AHCJ finds uneven disclosure of H1N1 deaths
Filed under: Government, Health journalism, Public health
An informal poll of AHCJ members from across the country, as well as a review of press releases and news reports, reveals that there is a wide variation in what information local and state health officials are disclosing about H1N1 deaths.
In some places, health officials have held press conferences at which they released age, gender, city of residence and the place and time of death. In other places, officials have refused to reveal the age or gender of people who have died. Some states update tallies of deaths on their Web sites, others issue press releases, some release information only if asked and some remain silent even when asked.
“We understand the need for health officials to protect the privacy of those with H1N1,” says Felice J. Freyer, chair of AHCJ’s Right-to-Know Committee. “But, 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.”
AHCJ is preparing a guide for journalists who have difficulty getting basic information about deaths that are of public interest. The organization also hopes to work with public health officials on national level to encourage greater openness.
Read more …
Tech company aggregates, digitizes H1N1 info
Ebrary, a Silicon Valley outfit that specializes in digitizing and aggregating documents, then making them searchable, has put together a robust collection of H1N1-related documents.
Ebrary says it put the free database together because of employees’ personal frustrations over the unavailability of solid H1N1 information online. The database eases that frustration by making resources as varied as public health posters, FAQs and academic studies easy to browse and search.
While the documents are available elsewhere on the Web, journalists might find it helpful to browse this well-organized collection.
Ebrary’s H1N1 sources include Occupational Safety and Health Administration, CDC, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, HHS, National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, Department of Homeland Security, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the World Health Organization and more.
Public broadcasters have H1N1 site for journalists
Public Radio Exchange’s FluPortal.org, funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and done in collaboration with NPR, aims to provide public media with resources for reporting on H1N1.
Led by a regularly updated and authoritative blog, the site also impresses with a selection of Web tools, including widgets and embeddable multimedia, for media outlets to use on their own sites, up-to-date reference materials and examples of what others have done. The portal’s handling of new media and both official and unofficial online sources alone makes it worth a visit, especially given its current update frequency and timeliness.
Tracking H1N1 shots, in Texas and beyond
Filed under: Health data, Hot Health Headline, Public health
Jeffrey Weiss of The Dallas Morning News reports that he was able, via an open records request, to get a full list of organizations in Texas that have requested H1N1 vaccines, as well as list of all shipments ordered. The list doesn’t include any public health departments, and is led by large hospitals and mass vaccinators.
On a national scale, the HHS-maintained flu.gov has an updated list of the number of doses of H1N1 vaccine that have been shipped to states, territories and regions thus far. And for your readers or viewers who are trying to get the shots, Google has a flu shot finder map for both H1N1 and seasonal flu vaccines.
6-foot rule separates San Diego paramedics, H1N1
Voice of San Diego’s Randy Dotinga explains exactly how the fear of H1N1 has transformed every step of the health care delivery process in the Southern California city, which has been hit particularly hard by the virus. Dotinga focuses on how paramedics’ routines have changed. “To protect themselves,” Dotinga writes, “paramedics are essentially using the same precautions they would against infectious tuberculosis – something they hardly ever see.”
Dotinga says the changes become evident as soon as the paramedics arrive on the scene. Before H1N1, they’d walk right up to the patient. Not anymore.
Now, paramedics across the county adhere to a “Six-Foot Rule” when they suspect a patient has a respiratory illness. “If you’re six feet away even without your protective equipment for a short period of time, you’re not likely to get infected,” said Haynes, the county official.
If a patient has possible flu symptoms, the paramedics put on N95 respirators. They began wearing the respirators instead of ordinary masks about a month ago. Paramedics will put on eye shields too. Many paramedics hate to wear them, and forget to put them on.
In this environment of extreme care, not even the ambulances are left to go on as usual. These days, in addition to their regular regimen of extreme sanitation, they visit a nearby fire station a few times a month. There, they are nailed with a super-powered germicidal fog that ensures no microbes, nefarious or otherwise, are going to linger for long.
Does the six-foot rule really work? What about masks?
Maybe. Your view of the effectiveness of social distancing likely depends on where you stand on a particularly contentious issue: airborne vs. droplets. If influenza is spread primarily through droplets (as the CDC says it does here, and here), then it’ll have a tough time spreading beyond three feet unless it’s smeared on a surface. In this case, then, the six-foot rule is an effective way to slow the spread of the virus, as are masks.
If, however, you believe the virus is airborne then it would be able to cross the six-foot gap and you would need, at the very least, an N95 respirator (a mask which filters out at least 95 percent of airborne particles) to protect yourself. In this case, though, it’s important to note that according to some recent research, an N95 won’t offer any more protection than a regular mask.
According to the Institute of Medicine, we haven’t yet heard the final word on influenza transmission and further research is required (PDF). In the meantime, most providers are erring on the side of caution. Check out AHCJ’s primer on controlling pandemic flu for further information.
(Hat tip to AHCJ board member Maryn McKenna for pointing us in the right direction.)
NPR answers H1N1 questions
With H1N1 and the mini-pandemic of rumors that seem to follow it on the rise, NPR brought out the big guns in an attempt to answer reader/listener questions and get the facts straight.
NPR’s health editors, Joe Neel and Anne Gudenkauf, teamed up with Dr. Andrew Pekosz and Dr. William Schaffner to tackle your questions.
Pekosz is an expert on viruses and immunology and a professor at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Schaffner is an infectious disease expert and professor at Vanderbilt University.
They answer questions like “Do H1N1 and other flu vaccines work?”; “Are they dangerous?”; “Who’s immune?”; “Should I be vaccinated for both H1N1 and typical seasonal flu?” and more.
Heisel: H1N1 reporters should get out the test tubes
Antidote’s William Heisel recommends that journalists looking to dive deeper in H1N1 issues pull out their test tubes, put on their lab coats and perform a few original acts of science.
In particular, Heisel focuses on possible tests of the link between H1N1 and swine. In that spirit, he adds a list of six recommendations for enterprising reporters to produce original news research on H1N1.
Prisons to get H1N1 vaccines before everyone else?
Poynter’s Al Tompkins, always quick to seize on an interesting emerging story, rounds up reports that inmates are getting H1N1 vaccines before the general population.
McNeil Island Prison, in Puget Sound off the coast of Washington State, where some prisoners have already been vaccinated. Photo by worldislandinfo.com via Flickr.
Predictably, this revelation has spawned a bit of outrage. According to Tompkins, the vaccines go to prisons because they are high-risk areas in which a large number of people live in close quarters.
Resources for journalists covering flu
Filed under: Health journalism, Health policy, Tools
AHCJ member Stefanie Friedhoff has led a Nieman Foundation effort to bring together as much pandemic flu material as possible in one spot. The CoveringFlu.org guide not only helps reporters with the science, historical context and journalism involved, but also with practical safety considerations.
Much of the content came out of a 2006 conference, The Next Big (Health) Crisis - And How to Cover It, presented by the Nieman Foundation and cosponsored by AHCJ. It brought journalists together with scientists, public health officials, medical experts, academic researchers, law enforcement officers, public policy experts, and Homeland Security officials to talk about how best to prepare for the possible arrival of pandemic flu.
Read edited excerpts from a lengthy transcript from the event:
- Interactions of journalists and sources
- A focus on the science
- Understanding the risk - What frightens rarely kills
- Reacting to the crisis
- Press lessons from the 1918 pandemic flu
- Preparing for pandemic flu
- Reporting from the frontlines
- The many dimensions of the avian flu story
- Communicating news of an outbreak
- Preparing for the crisis
- Books about influenza
AHCJ also has these resources for journalists covering flu stories:
- Avian and pandemic influenza tip sheet, by Maryn McKenna
- Covering avian flu and pandemics: Tips for smaller newspapers/broadcast operations
- Pandemic preparedness: Tips to cover recent supplemental funding to states
- Avian & pandemic flu resources
- Bringing international stories home
- Resources for covering H1N1 flu, pandemics and preparedness
- Preparing your community for pandemics
- Pandemic/avian influenza: Epidemiology and challenges
- Pandemic influenza: Planning and coordinating the response
- Public health crisis preparation: Linda Rosenstock
CBS questions CDC’s H1N1 prevalence estimates
CBS’s Sharyl Attkisson reviewed state and federal data (collected through FOIA and other open records requests) and found that H1N1 may not be as prevalent as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have estimated. The story turns on a July 24 memo announcing to states that the CDC would no longer count H1N1 cases and statistics from state tests taken before the memo that show that even tests of the most likely patients usually came back negative for H1N1.
The high level of misdiagnosis of “probable” or “presumed” H1N1 could result inaccurate reports of outbreaks as well as in people assuming they’ve survived H1N1 and are now immune when they’ve actually suffered something that may or may not even be influenza.
Related: The CDC talked a bit about reporting and data in its Oct. 20 news briefing. Read the rough transcript of that briefing, provided by the CDC. And, The Associated Press’ Mike Stobbe, an AHCJ board member, offers more explanation about the surveillance of H1N1.
Attkisson’s report:
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