The document summarizes research on the quality of health news coverage and discusses why improving coverage matters and what doctors can do to help. Key findings include:
- Many news stories do not adequately report on the benefits and risks of medical treatments, tests, and drugs or mention costs.
- For many groups, media and doctors are the top sources of health information, so inaccurate coverage can influence health behaviors.
- Doctors can help by developing relationships with reporters, answering questions, reviewing press releases, and providing context on new studies through their own blogs or comments to reporters.
Overuse and inappropriate use of antibiotics is a major public health concern in the US according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), making it more difficult for physicians to easily treat many infections.
My talk to National Breast Cancer Coalition Project LEAD® workshop 2014Gary Schwitzer
Delivered in Washington, DC, on November 16, 2014. These slides also became the basis for a talk I gave via Skype to Doug Starr's class in the graduate Program in Science and Medical Journalism at Boston University on November 19.
Hepatitis C Risk Assessment, Testing and Referral for Treatment in primary Ca...Real Wellness, LLC
Dr. Robert Winn worked with a team to determine rates of hepatitis C (HCV) risk factor ascertainment, testing, and referral in urban primary care practices, with particular attention to the effect of race and ethnicity.
Overuse and inappropriate use of antibiotics is a major public health concern in the US according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), making it more difficult for physicians to easily treat many infections.
My talk to National Breast Cancer Coalition Project LEAD® workshop 2014Gary Schwitzer
Delivered in Washington, DC, on November 16, 2014. These slides also became the basis for a talk I gave via Skype to Doug Starr's class in the graduate Program in Science and Medical Journalism at Boston University on November 19.
Hepatitis C Risk Assessment, Testing and Referral for Treatment in primary Ca...Real Wellness, LLC
Dr. Robert Winn worked with a team to determine rates of hepatitis C (HCV) risk factor ascertainment, testing, and referral in urban primary care practices, with particular attention to the effect of race and ethnicity.
Global Medical Cures™ | NEULASTA- Pediatric PostMarketing Adverse Event ReviewGlobal Medical Cures™
Global Medical Cures™ | NEULASTA- Pediatric PostMarketing Adverse Event Review
DISCLAIMER-
Global Medical Cures™ does not offer any medical advice, diagnosis, treatment or recommendations. Only your healthcare provider/physician can offer you information and recommendations for you to decide about your healthcare choices.
Role of the media in preventing or promoting overdiagnosisGary Schwitzer
Seminar presentation at Preventing Overdiagnosis 2015 conference in Washington DC 9/1/15 by Gary Schwitzer, Publisher, HealthNewsReview.org & Adjunct Associate Professor, University of Minnesota School of Public Health
HIV, TB, and diabetes are three of the communicable and non-communicable disease combinations on the rise globally, particularly in Southern Africa. The newsletter describes some research breakthroughs and challenges in seeking durable cures and optimizing integrated disease management. This will be the first in a series of newsletters about communicable and non-communicable diseases and is a supplement to my book, The Heroine Next Door.
My talk to University of Wisconsin event, "Science Writing in Age of Denial"Gary Schwitzer
This is an amended version to reduce file size to allow it to fit on SlideShare.
My main theme was news coverage of screening tests that emphasized only benefits while denying/ignoring/minimizing evidence of potential harms.
McGovern Award Lecture - American Medical Writers AssociationGary Schwitzer
The McGovern Award is given by the American Medical Writers Association for "preeminent contributions to medical communications." It was presented at the AMWA annual conference, in Memphis, October 9, 2014.
Bioethics lecture UMDNJ-RWJ Medical School: "Addressing the Morass at the Int...Gary Schwitzer
I began the talk by expressing my thanks and humility for being invited to speak in a lecture series that had previously hosted George Annas, Art Caplan, Robert Veatch, Linda and Zeke Emmanuel, Daniel Callahan and many others whose work I have followed and admired. I expressed my appreciation for being the first journalist to speak in the series and hoped that I would not be the last.
I noted that one previous speaker in the series had said, ”In the last 30 years, our entire ethical sensitivity has increased substantially.” I began by wondering if the same could be said about increased ethical sensitivity in media messages about health care. And then I launched into my own 30 year retrospective.
I cited a few examples from the epiphany I had in 1984 as a reporter whose eyes were opened to the hype/misinformation disseminated on AIDS, Artificial Heart, Alzheimer's. And then I transitioned to a reflection on how the same or similar issues are covered today. I offered only a few examples; it would have been a 5-hour talk if I'd made the list more complete. CNN, not coincidentally, is cited in many of the examples, some of them from my own first-hand experience. From the ‘80s, the network insisting on hourly live reports of artificial heart patient updates, and the hyping of a trial in 4 Alzheimer’s patients. In ’90, the hype of an AIDS patient (or was he?) claiming cure from a hyperthermia experiment. Then in the current era, CNN lending credence to cloning claims by a UFO-obsessed sect, and claiming an “exclusive” and “breakthrough” on a hospital news release claiming a cancer cure was within reach. The talk emphasized shared responsibilities on the part of all who communicate about medical research and health care claims. It touched on the imbalance in many media messages about screening tests, with journalists sometimes crossing the line from independent vetting into non-evidence-based advocacy. I cited the Statement of Principles of the Association of Health Care Journalists (which I wrote). It pointed to how medical journals can be complicit in the miscommunication of findings, but how many articles are now being published in journals raising questions about “spin” and bias and interpretation and word choice.
Lipid Screening in Childhood for Detection of Multifactorial DyslipidemiaGlobal Medical Cures™
Lipid Screening in Childhood for Detection of Multifactorial Dyslipidemia
IMPORTANT NOTE TO USERS OF WEBSITE & DOCUMENTS POSTED ON SLIDESHARE- Global Medical Cures™ does not offer any medical advice, diagnosis, treatment or recommendations. Only your healthcare provider/physician can offer you information and recommendations for you to decide about your healthcare choices.
www.globalmedicalcures.com
PrEP, or Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis, is a once a day pill that can be taken by an HIV negative individual to prevent HIV infection. This presentation reviews current statistics, research and policy regarding PrEP.
Knight Science Journalism Fellowships at MIT Medical Evidence Boot Camp 2013Gary Schwitzer
This was, I believe, the fifth time I've been asked to speak at this event in Cambridge. Other speakers: Drs. Steven Woloshin and Lisa Schwartz of Dartmouth, Dr. Barry Kramer of NCI, and Dr. Marty Makary of Johns Hopkins.
Sherborn: Thompson & Pape - Sherborn’s critical influence in getting informat...ICZN
The order Diptera (Insecta), flies, is a megadiverse group, representing some 15% or more of the known species of organisms. Scientific names are tags to concepts (hypotheses), called species, by which we organize our knowledge of biodiversity. Our Systema Dipterorum provides an index to all scientific names related to flies, so access to our knowledge about them is readily available. Sherborn more than a century ago attempted to provide such an index to all animal names. He did provide an index to all names published up until and including 1850. We compare our indexes, revealing how standards have changed and the number of names increased. Today, more and better resources are being made available to us, such as the Biodiversity Heritage Library, and our standards are higher (new International Code of Zoological Nomenclature), but regardless of all the change, Sherborn for his time provided an almost perfect (99.9%) index.
Global Medical Cures™ | NEULASTA- Pediatric PostMarketing Adverse Event ReviewGlobal Medical Cures™
Global Medical Cures™ | NEULASTA- Pediatric PostMarketing Adverse Event Review
DISCLAIMER-
Global Medical Cures™ does not offer any medical advice, diagnosis, treatment or recommendations. Only your healthcare provider/physician can offer you information and recommendations for you to decide about your healthcare choices.
Role of the media in preventing or promoting overdiagnosisGary Schwitzer
Seminar presentation at Preventing Overdiagnosis 2015 conference in Washington DC 9/1/15 by Gary Schwitzer, Publisher, HealthNewsReview.org & Adjunct Associate Professor, University of Minnesota School of Public Health
HIV, TB, and diabetes are three of the communicable and non-communicable disease combinations on the rise globally, particularly in Southern Africa. The newsletter describes some research breakthroughs and challenges in seeking durable cures and optimizing integrated disease management. This will be the first in a series of newsletters about communicable and non-communicable diseases and is a supplement to my book, The Heroine Next Door.
My talk to University of Wisconsin event, "Science Writing in Age of Denial"Gary Schwitzer
This is an amended version to reduce file size to allow it to fit on SlideShare.
My main theme was news coverage of screening tests that emphasized only benefits while denying/ignoring/minimizing evidence of potential harms.
McGovern Award Lecture - American Medical Writers AssociationGary Schwitzer
The McGovern Award is given by the American Medical Writers Association for "preeminent contributions to medical communications." It was presented at the AMWA annual conference, in Memphis, October 9, 2014.
Bioethics lecture UMDNJ-RWJ Medical School: "Addressing the Morass at the Int...Gary Schwitzer
I began the talk by expressing my thanks and humility for being invited to speak in a lecture series that had previously hosted George Annas, Art Caplan, Robert Veatch, Linda and Zeke Emmanuel, Daniel Callahan and many others whose work I have followed and admired. I expressed my appreciation for being the first journalist to speak in the series and hoped that I would not be the last.
I noted that one previous speaker in the series had said, ”In the last 30 years, our entire ethical sensitivity has increased substantially.” I began by wondering if the same could be said about increased ethical sensitivity in media messages about health care. And then I launched into my own 30 year retrospective.
I cited a few examples from the epiphany I had in 1984 as a reporter whose eyes were opened to the hype/misinformation disseminated on AIDS, Artificial Heart, Alzheimer's. And then I transitioned to a reflection on how the same or similar issues are covered today. I offered only a few examples; it would have been a 5-hour talk if I'd made the list more complete. CNN, not coincidentally, is cited in many of the examples, some of them from my own first-hand experience. From the ‘80s, the network insisting on hourly live reports of artificial heart patient updates, and the hyping of a trial in 4 Alzheimer’s patients. In ’90, the hype of an AIDS patient (or was he?) claiming cure from a hyperthermia experiment. Then in the current era, CNN lending credence to cloning claims by a UFO-obsessed sect, and claiming an “exclusive” and “breakthrough” on a hospital news release claiming a cancer cure was within reach. The talk emphasized shared responsibilities on the part of all who communicate about medical research and health care claims. It touched on the imbalance in many media messages about screening tests, with journalists sometimes crossing the line from independent vetting into non-evidence-based advocacy. I cited the Statement of Principles of the Association of Health Care Journalists (which I wrote). It pointed to how medical journals can be complicit in the miscommunication of findings, but how many articles are now being published in journals raising questions about “spin” and bias and interpretation and word choice.
Lipid Screening in Childhood for Detection of Multifactorial DyslipidemiaGlobal Medical Cures™
Lipid Screening in Childhood for Detection of Multifactorial Dyslipidemia
IMPORTANT NOTE TO USERS OF WEBSITE & DOCUMENTS POSTED ON SLIDESHARE- Global Medical Cures™ does not offer any medical advice, diagnosis, treatment or recommendations. Only your healthcare provider/physician can offer you information and recommendations for you to decide about your healthcare choices.
www.globalmedicalcures.com
PrEP, or Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis, is a once a day pill that can be taken by an HIV negative individual to prevent HIV infection. This presentation reviews current statistics, research and policy regarding PrEP.
Knight Science Journalism Fellowships at MIT Medical Evidence Boot Camp 2013Gary Schwitzer
This was, I believe, the fifth time I've been asked to speak at this event in Cambridge. Other speakers: Drs. Steven Woloshin and Lisa Schwartz of Dartmouth, Dr. Barry Kramer of NCI, and Dr. Marty Makary of Johns Hopkins.
Sherborn: Thompson & Pape - Sherborn’s critical influence in getting informat...ICZN
The order Diptera (Insecta), flies, is a megadiverse group, representing some 15% or more of the known species of organisms. Scientific names are tags to concepts (hypotheses), called species, by which we organize our knowledge of biodiversity. Our Systema Dipterorum provides an index to all scientific names related to flies, so access to our knowledge about them is readily available. Sherborn more than a century ago attempted to provide such an index to all animal names. He did provide an index to all names published up until and including 1850. We compare our indexes, revealing how standards have changed and the number of names increased. Today, more and better resources are being made available to us, such as the Biodiversity Heritage Library, and our standards are higher (new International Code of Zoological Nomenclature), but regardless of all the change, Sherborn for his time provided an almost perfect (99.9%) index.
Webinar on Bundling agriculture index insurance with financial and non financ...Impact Insurance Facility
The WBG's Global Index Insurance Facility, the USAID and BASIS/I4-sponsored Global Action Network (GAN) and the ILO's Impact Insurance Facility organised a webinar to look into the question "How can index insurance be bundled with other financial and non financial services". This webinar featured speakers from global organizations who shared experiences and discussed which services and activities in the agriculture value chain are most aligned for bundling. It explored mechanisms and issues in bundling, and also looked into the possible impact of bundling on pricing & off-take of index insurance and measures of tracking it.
Speakers: François-Xavier Albouy (Vice President PlaNet Guarantee), Michael R. Carter (Professor and Director BASIS Research Program, University of California, Davis), Shadreck Mapfumo (Senior Financial Specialist World Bank Group) and David Muigai (Actuarial Officer ACRE).
Covering Cancer News - Lessons from HealthNewsReview.orgGary Schwitzer
This is 1 of 2 presentations I made at the National Cancer Institute's Cancer Research in the Media workshop for Latin American journalists in Guadalajara on November 7, 2011
A Promulgation Of Incredulity In The Pharmaceutical IndustryStuart Silverman
It is simply no longer possible to believe much of the clinical research that is published, or to rely on the judgment of trusted physicians or authoritative medical guidelines.
Breakthrough Advocacy for Breakthrough ResearchCTSciNet .org
Meeting: Physician-Scientist Career Development Meeting, New York Academy of Sciences, November 3-5, 2010
Presentation: Breakthrough Advocacy for Breakthrough Research
Speaker: Mary Woolley, President and CEO, Research!America
View online with audio at http://community.sciencecareers.org/ctscinet/groups/sessions/2010/12/breakthrough-advocacy-for-breakthrough-research.php
Can you teach an old doc new tricks? Techonomy Bio 2015W2O Group
Greg Matthews' presentation at the Techonomy Bio confernce 2015 in Mountain View, CA (http://techonomy.com/conf/bio15/). Introduces the context of the global health ecosystem.
How useful are advance directives in directing end of life care and do people really understand or want to know the true status of their health as the end nears?
an informed patient is an empowered patient … with the goal of achieving improved health outcomes.
… shared or informed decision-making, evidence-based patient choice, or concordance.
Chapter 3Public Health Data and Communications.docxwalterl4
Chapter 3
Public Health Data and Communications
Learning Objectives
Identify six basic types of public health data
Explain the meaning, use, and limitations of the infant mortality rate and life expectancy measurements
Explain the meanings and uses of HALEs and DALYs
Identify criteria for evaluating the quality of information presented on a website
Explain ways that perceptions affect how people interpret information
Learning Objectives
Explain the roles of probabilities, utilities, and the timing of events in combining public health data
Explain the basic principles for the construction of decision trees and their uses
Explain how attitudes, such as risk-taking attitudes, may affect decision making
Identify three different approaches to clinical decision making and their advantages and disadvantages
Vignette 1
You read that the rate of use of cocaine among teenagers has fallen by 50% in the last decade.
You wonder where that information might come from.
Vignette 2
You hear that life expectancy in the United States is now approximately 80 years.
You wonder what that implies about how long you will live and what that means for your grandmother, who is 82 and in good health.
Vignette 3
You hear on the news the gruesome description of a shark attack on a young boy from another state and decide to keep your son away from the beach.
While playing at a friend’s house, your son nearly drowns after falling into the backyard pool.
You ask why so many people think that drowning in a backyard pool is unusual when it is far more common than shark attacks.
Vignette 4
“Balancing the harms and benefits is essential to making decisions,” your clinician says.
The treatment you are considering has an 80% chance of working, but there is also a 20% chance of side effects.
“What do I need to consider when balancing the harms and the benefits?” you ask.
Vignette 5
You are faced with a decision to have a medical procedure.
One physician tells you there’s no other choice and you must undergo the procedure, another tells you about the harms and benefits and advises you to go ahead and the third lays out the options and tells you it’s your decision.
Why are there such different approaches to making decisions these days?
Questions-to-Ask (1)
What is the scope of health communications?
Where does public health data come from?
How is public health information compiled to measure the health of a population?
How can we evaluate the quality of the presentation of health information?
What factors affect how we perceive public health information?
Questions-to-Ask (2)
What type of information needs to be combined to make health decisions?
What other data needs to be included in decision making?
How do we utilize information to make health decisions?
How can we use health information to make healthcare decisions?
Table 3-1 The 6 Ss of Quantitative Sources of Public Health Data (1/3)Type
ExamplesUsesAdvantages/
DisadvantagesSingle case or small seriesC.
Talk at the University of Tokyo on history of Retraction Watch, our database, and current trends. Includes titles in Japanese, courtesy of Iekuni Ichikawa.
My June 14, 2017 talk at the Friends of the National Library of Medicine conference, "Consequential Clinical Research Accelerating Continuous Improvement"
Post-Publication Peer Review in Science: Reflections on Retractions and Med...
Health News Coverage: Just How Bad It Is, Why It Matters, and What Doctors Can Do About It
1. Health News Coverage:
Just How Bad It Is, Why It Matters,
and What Doctors Can Do About It
Ivan Oransky, MD
Executive Editor, Reuters Health
Clinical Asst. Professor of Medicine, New York University
Adjunct Asst. Professor,
New York University Science, Health, and Environmental Reporting Program
Grand Rounds
University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health,
Department of Medicine
November 5, 2010
2. Disclosures
I’m a full-time employee of Thomson Reuters, a provider of
news about health and other subjects
My wife is a full-time employee of CNN, a provider of news
about health and other subjects
4. Just how bad is some health care journalism?
Front page story, May 3, 1998
"Judah is going to cure cancer in two years,'' said Dr.
James D. Watson, a Nobel laureate who directs the Cold
Spring Harbor Laboratory, a cancer research center on
Long Island.
6. Schwitzer G. How do U.S. journalists cover treatments, tests, products,
and procedures? An evaluation of 500 stories. PLoS Medicine 2008
doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.0050095
Just how bad … ?
7. 207 stories
• 83 (40%) did not report benefits quantitatively
• 124 did, but
- 103 (83%) reported relative benefits only,
- 3 (2%) absolute benefits only,
- 18 (15%) both absolute and relative benefits
• 98 (47%) mentioned potential harm to patients
• 63 (30%) mentioned costs
• 170 stories cited an expert or a scientific study
- 85 (50%) cited at least one source with disclosed financial ties
- 33 (39%) disclosed these ties
Moynihan R et al. Coverage by the news media of the benefits
and risks of medications. N Engl J Med 2000; 342:1645-1650
Just how bad … ?
8. 193 articles reporting at least one benefit or harm of a drug
100% mentioned at least one benefit
132 (68%) did not mentionside effects or harms
119 (62%) did not quantify benefits or harms
– Of 510 mentions of benefits and harms, only 120 (24%) gave quantitative
information
– In 26% (31/120) the magnitude was presented in relative terms
37(19%) articles reported only surrogate benefits
7 (4%) mentioned contraindications
61 (32%) mentioned drug costs,
89 (46%) mentioned drug alternatives
30 (16%) mentioned nondrug options (such as exerciseor diet)
Cassels A. Drugs in the news: an analysis of Canadian
newspaper coverage of new prescription drugs. CMAJ, April
29, 2003; 168 (9)
Just how bad … ?
9. 193 articles reporting at least one benefit or harm of a drug
120 (62%) quotedat least one interviewee.
After exclusion of industry and government spokespeople, potential
financial conflicts of interest were reported for only 5 of 164 interviewees
(3%)
Of 57 articles covering studies, only 15 (26%) included information on
study funding
Cassels A. Drugs in the news: an analysis of Canadian
newspaper coverage of new prescription drugs. CMAJ, April
29, 2003; 168 (9)
Just how bad … ?
10. Wells: “Newspapers over-represent support for screening
mammography for ages 40 to 49”
Reports would have been improved by
• Identification of all sources for information cited
• Less reliance on relatively few sources
• Discussion of benefits in absolute terms
Medical journalism may need standards similar to those used for
reporting medical research
Wells J. Newspaper reporting of screening
mammography. Ann Intern Med 2001;35:1029-1037.
Just how bad … ?
11. FDA message: Use of pediatric antidepressants is linked to a
risk of suicidality (as opposed to suicide itself)
• Reported correctly in the vast majority of news stories, BUT
• Other key health messages in FDA warning often missing
• News stories more likely to include anecdotes of children harmed
versus children helped by antidepressants
• Quoted experts more likely to emphasize benefits over risks
Coverage grew increasingly neutral over time, conveyingneither the
impression that the risks outweighed the benefits nor that benefits
outweighed the risks
Barry CL, Busch SH. News coverage of FDA warnings
on pediatric antidepressant use and suicidality.
Pediatrics 2010; 125:88-95.
Just how bad … ?
12. Why It Matters:
Where do people find health information?
National Health Interview Survey:
Among blacks, Hispanics, and whites, doctors and print
media were consistently the two most frequent sources
of information
Meissner HI et al. How sources of health information
relate to knowledge and use of cancer screening exams.
J Comm Health 1992;17(3):153–165.
13. Why It Matters:
Where do people find health information?
Woodall ED et al. Sources of health information
Among Vietnamese American Men,” Journal of
Immigrant and Minority Health July 2006
14. Survey of U.S. Latino adults
by the Pew Hispanic Center and the RWJ Foundation
• More than 25% lack a usual health care provider
• A similar proportion report obtaining no health care information
from medical personnel in the past year
• More than 80% report receiving health info from the media
• 79% say they are acting on media information
• “…the survey findings clearly demonstrate the power and potential
of these alternative outlets to disseminate health information to the
disparate segments of the Latino population.”
Pew Hispanic Center, 2008: Hispanics and Health Care in
the United States: Access, Information and Knowledge.
Why It Matters:
Where do people find health information?
15. 2010 Harris Poll
88% of adults have looked for health info online
81% of “Cyberchondriacs” looked online in last 30 days (mean, 6x/mo)
• 17% looked for health info online ≥10 times in the last month
Most are satisfied with their ability to find what they want online
• Only 9% say they were somewhat (6%) or very (3%) unsuccessful
• Only 8% think the info they found was unreliable
53% say they discussed online info with their doctors
51% looked for info online based on discussions with their doctors
Why It Matters:
Where do people find health information?
16. In 1997 the South Wales Evening Post ran a “protracted campaign” on the
supposed dangers of measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccinations
• 5 front-page stories,
• 3 opinion pieces
• at least 18 other stories
Immunization rates fell by 13.6% in the paper's circulation area, and 2.4%
in the rest of Wales.
Mason BW, Donnelly PD. Impact of a local newspaper
campaign on the uptake of the measles mumps and rubella
vaccine. J Epidemiol Community Health. 2000;54:473-74
Why It Matters:
Where do people find health information?
17. Why It Matters:
Does media coverage make a difference?
(The $64,000 question)
Are medical experts like pots calling the kettle black?
"The reaction of the medical profession to evidence of
damage to children was to claim coincidence," Edwards said.
"We might as well say it was a coincidence that the take-up
for MMR fell after we published our series of stories."
19. In a national survey of U.S. health and medical journalists:
• Nearly 70% had at least a bachelor’s degree
• 19% reported having a master’s degree;
• 4.5% had a doctorate; about 3% were M.D.s
• Almost half had a degree in journalism
• 13% had a degree in communications
• 8% were ‘‘life sciences’’ majors
Viswanath K et al: Occupational practices and the making of
health news: A national survey of U.S. health and medical
science journalists. Journal of Health Communication 2008;
13:759–777.
Why is it so bad?
20. Fewer reporters are doing more stories, broadcasts, and
blog posts
• Sites chasing a smaller number of advertising
dollars
• Pressure to cover more and more, which places
heavy reliance on journals and meetings
Why is it so bad?
21. Barriers to improving medical journalism
• Lack of time, space and knowledge (the most common
obstacles)
• Competition for space and audience
• Difficulties with terminology
• Problems finding and using sources
• Problems with editors and commercialism
Larrson A. Medical messages in the media--barriers and
solutions to improving medical journalism. Health
Expectations 2003;6:323-31.
Why is it so bad?
22. Many health reporters feel it’s hard to find independent
experts willing to assist journalists
They think editors need education in critical appraisal of
medical news
Nearly all want short, reliable, up-to-date background
information on various topics available on the Internet
Most (79%) were interested in participating in a trial to
evaluate strategies to overcome identified constraints
Larrson A. Medical messages in the media--barriers and
solutions to improving medical journalism. Health
Expectations 2003;6:323-31.
Why is it so bad?
23. • Academic medical centers issue a mean of 49 press releases/year
• Among 200 randomly selected releases
– 87 (44%) promoted animal or laboratory research, of which 64 (74%)
explicitly claimed relevance to human health
– Among 95 releases about clinical research, 22 (23%) omitted study
size and 32 (34%) failed to quantify results
– 113 releases promoted human research
• 17% promoted randomized trials or meta-analyses
• 40% reported on uncontrolled interventions, small samples (<30
participants), surrogate primary outcomes, or unpublished
data—yet 58% lacked the relevant cautions
Woloshin S et al. Press releases by academic
medical centers: not so academic? Ann Intern
Med 2009;150:613-618
Why is it so bad?
24. What You Can Do
• Journals should make efforts to interest the press equally in
negative and positive studies
• Scientists should check all institutional press releases for accuracy
and clarity
• The health science community should promote contact with the
media when confirmatory or non-confirmatory studies emerge in
an area that has already been in the news
• Medical journals should revise their policies so that scientists who
explain a study to reporters do not jeopardize their chances of
publishing their work
Schuchman M. Medical scientists and health
news reporting: a case of miscommunication.
Ann Intern Med 1997;126:976-982
25. • Develop relationships
– Answer calls
– Don’t just call when you have a paper published
– Send newsworthy items and ideas from other groups
– Be an reporter’s back pocket expert
• Help news offices write better press releases
• Start your own blog
• Don’t hype
What You Can Do
27. Acknowledgements
My Twitter followers, especially Susannah Fox
(@SusannahFox) for references on media usage
Nancy Lapid of Reuters Health, for formatting my slides