Transcript EMFW_Thomas - Grady College of Journalism and Mass

Enhancing health coverage
Patricia Thomas
Ethnic Media Family
Weekend
February 23-24, 2008
Secrets of the metro dailies
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Press releases, alerts, and conferences
Scientific journals
Medical/scientific/policy meetings
Pros and cons of each
Releases, alerts and conferences
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Sign up for email alerts and RSS feeds from
official public health newsmakers
“Follow the money” when practitioners and
companies push news about health
Press releases and web sites say only what
owner wants you to know
News from medical journals
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Journal articles are “news” – part of ongoing
story
Disagreements, contradictory claims are
inevitable
Tell readers: no one should ever start or stop
treatment based on a single study
Big meetings downtown
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Doctors love Atlanta, New Orleans and
Orlando
Visitors-Convention Bureau calendar
FREE for reporters
Plan ahead – find stories for your community
Thousands of international experts
Other important sources
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State and local public health agencies
Centers for Disease Control, other federal
agencies
Web sites that bring many stories together in
one place (see handout)
Bring national stories home!
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http://www.onlineathens.com/stories/092307/
news_20070923075.shtml
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http://atlantalatino.com/detail.php?id=7426
Best stories are your own!
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What do you notice about people and
surroundings?
What makes people sick?
What health issues worry family and friends?
What is safe or unsafe in community?
What are barriers to good health care?
Look in the briefing book
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My favorite websites
What makes a good story about a disease
medical condition?
What makes a good story about a test,
treatment or procedure?
Online Resources for Covering Health and Medical Stories
Patricia Thomas, University of Georgia
Ethnic Media Family Weekend
February 23-24, 2008
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Kaiser Family Foundation State Health Facts
http://www.statehealthfacts.org/
An amazing treasure trove of health information: organized by state, easily searched.
Information about physicians, hospitals, emergency room visits, nursing home
residents, all available by race and gender and location. Always worth checking
whenever you ask yourself, “I wonder how many people fit this description?” or “I
wonder how often this happens?”
Kaiser Family Foundation Reports
http://www.kaisernetwork.org
Index page filled with important news items
Daily and weekly reports on HIV/AIDS and health policy
Weekly report on health disparities and minority health
Alliance for Health Reform
www.allhealth.org
This nonprofit, nonpartisan group believes that everyone in the U.S. should have
access to health care at a reasonable cost. But they are not affiliated with a
particular political party and they don’t advocate for a specific solution to health care
problems. Reporters can register at no charge and have access to experts on many
topics, in many local areas. Or if you’re in too much of a hurry to register, call 202789-2300 or email [email protected] and the organization will help you find an
expert anyway.
Online Resources for Covering Health and Medical Stories
Patricia Thomas, University of Georgia
Ethnic Media Family Weekend
February 23-24, 2008
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Health News Review
www.healthnewsreview.org
This website evaluates the accuracy and completeness of news stories about health.
If you want to see examples of stories that do everything right and stories that fall
short, this is the place to look. There is a checklist for each story explaining its strong
and weak points. A project of the Foundation for Informed Medical Decision Making
and the University of Minnesota School of Journalism.
Association of Health Care Journalists
www.healthjournalism.org
It costs $60/year to join AHCJ, but membership benefits include an archive of “howto” articles and guides on topics such as “covering hospitals” or “covering obesity.”
The listserv enables reporters to ask other reporters for help – which is freely given.
Someone might need an expert on a particular disease, for example, who is not on
the payroll of a drug company. Other reporters offer names of experts they’ve used
successfully – and sometimes flag untrustworthy sources.
The organization also provides an email newsletter and organizes annual
conferences where veteran, expert journalists and authors share what they know.
Participation is a great way to improve your skills and network with colleagues from
across the country.
Online Resources for Covering Health and Medical Stories
Patricia Thomas, University of Georgia
Ethnic Media Family Weekend
February 23-24, 2008
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Pew Hispanic Center
http://pewhispanic.org
The most recent health-related survey on this site appears to be from
2002; given immigration patterns it is dated but still contains information
that can help reporters – depending on what you’re writing about.
National Council of La Raza
www.nclr.org
In the topics section, look under “Health and Family Support” for archives of publications
and news stories; strong on child health and insurance issues.
US Department of Health and Human Services Office of Minority Health
http://www.omhrc.gov
Look under “Data and Statistics” for information about the health of various communities:
African American, American Indian/Alaska Native, Asian American/Pacific Islander,
Hispanic/Latino, Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islanders.
Checklist for a solid story about a disease or medical condition
Patricia Thomas, University of Georgia
Ethnic Media Family Weekend
February 23-24, 2008
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Whether you are writing about hypertension, elbow injury or an outbreak of a new
infectious disease, here are important points to cover.
How is the disease/condition/injury defined? What are its signs and symptoms?
Who is most likely to be affected? (Children or older people, men or women, etc.)
What are the risk factors? (Smoking, overweight, working at certain types of jobs,
etc.)
How can risk be lowered? (Quitting smoking, losing weight, wearing protective
equipment.)
If this is an infectious disease, such as flu, HIV or Chagas disease, how does
exposure or transmission occur? (Sexual contact, casual contact, insect bite, etc.)
How do doctors diagnose the problem? (Physical examination, blood or urine tests,
etc.)
What treatments are available? (Drugs, surgery, physical therapy, lifestyle change,
etc.)
How successful is treatment likely to be?
What happens to people who aren’t treated? Do most people recover spontaneously,
or is there significant risk for severe illness or death without medical treatment?
What does treatment typically cost?
Can a local doctor diagnose and treat this problem or should consumers turn to
designated hospitals with specialized physicians and facilities?
Checklist for a solid story about a disease or medical condition
Patricia Thomas, University of Georgia
Ethnic Media Family Weekend
February 23-24, 2008
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Reporting and presentation tips:
Lots of basic medical information can be found in online fact sheets
created by government agencies (Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention, National Institutes of Health) or reputable non-profit
organizations (American Cancer Society, Alzheimer’s Association,
American Heart Association).
Interviews with experts can help you bring the story home and show
why it matters for your audience.
Use charts, drawings, photos, boxes and sidebars to break information
into smaller, easy-to-read chunks. Pictures often explain disease
processes and surgical treatments better than words.
Patricia Thomas
Knight Chair in Health and Medical Journalism
Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication
Athens, GA 30602-3018
704-542-1210
[email protected]
Patricia Thomas is the first holder of the Knight Chair in Health and Medical Journalism at
Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication, University of Georgia.
She has written about medicine, public health, and life science research for many years,
and from 1991 to early 1997 was editor of the Harvard Health Letter. For her book Big
Shot: Passion, Politics, and the Struggle for an AIDS Vaccine (PublicAffairs, September
2001), Thomas won the 1998 Leonard Silk Journalism Fellowship and the 2002 Ralph A.
Deterling Award of Distinction from the American Medical Writers Association New England
Chapter. Thomas was also one of the first healthy volunteers injected with an experimental
HIV vaccine.
She has been a Knight Science Journalism Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology and in 2002-2003 was the Visiting Scholar at the Knight Center for Science and
Medical Journalism at Boston University. During that year, Thomas taught graduate
students, wrote a monograph analyzing news management and reporting during the
anthrax attacks of 2001, and wrote a chapter for The War on Our Freedoms: Civil Liberties
in an Age of Terrorism. She analyzed how post-9/11 laws such as the Patriot Act affect
infectious disease research. Thomas’s work appears regularly in Harvard Magazine, where
she is a Contributing Editor.
Thomas is an advisor to the Knight Science Journalism Fellowships at MIT and the Albert
B. Sabin Vaccine Foundation. She also reviews grants for the Congressionally Directed
Medical Research Program on Breast Cancer, administered by the Department of Defense.