Newspaper Coverage of Health Issues

Stan and Clarence sit down with Jeremy Olson to chat about newspaper and journalism coverage of health issues.

Jeremy has a developed career as a healthcare journalist. In addition to being a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter, Jeremy has completed fellowships at the Kaiser Family Foundation, Poynter Institute, and New York Times. Jeremy has received numerous awards for their work including, "a Premack Public Affairs award for scrutinizing a schizophrenia drug trial, a SABEW award for uncovering abuses of meatpackers, and a Casey Medal for examining deaths in foster care." (Star Tribune) Jeremy now reports for the Star Tribune.

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Brought to you in support of Hue-MAN, who is Creating Healthy Communities through Innovative Partnerships.

More about their work can be found at http://huemanpartnership.org/

Research: 

• History of Newspapers and health issues
• How do we report health issues in the news today?
• An awareness of how to work with the media is essential for health communicators. This includes understanding journalists' daily routines, being available, providing resources, and building relationships with specialist health reporters. [BMC]
• Pew Research
• Health news was the 8th biggest subject in the national news, comprising 3.6% of all coverage. This is more than three times the amount of coverage for education or transportation, but much less than coverage about foreign affairs, crime, or natural disasters. 
• When the overall coverage of health was broken down, specific diseases such as cancer, diabetes or heart disease received the most coverage at 41.7%. Public health issues such as food contamination, tainted vaccines, and binge drinking garnered the next most attention, accounting for nearly a third (30.9%) of all health coverage. News about health policy or the U.S. health care system was not far behind, at 27.4% of the coverage. 
•  The single disease to get the most attention was cancer, accounting for 10.1% of all health coverage. 
• The number two condition was diabetes/obesity, at 5.2% of coverage, followed by heart disease, at 3.9%, and HIV/ AIDS and autism at 2.2% each. 
• The biggest individual health-related story was the debate over U.S. health care policies, which was the focus of 16.3% of all health news. Coverage of that story peaked in the fall of 2007 when the debate about the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) erupted in Congress. The next biggest story was the tuberculosis-carrying traveler who entered the U.S. This story accounted for 8.3% of health coverage for the entire 18-month period, but during the week it occurred, it was the top-ranked story in the nation.
• Where do you see newspaper reporting going?
• Interesting article: https://content.iospress.com/articles/information-services-and-use/isu200081 
• ABSTRACT: Today’s health care journalists work in a very different environment than those of yesterday. The demand for stories and broadcasts has grown exponentially, and the resources available have shrunk dramatically. While it may therefore be difficult to see how improvements in health care journalism are possible, let alone a way to improve health care literacy, there is an important connection that, if illuminated, could help both fields. To understand the literature on the quality of health care journalism, it is critical to understand the backgrounds of today’s health care journalists and the challenges they face. That literature also goes hand in hand with studies of the effects that news coverage has on the public’s understanding of health care issues. There are training and educational programs designed to help health care journalists do their jobs better, and this chapter concludes with a discussion of how cooperation between health journalists, physicians, and other stakeholders can lift all boats.
• Main Take Aways 

• Who are today’s health care journalists?

• almost 70% of the respondents to our survey had at least a bachelor’s degree; 19% reported having a master’s degree; 4.5% reported having a doctorate, including about 3% with an M.D. Almost half of the respondents graduated with a degree in journalism and 13% with a degree in communications. Eight percent reported they were ‘life sciences’ majors in college” [1]. Although two-thirds of those surveyed were women, minorities were not well represented among health care journalists - and both trends remain unchanged.

• What challenges do health care journalists face?

• To meet news traffic targets, contemporary health reporters are asked to produce high volumes of stories, sometimes several per day, which does not facilitate in-depth reporting, or context

• How good (or bad) is today’s health care journalism?

• The net effect of these limitations and resource constraints is that coverage of medical research is often one-dimensional, oversimplified, and fails to provide readers and viewers with the kind of narrative and information that is desirable to improve public understanding about health and medicine.
• Does news coverage influence the public’s health literacy, attitudes, and behavior?
• A 2002 Cochrane review found: “despite the limited information about key aspects of mass media interventions and the poor quality of the available primary research, there is evidence that these channels of communication may have an important role in influencing the use of health care interventions”

• What efforts are in place to improve health care journalism?

• efforts range from academic programs that offer degrees, to ongoing professional education for working journalists, to organizations that connect researchers to reporters and editors.

• Does improving health journalism really improve public understanding?

• Insufficient research to know for sure
• Reliable vs not reliable source [IFFGD].
• Readers should be aware of obvious biases.
• There are few absolutes in Medicine.
• Information derived from one population may not apply to another.
• The Nature of the Media – 
• Some news media and broadcasts inspire more trust than others do. Readers should judge the medium’s reputation and independence. Does the outlet have any connection to the news item? For example, does the same issue advertise the reported ‘beneficial’ product?
• The Credibility of the Journalist
• The Source of the Information 
• Beware of Extravagant Claims 
• Beware the Anecdote – 
• Most of us have a friend or have heard of someone who claims to be cured by a treatment that has no scientific basis. Faith-based treatments are not necessarily harmful, but if they have adverse effects, or delay effective treatment, they can be so. Journalism thrives on the anecdote, the human-interest story – the attention-grabbing incident that “proves” the point. Nevertheless, anecdotes are poor science. The human condition is far too complex for us to believe that if a treatment works for someone, it is more likely than by chance to work in ourselves. If there must be anecdotes, they should illustrate all possible outcomes.
• Interesting article on healthcare journalists
• Among 34 journalists, 56% were women and 44% men; the majority of journalists (65%) had no specialized training on health reporting, 35% of journalists were not able to understand the health issues, and the knowledge of medical terminology in 59% of them was moderate to low. The most important required skill for reporters was the ability to interpret medical research reports (88%), 97% were eager to participate in specialized health education.
• Did you double check reliability???