I had never met Jim Walsh of the Star Tribune, but he called me recently about a story he was working on. I’m glad he did, because I think our conversation (and subsequent conversations with people to whom I referred him) may have altered the direction of the final product. I hadn’t realized that Walsh [...]
Ray Moynihan, a terrific health care journalist who is now pursuing his PhD on overdiagnosis and working as a Senior Research Fellow at Bond University in Australia, kicks off the first of a nine-part series, “Over-diagnosis Epidemic” on TheConversation.edu.au website. The first part is an introduction, “Preventing over-diagnosis: how to stop harming the healthy.” Other [...]
Kudos to the Los Angeles Times for its story, “California doctors must soon tell women if they have dense breasts.“ Excerpts: Doctors in California will soon have to tell a patient if a mammogram reveals she has dense breasts. They will have to explain that breast density is associated with a higher risk of breast [...]
A New York Times editorial, “False Promises on Ovarian Cancer,” captures the latest chapter in the history of the too-much, too-soon enthusiasm for screening tests that often takes place – enthusiasm that is later overcome by the reality of evidence. Excerpts: “New evidence that women are more likely to be harmed than helped by screening [...]
An opinion piece in the Annals of Internal Medicine, “Ethics of Commercial Screening Tests,” makes a strong, clear statement about the problems with many screening test campaigns offered by commercial companies in partnerships with churches, pharmacies, shopping malls or trusted medical organizations. Excerpts: “Particular concerns about “the use of ultrasonography (for example, ultrasonography of the [...]
Dr. Gil Welch of the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice has an opinion column in the New York Times, “Testing What We Think We Know.” Excerpts: “The truth is that for a large part of medical practice, we don’t know what works. But we pay for it anyway. Our annual per capita [...]
The Komen Foundation’s ad campaign for breast cancer screening was criticized in a BMJ article by Dartmouth’s Steve Woloshin and Lisa Schwartz, who wrote: “Unfortunately, there is a big mismatch between the strength of evidence in support of screening and the strength of Komen’s advocacy for it.” Take your pick of places to read more [...]
The pearl I experienced in person was the 14th annual Rocky Mountain Workshop on Evidence-Based Health Care, held last week in Steamboat Springs, Colorado. It was the most intensive training in the evaluation of evidence that I’ve participated in. The organizers planned excellent plenary sessions on topics such as bias in research and making policy [...]
I’m off to the Rockies next week to speak at and participate in The Rocky Mountain Workshop on How to Practice Evidence-Based Health Care at the invitation of Dr. Andy Oxman of the Norwegian Knowledge Centre for the Health Services in Oslo. This is the 14th annual workshop but this will be my first. I’ve [...]
Catch up time: drawing attention to some interesting work published recently: The Poorest of Times: A Shift in “Death Panel” Rhetoric by Diana J. Mason, PhD, RN, in the JAMA forum. How Your Chicken Dinner Is Creating a Drug-Resistant Superbug by Maryn McKenna in The Atlantic. Hospitals Finding Patients on Google, Facebook by Phil Galewitz on [...]
This story focuses on a family that may have a rare genetic mutation that increases their risk of heart disease. Unfortunately, the “rare” part wasn’t mentioned until 1,600 words into this 2,100 word story.
While this story adequately addressed 7 of our 10 criteria, the 3 on which it missed were significant omissions, yet could have been easily addressed.
Solid medical conference reporting, with many expert interviews and good context provided. Goes far beyond the conference presentation itself.
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