.” In general, they found that the communities need to practice more, plan for all eight categories and make those plans “actionable.” In general, folks were best at planning for receiving/staging and dispensing and worst at planning for security, storage and transportation.(Read the whole 57-page report here.)
Based on those findings, the OIG recommended that the CDC:
- Work with states to figure out why folks are still in the “early stages” of planning and help them make some progress
- Prioritize which of the eight areas states should focus on in order to improve local readiness as quickly as possible.
- Emphasize “actionable” plans that “identify the organizations or individuals responsible for carrying out specific actions and the sources that would be necessary to staff distribution and dispensing positions” that are “supported by valid, detailed formal agreements with partnering agencies.”
- Again, make sure locals keep track of what they’ve learned in preparedness exercises and that they make plans to correct any deficiencies. Also, make sure they share plans and “emerging promising practices.”
Former CDC boss now ABC health/medical editor
Filed under: Health journalism, Hot Health Headline
Richard Besser, M.D., the acting director of the CDC during the first six months of 2009 (CDC bio), will become ABC’s senior health and medical editor, Shelia M. Poole reports in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Besser
Besser’s regular press conferences at the beginning of the H1N1 outbreak first put him in the national media spotlight, and now he’ll be leaving his post as head of the Coordinating Office for Terrorism Preparedness and Emergency Response to work on the media side full-time.
Besser, who did some TV health reporting in San Diego in the ’90s, has been praised for his media savvy but was passed over in favor of former New York City Health Commissioner Thomas Freiden when the long-term hire for the CDC’s top spot was announced in May.
At ABC, Besser plans to tackle issues like “obesity, health disparities and HIV” as well as coverage of this fall’s upcoming H1N1 season, Poole reports.
New CDC tool tracks environmental health
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have created what they refer to as an online Environmental Public Health Tracking Network, a complex tool designed to aggregate, link, combine and monitor environmental health-related data streams from participating programs, including local health departments, NASA, the USGS, the EPA and several health data oriented organizations.
The network is active in California, Connecticut, Florida, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Missouri, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Utah, Washington, Wisconsin, and New York City. There are plans to expand it to five more states this summer, and the CDC hopes to eventually implement it across the country.
In its press release the CDC provides an anecdote demonstrating the system’s possible advantages:
The Utah Department of Health received a call from a citizen concerned about cases of cancer in his neighborhood. In the past, a similar call would have prompted a study that would have taken up to a year to complete, with most of that time spent waiting for data. In less than a day, the Utah Tracking Program was able to let this resident know that the likelihood of cancer in his area was no greater than in the state as a whole.
The network provides information about health effect data, environmental hazard data, exposure data and more.
New CDC site aims to reduce workplace obesity
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has launched a Web site called “LEAN Works” as part of a campaign to work with employers to reduce workplace obesity. In CDC-speak, LEAN stands for Leading Employees to Activity and Nutrition.
The campaign aims to speak in a language business can understand, emphasizing the negative impact big waistlines can have on a company’s bottom line. They even provide an obesity cost calculator, which will allow any HR department creepy enough to have every employee’s body mass index on file to calculate the precise projected return on investment yielded by an obesity intervention program.
The CDC also gives tips on how to set up a workplace obesity intervention, how to keep the momentum going and how to measure whether or not it’s producing any results.
(Hat tip to the NPR Health Blog)
AHCJ Resource
Covering Obesity: A Guide for Reporters
The prospect of covering such a broad, engaging and important topic as obesity can be overwhelming. This guide, supported by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, is designed to help journalists cover a wide range of stories, whether writing on deadline or researching a multipart series. It offers assistance on calculating body mass index, finding obesity statistics on the state level, gauging the quality of school district wellness policies, finding innovative school nutrition policies and much more. Supplementary material can be found on this page.
CDC refuses to hand over 4,000 pages to paper
Filed under: Health journalism, Hot Health Headline, Public records
In January, 2007, AHCJ member and Atlanta Journal-Constitution reporter Alison Young asked the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for 4,000 pages of documents, all discussing the threats to the agency’s reputation posed by her work and that of her co-workers.
Photo by Marcin Wichary via Flickr
The CDC says it takes an average of 38 days to process Freedom of Information Act requests, yet the Atlanta paper has several requests still pending after a year or two. In a recent column, Young takes the tardy agency to task, citing President Obama’s request for openness.
In the AJC’s case, the CDC said it fears publishing the records “would interfere with the agency’s deliberative process and have a chilling effect on employee discussions.” The records are being withheld under an FOIA exemption for internal documents that are part of the agency’s deliberative process.
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