Reporter shares lessons from writing first-person medical stories
Late last year, the Concord (New Hampshire) Monitor ran a series of stories in which reporter Meg Heckman used her own struggles with hepatitis C as a lens through which to examine the nation’s epidemic. Now, she’s shared the lessons she learned during her effort as both reporter and source in a Poynter article. If you’re not familiar with the story, I recommend taking three minutes to review the the video piece that accompanied the story. The final 90 seconds, in particular, really get to the heart of Heckman’s internal conflict.
The lessons Heckman took from the experience include the vulnerability of becoming a news source, the importance of structuring your story both for web and print, and the ins and outs of researching (and then exposing) your own personal and medical life.
Expect developments in screening, treatment for hepatitis C
This is a guest post from Felice J. Freyer, a medical writer at The Providence (R.I.) Journal. Freyer, an AHCJ board member, is one of 11 AHCJ-CDC Health Journalism Fellows visiting the CDC this week.
Felice J. Freyer
One in 30 people born between 1945 and 1965 – the Baby Boom generation – suffer from hepatitis C, a viral infection that can lead to liver cancer.
But the majority of infected people don’t know they have it.
That may change soon, and journalists should keep their ears perked for developments that will lead to good stories about hepatitis, Dr. John Ward, director of the Viral Hepatitis Program at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told the AHCJ-CDC Health Journalism Fellows this morning.
The CDC is in the process of developing screening guidelines in the hope of encouraging more people to get tested for hepatitis C. Current guidelines call for asking people about risk factors, such as intravenous drug use, that many may not want to disclose or consider part of their distant past, Ward said. The new guidelines may be based on age and other factors rather than just behaviors, he said.
Additionally, the FDA is considering approval of a new, more effective drug against hepatitis C. “We are on the cusp of a revolution in hepatitis C treatment,” Ward said.
The 11 AHCJ-CDC fellows today completed the third of four days at the CDC, where they have met with CDC experts on food-borne illness, diabetes, influenza, health care-acquired infections and other topics, as well as touring the CDC emergency operations center and laboratories in Atlanta.
Other dispatches from the AHCJ-CDC Health Journalism Fellows:
Drug companies hit with punitive damages
A jury has decided Teva Parenteral Medicines and Baxter Healthcare Corp. must pay a combined $500 million in punitive damages in a case involving a hepatitis C outbreak in Las Vegas.
The case, expected to be just the first of hundreds, alleged that the re-use of vials of the anesthetic propofol infected patients with the disease.
An attorney for former patient Henry Chanin said the vials provided by the companies were larger than necessary, while “drug company lawyers have maintained that the vials were marked with instructions and warnings, and medical professionals decided what sizes were appropriate.”
Related
- Hep C emerges from dormancy to hit baby boomers
- KQED profiles those who live with disease, injury
- VA hospitals faulted for lax infection control
Hep C emerges from dormancy to hit baby boomers
Newsweek’s Sarah Kliff looked into hepatitis C, a virus which can be dormant for decades then emerge to cause liver fibrosis and cirrhosis. It affects between 2.7 million and 3.9 million Americans, two-thirds of them baby boomers.
The virus is transferred through contact with infected blood, typically through intravenous drug use or transplants or blood transfusions that occurred before 1992, the year when officials started screening blood for the disease. Because it can remain dormant for so long, many boomers who contracted the disease during their free and easy youth are just starting to show symptoms.
“Even though Boomers moved on with their lives, they could be living with an infection that happened many years ago,” says John W. Ward, division director for the Center for Disease Control’s Division of Viral Hepatitis. “Now, they’re aging into a period of their lives when Hepatitis C could become manifest through physical symptoms.” One study published last May estimates that, in the next 20 years, total medical costs for Hepatitis C patients will nearly triple, from $30 to $85 billion.
Many don’t even know they have the disease, and Kliff writes that general public awareness is lagging.
Despite affecting 1 percent of the population, hepatitis C remains a disease generally misunderstood by the general public with little in financial commitments from the federal government. The CDC’s National Center for HIV/AIDS, Viral Hepatitis, Sexually Transmitted Diseases, and Tuberculosis Prevention had a budget of almost $1 billion for 2008. Only 2 percent of that was allocated to hepatitis B and hepatitis C despite both viruses being five times more prevalent.
Because of the stigma associated with a virus often linked to drug use that causes symptoms (chronic liver disease) often associated with alcohol abuse, officials have found it tricky to convince now-affluent and settled boomers to come to terms with their wild past and acknowledge that they may have exposed themselves to the virus. To get past those barriers, officials have even considered comprehensive age-based screening requirements, Kliff writes.
The CDC is considering a blanket, age-based screening recommendation. “We’re launching studies to see if it’s feasible and makes sense,” says Ward, the CDC official. “Just like everyone over 50 should have a check for colon cancer, it might fit into an age-based checklist of preventative services.”
Related
From the Institute of Medicine: Hepatitis and Liver Cancer: A National Strategy for Prevention and Control of Hepatitis B and C (PDF)
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