Third-party PubMed video tutorials in plain English
PubMed’s fantastic, but it can also be mighty frustrating. Maintained by the National Library of Medicine, it’s the interface through which folks can search or browse their way through NIH’s vast repository of health-related research articles.
Unfortunately, it’s also not quite like the user-friendly search engines most of us have come to know and love. That’s where third-party tutorials come in.
If you’re looking for a strong distillation of the basics, head straight for AHCJ’s tip sheet. If you prefer more technical info and less hands-on guidance, see Wikipedia. But if you’re looking for an in-depth, easy-to-follow introduction broken into easily digestible chunks, head for this nine-part video tutorial created by an Indiana University medical librarian.
She uses accessible language, analogies and well-paced demonstrations to peel back the layers of the labyrinth and help viewers understand the purpose and relevant applications of the interface’s features. Here’s the first installment:
Note that on Screenjelly webcasts, such as this one, you can click on the “full-screen” icon in the bottom-right corner of the player. Screenjelly looks much better in the full-screen mode than most players.
NIH updates stimulus grant info, releases database
Filed under: Health data, Health journalism, Public records, Tools
We’ve been waiting for this one. The National Institutes of Health have followed through on their promise to release a comprehensive database of NIH grants funded with stimulus money. The new data is up-to-date as of yesterday, you can find it on this page or go directly to the 13mb Excel file. The NIH’s stimulus transparency site has been quite good, in general, but inexplicably lacked key data fields and a way to export more than 500 (of 12,000+) grants at a time. The new database solves those issues.
For a quick picture of where the stimulus cash was headed, we grabbed data for all 50 states as well as D.C. and Puerto Rico, added some recent census estimates, and put together a few top 10 lists. Massachusetts, D.C. and California lead most categories, and per-capita numbers differ pretty significantly from absolute totals.
Which states (etc.) are getting the most NIH grant money?
And how does all of that money break down on a per-person basis?
What about individual NIH grants?
And what’s the per-capita on those?
These are just scratching the surface, the database has a separate entry for each grant, and it’s pretty easy to break it down by institution, research area and a number of other categories.
Does stimulus-funded research stimulate?
Filed under: Government, Hot Health Headline, Studies
Reporter Michelle Breidenbach of the Syracuse, N.Y., Post-Standard considers local academic research being funded by stimulus money and wonders just how much these projects – many of which were turned down previously and selected for stimulus money based partly on timing considerations – are really stimulating the economy. There were no job-creation or buy-American strings attached and, while ostensibly health-related, studies covered such esoteric topics as wild ticks on lab mice and the interaction between marijuana and malt liquor consumption.
With a story localization model that can be applied across the country, Breidenbach used the NIH’s grant-tracking site to check in on stimulus-funded projects getting underway at a number of nearby universities, then contacted researchers and assessed their work’s impact on the local economy and on human knowledge in general.
Collins unanimously confirmed as head of NIH
Francis S. Collins, M.D., Ph.D., has been unanimously confirmed as director of the National Institutes of Health, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced today.
“Dr. Collins is one of our generation’s great scientific leaders. A physician and geneticist, Dr. Collins served as Director of the National Human Genome Research Institute, where he led the Human Genome Project to completion,” said Secretary Sebelius. “Dr. Collins will be an outstanding leader. Today is an exciting day for NIH and for science in this country.”
Francis S. Collins
Collins, a geneticist, had received some attention when he was nominated because of his religious beliefs. The evangelical Christian wrote a book, “The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief.”
Jacob Molyneux, senior editor at the American Journal of Nursing, examined some of what was written about Francis at the time and looked at the then-nominee’s statements and records, including those about the use of embryonic stem cells for research. He concluded that “for Collins, science and the potential for alleviation of human suffering trump moral or religious absolutism and blind adherence to the sanctity of life issue.”
The Los Angeles Times ran a point-counterpoint piece about the topic, Newsweek’s religion editor weighed in, and The New York Times ran an op-ed by an author who is “uncomfortable” with Francis’ nomination. Eric Berger of the Houston Chronicle did a Q&A with Josh Rosenau from the National Center for Science Education, which defends the teaching of evolution in public schools.
NIH on Wikipedia: If you can’t beat ‘em…
The Washington Post’s Ibby Caputo reports that the National Institutes of Health, upon realizing that more folks are looking for health information online and that many of those folks are ending up on Wikipedia, has started to teach its scientists how to create and edit Wikipedia entries.
Rather than trying to compete with the free online encyclopedia, NIH seems to have chosen to embrace the inevitability that users will turn to Wikipedia for health advice. If they’re going to go there anyway, then NIH is at least going to try to make sure they’re getting the best possible information.
To this end, the NIH and the Wikimedia Foundation (the nonprofit which publishes the encyclopedia) hosted a workshop attended by about 100 NIH scientists this month in which they learned how to edit and even create Wikipedia entries.
Progress on open access issue not what it seems
A press release from the Alliance for Taxpayer Access yesterday raised hopes that permanent open access to federally funded research through the National Institutes of Health had been assured by President Obama.
As the release pointed out, on Wednesday, Obama signed the 2009 Consolidated Appropriations Act (PDF), which includes a provision making the NIH Public Access Policy permanent (section 217 on page 621 of this PDF document). The NIH policy that had been in place requires eligible NIH-funded researchers to deposit electronic copies of their peer-reviewed manuscripts into the National Library of Medicine’s online archive, PubMed Central, but the provision had to be renewed every year.
That sounds like a positive step toward ensuring public access to publicly funded research, right?
Well, not so fast.
The Fair Copyright in Research Works Act, HR 801, introduced by U.S. Rep. John Conyers Jr. and others, is still active and has been referred to the House Committee on the Judiciary.
AHCJ opposes that bill because it would completely reverse the NIH’s open access policy and would essentially nullify the provision that Obama just signed into law. As Gregg Leslie of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press said, “… any later piece of legislation modifies the current law, so Obama could sign something into law and then soon invalidate it by signing a new bill sent to him after approval by Congress.”
15 areas get a share of NIH’s stimulus funding
The NIH has designated $200 million of its stimulus money for 200 or more “Challenge Grants” in specific areas where NIH has judged the money will have the most immediate impact.
“Challenge Areas” in which funds will be available:
- Behavior, Behavioral Change, and Prevention
- Bioethics
- Biomarker Discovery and Validation
- Clinical Research
- Comparative Effectiveness Research
- Enhancing Clinical Trials
- Enabling Technologies
- Genomics
- Health Disparities
- Information Technology for Processing Health Care Data for Research
- Regenerative Medicine
- Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) Education
- Smart Biomaterials - Theranostics
- Stem Cells
- Translational Science
AHCJ to Obama: Improve access to federal experts
The Association of Health Care Journalists has urged President Barack Obama to end inherited policies that require public affairs officers to approve journalists’ interviews with federal staff.
Such policies, which are in place at such critical agencies as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Food and Drug Administration, the National Institutes of Health and most agencies of the Department of Health and Human Services, hamper newsgathering and make it difficult for reporters to fulfill their obligation to hold government agencies accountable, AHCJ said in a letter to the Obama administration.
Federal public information officers can play a key role in facilitating and coordinating communication, but have been used in recent years to inhibit the flow of information to the public rather than foster it. AHCJ members have reported waiting for days for permission to conduct an interview, or have had requests ignored or denied entirely.
Read the full statement and see the letter (PDF) that was sent to Obama.
AHCJ: Proposal would be blow to public access
Legislation introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives on Feb. 3 “would constitute a blow to the public’s right to access vital scientific data” if it goes forward, according to a statement by the Association of Health Care Journalists.
Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.)
The Fair Copyright in Research Works Act, HR 801, introduced by U.S. Rep. John Conyers Jr. and others, would reverse a National Institutes of Health policy that requires federal research grantees to provide their peer-reviewed articles to PubMed Central, a free online database. Under the existing policy, manuscripts resulting from federally-funded research must be made publicly available within 12 months of their publication date.
Related
See what others are saying about the proposed legislation:
- DigitalKoans: Fair Copyright in Research Works Act: Ten Associations and Advocacy Groups Send Letter to Judiciary Committee Members Opposing Act
- Free Government Information: Act now for open access to govt funded research
- American Library Association:Conyers Introduces H.R. 801, “The Fair Copyright in Research Works Act”
- Open Access News: Comments on the Conyers bill, #4
- Open Access Blog: Nathan Georgette follows the money and finds that “Conyers’ third single largest campaign contributor in 2008 was the American Intellectual Property Law Association.
Health spending in stimulus plan called ‘wasteful’
Congressional Republican leaders have outlined what they think are “wasteful provisions in the Senate version of the nearly $900 billion stimulus bill that is being debated.”
Several health-related proposals are among those “wasteful” expenditures:
- $400 million for the Centers for Disease Control to screen and prevent STD’s.
- $75 million for “smoking cessation activities.”
- $25 million for tribal alcohol and substance abuse reduction.
- $88 million for renovating the headquarters of the Public Health Service.
- $412 million for CDC buildings and property.
- $500 million for building and repairing National Institutes of Health facilities in Bethesda, Md.
- $100 million for reducing the hazard of lead-based paint.
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Health Journalism 2010, AHCJ's annual conference, features a world-class program with story ideas, sources, stronger reporting skills, chances to meet newsmakers and network with other journalists.
- Health and education: Covering these intersecting beats
- Reporting on the business of health care
- Health reporting resources for journalists on state and local government beats
- Shortened Lives: How location, lifestyle affect health
- Covering a complex story for the long haul
- Aging in the 21st Century: Presentations and tip sheets
- AHCJ calls for better information from Joint Commission Web site
