HealthNewsReview.org | Independent Expert Reviews of News Stories | Holding Health and Medical Journalism Accountable

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What is HealthNewsReview.org?

HealthNewsReview.org is a website dedicated to:

We support and encourage the ABCs of health journalism.

  • Accuracy
  • Balance
  • Completeness

How is HealthNewsReview.org funded?

The funding for HealthNewsReview.org is provided by the Foundation for Informed Medical Decision Making.


The Foundation's mission is to ensure that people understand their choices and have the information they need to make sound decisions affecting their health and well being. A non-profit organization, its objectives are to:

In a complex medical environment, where cost savings, commercial interests or professional beliefs and commitments are likely to drive medical decisions, the Foundation provides information that is as objective, complete and unbiased as possible.


Where did the idea come from?

This website is modeled, in large part, upon the pioneering effort begun by an Australian team that launched the Media Doctor Australia website in 2004. We are grateful to David Henry and the Media Doctor team for sharing their ideas and perspectives with us. The Australian effort has also been the inspiration for a Media Doctor Canada site, whose publisher, Alan Cassels, has been very helpful in guiding us.

People

People Involved in HealthNewsReview.org

People

Gary Schwitzer is publisher of the website HealthNewsReview.org, leading a team of more than two dozen people who grade daily health news reporting by major U.S. news organizations.

 

In its first year, the project was honored with several journalism industry awards – the Mirror Award, honoring those who "hold a mirror to their own industry for the public's benefit," and the Knight-Batten Award for Innovations in Journalism.

 

His blog – which is embedded within HealthNewsReview.org – was voted 2009 Best Medical Blog in competition hosted by Medgadget.com.

 

Read more about his background.

 


People

The following people share in the reviewing and scoring of the health news stories on this site:

David ArterburnDavid Arterburn, MD, MPH

David Arterburn is Assistant Investigator at the Center for HealthStudies at Group Health Cooperative in Seattle, Washington. Dr. Arterburn received his MD from the University of Kentucky in 1997 and completed his Internal Medicine residency and chief residency at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio in 2001. In 2003, he completed a Health Services Research and Development Fellowship at the VA Puget Sound in Seattle and received his MPH in Health Services at the University of Washington. Dr. Arterburn's work has focused on the area of obesity health services research, with expertise in the clinical effectiveness of obesity interventions and systematic reviews. He has recently published articles on the cost of obesity, obesity pharmacotherapy, bariatric surgery, health-related quality of life assessment, and the health outcomes of obesity in the elderly. He also currently serves as a medical editor for the Foundation for Informed Medical Decision Making, and is working with the Foundation to develop shared decision making tools in the area of weight management.

Steven AtlasSteven J. Atlas, MD, MPH

Steven J. Atlas is an Associate Physician in General Medicine and Associate Director of primary care quality improvement at Massachusetts General Hospital, and is an Assistant Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. His research focuses on improving the quality of care for patients with low back disorders and respiratory infections. He is a National Institutes of Health funded investigator studying work-related low back pain and ways to improve patient care by better linking patients and doctors. For patients with sinus infections, he developed a survey instrument to measure the severity of symptoms and their impact.

Molly T. Beinfeld, MPH

Molly T. Beinfeld is a Research Associate in the Clinical Evidence Section of the Foundation for Informed Medical Decision Making. She has a BA in Psychology and Biology from Cornell University and a Master's of Public Health from Boston University. Before joining the Foundation in 2004, Ms. Beinfeld worked as an Analyst for the Boston Public Health Commission and as a Research Scientist at the Institute for Technology Assessment at Massachusetts General Hospital.

Michael Bierer MD, MPH

Michael Bierer is Assistant Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Associate Physician at Massachusetts General Hospital where he has been on staff since 1988. He currently has an active primary-care clinic in internal medicine at the hospital, and is responsible for resident education related to the clinical management of drug and alcohol problems. He formerly ran the program for homeless patients at the hospital.

Ebony BoulwareL. Ebony Boulware, MD, MPH

L. Ebony Boulware is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Internal Medicine at the School of Medicine of Johns Hopkins University. Dr. Boulware's major research interests include chronic kidney disease epidemiology and prevention, eliminating racial disparities in access to appropriate care for persons with chronic kidney disease, and identifying barriers to the delivery of appropriate care for persons with chronic kidney disease.


Her current research activities focus on identifying patient and physician barriers to the receipt of guideline concordant care for patients with chronic kidney disease, identifying patient, physician, and population factors affecting the receipt of kidney transplantation, and race and gender differences in attitudes toward organ donation. Additional activities include investigating the relation of quality of life indices to outcomes in chronic kidney disease and work identifying the contribution of patient behavior to the progression and treatment of chronic disease

Julie Beauregard, MLIS

Julie Beauregard is a Research Associate in the Clinical Evidence Section of the Foundation for Informed Medical Decision Making. She gathers, evaluates and summarizes the current medical research in support of new or revised Shared Decision Making programs. Prior to joining the Foundation, Julie worked as a Librarian at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, where she synthesized evidence-based information packets in response to clinical questions and assisted with a number of patient education initiatives. Julie holds a BS in biology from Union College and a Master.s in Library and Information Science from the University of Pittsburgh.

Karen CarlsonKaren Carlson, MD

Karen Carlson is Director of Women's Health Associates at Massachusetts General Hospital, Assistant Professor in Medicine and Deputy Director, Center of Excellence in Women's Health at Harvard Medical School. Her areas of interest include hysterectomy and alternative treatments for nonmalignant gynecologic conditions, ovarian cancer screening, and communication issues in the doctor-patient relationship. She was the principal investigator of the Maine Women's Health Study, a study of hysterectomy outcomes in the United States. She is co-editor of a medical textbook, Primary Care of Women, and a comprehensive book on women's health, The Harvard Guide to Women's Health.

Harold DeMonacoHarold J. DeMonaco, MS

Harold J. DeMonaco is the Director of the Innovation Support Center at the Massachusetts General Hospital.  A graduate of the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Allied Health Sciences he holds a bachelors degree in pharmacy and a masters degree in therapeutics.  He formerly served a Director of Drug Therapy Management and the Director of Pharmacy as well as Chair of the Human Research Committee at the MGH. He has a keen interest in the innovation process in medicine and organizational behavior related to change.  He is the author of two dozen articles and book chapters and routinely conducts manuscript reviews for medical journals.    He formerly served as a core editor at Harvard Health Publication and is a member of the editorial advisory board for Proto Magazine and Biologic Therapies in Psychiatry.

Kathleen FairfieldKathleen Fairfield, MD, DrPH

Kathleen Fairfield is a clinician-scientist based at Maine Medical Center. She attended Boston University School of Medicine, trained in Internal Medicine at Beth Israel Hospital in Boston, and completed general medicine fellowship there in 1998 before joining the faculty. She completed her research training with Doctorate in Public Health from Harvard in 2000, in Nutrition and Epidemiology with a concentration in cancer epidemiology. In 2002 she returned to her home state of Maine. Dr. Fairfield has research interests in nutritional supplements, complementary therapies, nutrition and cancer prevention.

Catherine Finn, MSW

Catherine Finn is a Research Associate in the Clinical Evidence Section of the Foundation for Informed Medical Decision Making. Before joining the Foundation, she worked as a research assistant in the Child Psychiatry Department at Massachusetts General Hospital, and as a research assistant at the Harvard School of Public Health. Ms. Finn conducted her clinical social work training within the Boston Public Schools and at Healthcare Associates, a multidisciplinary primary care practice within Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Boston.

Ralph GonzalesRalph Gonzales, MD

Ralph Gonzales is an Associate Professor of Medicine; Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the University of California, San Francisco; and serves as Associate Director of the UCSF Roadmap K12 Multidisciplinary Clinical Research Career Development Program and Co-Director of the UCSF School of Medicine Epidemiology/Evidence Based Medicine course for medical students. Dr. Gonzales conducts research on design and implementation of multidimensional intervention strategies to improve the management of acute respiratory tract infections in adults, particularly with regard to reducing overuse of antibiotics. He also edits the annually updated book Current Practice Guidelines in Primary Care (McGraw-Hill/Lange).

Katherine HartmanKatherine E. Hartmann, MD, PhD

Katherine E. Hartmann, MD, PhD is Deputy Director of the Institute for Medicine and Public Health at Vanderbilt University Medical Center where she also serves as Director of Women's Health Research at Vanderbilt, and Vice Chair of Research in Obstetrics and Gynecology. Dr. Hartmann is a reproductive and health care epidemiologist who received her medical training as well as a master's degree in science writing at the Johns Hopkins University. She completed residency, Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholars fellowship, and doctoral training in epidemiology at the University of North Carolina. Dr. Hartmann's research spans topics from subclinical hypothyroidism and cardiovascular disease, to risk factors for miscarriage and preterm birth. Her methodological interests include evaluation of diagnostic tests; measuring how patients and physicians use data for decision-making; and large scale clinical-translational studies of etiology and natural history of disease.

William HeiselWilliam Heisel

A former investigative reporter for The Los Angeles Times, William Heisel is a contributing editor for ReportingOnHealth.org at the USC Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism where he writes the blog Antidote <http://www.reportingonhealth.org/blogs/130>. He also works as the senior communications officer for the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington. He has reported on health for most of his career and has worked at the Orange County Register and the Associated Press. He helped create a first-of-its-kind report card judging hospitals on an array of measures for a story that was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. He was one of the lead reporters on a series of stories about lead in candy, a series that also was a finalist for the Pulitzer. He graduated from the University of Montana with a BA in journalism and Spanish.

Richard HoffmanRichard Hoffman, MD

Richard M. Hoffman, MD, MPH, a general internist, is a Professor of Medicine at the University of New Mexico School of Medicine and a staff physician at the Albuquerque VA Medical Center. He also serves as Interim Director for Cancer Prevention at the University of New Mexico Cancer Center. He received his MD from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in 1984 and completed an internal medicine residency at the Oregon Health Sciences University in Portland, Oregon in 1987. In 1992, he completed an ambulatory care fellowship at the VA Puget Sound in Seattle and received an MPH from the University of Washington. His areas of research interest are prostate and colorectal cancer screening and prostate cancer treatment outcomes, with expertise in clinical epidemiology, health services research, and meta-analysis. He is a medical editor for prostate cancer topics for the Foundation for Informed Medical Decision Making and works with the Foundation to develop shared decision making tools for prostate cancer screening and treatment of localized prostate cancer.

Andrew HoltzAndrew Holtz, MPH

Former CNN Medical Correspondent Andrew Holtz is an independent journalist based in Portland, Oregon. He is the author of three books that compare TV depictions of health care to reality: "The Medical Science of House, M.D." (2006), "The Real Grey's Anatomy" (2010) and "House M.D. vs. Reality" (to be published in 2011). Holtz wrote an award-winning series of columns on medicine in the media for Oncology Times. A series of videos he did on health news and understanding health research and health care can be viewed at MDiTV.com. Holtz is former President and current member of the Association of Health Care Journalists Board of Directors. He has a BA from Stanford and a Master's in Public Health from Portland State.

Jeffrey N. Katz, MD, MS

Jeffrey N. Katz, MD, MS graduated from Princeton University in 1980, attended Yale Medical School, and completed a medical internship and residency at Yale-New Haven Hospital and a Rheumatology fellowship at Brigham and Women's Hospital. He received a Master's Degree in 1990 at Harvard School of Public Health. Dr. Katz is currently Associate Professor of Medicine and Orthopaedic Surgery at Harvard Medical School and Associate Professor of Epidemiology and Environmental Health at HSPH.


Dr. Katz has focused his research on the evaluation and outcomes of musculoskeletal disorders including carpal tunnel syndrome, lumbar spinal stenosis and osteoarthritis and lower extremity joint replacement. Dr. Katz is Director of the Orthopaedic and Arthritis Center for Outcomes Research in the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery and Division of Rheumatology, Immunology and Allergy at Brigham and Women's Hospital. He is Principal Investigator of the Brigham Multidisciplinary Clinical Research Center (an NIH P60 Center), the MeTeOR Trial (a five center RCT of the efficacy of arthroscopic partial meniscectomy) and a NIAMS funded T32 clinical research training program.


He is Deputy Editor for Methodology of the Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery and Deputy Editor of Spine. He served on the National Academy of Sciences Panel on Musculoskeletal Disorders and the Workplace.

Jean KutnerJean S. Kutner, MD, MSPH

Jean S. Kutner is an Associate Professor of Medicine in the Division of General Internal Medicine at the University of Colorado at Denver Health Sciences Center and is the Head of the Division of General Internal Medicine. Dr. Kutner established and directs the Population-based Palliative Care Research Network (PoPCRN), a research network of organizations that provide hospice/palliative care. She is recipient of Robert Wood Johnson Generalist Physician Faculty Scholars Program and Paul Beeson Physician Faculty Scholars in Aging Research Awards. Nationally, she is the Chair of the American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine College of Palliative Care and is a member of the Board of Trustees of the American Board of Hospice and Palliative Medicine.

Jennifer Layne, PhD

Jennifer Layne, PhD is a Research Associate in the Clinical Evidence Section of the Foundation for Informed Medical Decision Making. Before joining the Clinical Evidence team, Dr. Layne was a research associate at the USDA Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts University and was involved in clinical trials and community-based initiatives for older adults with multiple chronic medical conditions. She received a master.s degree in Applied Anatomy and Physiology from Boston University and a PhD in Nutritional Biochemistry and Metabolism from Tufts University.

Andrew HoltzRuth Lipman, PhD

Ruth Lipman is a Research Associate in the Clinical Evidence Section of the Foundation for Informed Medical Decision Making. She has a PhD in Biomedical Sciences from Worcester Polytechnic Institute and has been a faculty member at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Tufts University School of Nutrition and Harvard School of Medicine where she worked in the biology of aging, focusing on the impact of diet and exercise on age-related disease processes.

Kevin LomanginoKevin Lomangino

Kevin Lomangino is an independent medical journalist and editor who is currently Editor-in-Chief of Clinical Nutrition Insight, a monthly evidence-based newsletter which reviews the scientific literature on nutrition for physicians and dietitians. He also advises medical societies on the development of their publishing programs as an associate with the consulting firm Kaufman-Wills Group LLC. He was formerly Senior Editor at Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, a medical publishing company, where he developed new print and online publications for health care professionals and managed a portfolio of medical publications and newsletters. Kevin received his BA from Loyola University in Maryland.

Carol MangioneCarol M. Mangione, MD, MPH

Carol M. Mangione is a Professor in the Division of General Internal Medicine and Health Services Research in the Department of Medicine of the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. She is also a consultant in the RAND Health Program, and Director of the NIA-funded UCLA/Drew Resource Center for Minority Aging Research/Center for Health Improvement of Minority Elderly. Additionally she is a practicing general internist in the UCLA Medical Group's Internal Medicine Suites where she sees patients and teaches medical residents. Dr. Mangione received her BS from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MD from the University of California, San Francisco, and her MSPH from the Harvard School of Public Health, Boston. She is Co-director of the UCLA Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Clinical Scholars Program, and member of the National Diabetes Quality Improvement Alliance Technical Expert Panel.

Mary CollinsMary McNaughton-Collins, MD, MPH

Mary McNaughton-Collins is on the faculty at Harvard Medical School and has a clinical practice at Massachusetts General Hospital. She has funding from the NIH to conduct research in prostate diseases. Dr. McNaughton-Collins received a bachelor's degree in Spanish from Holy Cross in 1987 and a medical degree from Dartmouth/Brown in 1991. She completed a medical residency at Boston University, followed by a fellowship in general medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital. She received a MPH degree from the Harvard School of Public Health.

Colin NelsonColin Nelson

Colin Nelson is a Research Associate in the Clinical Evidence Section of the Foundation for Informed Medical Decision Making. In this role, he critiques and synthesizes scientific research, and translates it into clear, evidence-based messages to support a broad range of Foundation programs. He has authored or edited more than 2000 articles and monographs, several of which won medical writing awards. His work for health care providers and the general public has appeared on CNN.com, WebMD, AOL Health, Medpage Today, and elsewhere. Mr. Nelson is also a consumer representative to the Cochrane Collaboration. For 10 years he was editor of the newsletters Bone & Joint and Sports Medicine Digest and associate editor of The Back Letter. He received his BA from Williams College.

Lyn Paget, MPH

Lyn Paget is the Director of Communications for the Foundation for Informed Medical Decision Making. She develops strategies for communicating the Foundation's mission to all who are interested in improving the quality of medical decision making and advancing informed patient choice. She designs plans for sharing the Foundation's resources, innovations, and research findings with the health care community, consumers, and policy professionals. She has a BS in Health Education from the University of Massachusetts, Lowell and a Masters in Public Health from the University of California, Los Angeles. Before joining the Foundation, she served as Vice President of the Medical Outcomes Trust in Boston. In management and consultative roles, her work has concentrated in health care quality improvement, with a focus on program planning, evaluation and policy development.

Mike PignoneMichael P. Pignone, MD, MPH

Michael P. Pignone is an Associate Professor of Medicine in the Division of General Internal Medicine at University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill, Associate Chief of the Division of General Internal Medicine, and Director of the UNC Center for Excellence in Chronic Illness Care. He received his medical degree and residency training in primary care internal medicine from the University of California- San Francisco. He then completed fellowship training in clinical epidemiology and health services research through the Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholars Program at UNC. Dr. Pignone's research is focused on chronic disease prevention and physician - patient communication about risk in primary care settings. His main areas of interest include heart disease prevention, colorectal cancer screening, and disease management for common chronic illnesses such as diabetes, depression, heart failure, and chronic pain.

Karen SepuchaKaren R. Sepucha, PhD

Karen R. Sepucha is a Senior Scientist with the Health Decision Research Unit at Massachusetts General Hospital and an Instructor in Medicine at Harvard Medical School. Her research interests focus on extending and refining normative and behavioral decision making theories and their applications to medical decision making. Dr. Sepucha has published several articles evaluating decision support interventions and describing a conceptual framework for promoting measurable improvements in decision quality. Her most recent work is focused on developing and evaluating decision quality measures that can be used to compare decision quality across populations of patients.

John WilliamsJohn W. Williams Jr., MD

John W. Williams Jr. is Professor of Medicine and Psychiatry at Duke University. He is co-Director for the MacArthur Initiative on Depression in Primary Care, Scientific Editor of the NC Medical Journal and a faculty member in the Center for Health Services Research in Primary Care at the Durham VAMC. His research on the clinical examination, depression recognition, and methods to implement effective care models for depression have been published in major medical journals such as JAMA, BMJ and Annals of Internal Medicine. Current projects focus on the dissemination of successful care models for depression, measuring depression quality of care, improving the incorporation of evidence into clinical guidelines, and evaluating screening strategies for cognitive impairment. Dr. Williams received a Generalist Physician Faculty Scholar award from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and an Advanced Career Development Award from the VA Health Services Research Program. Dr. Williams is board certified in Internal Medicine and active in clinical practice and resident physician education.

John WongJohn Wong, MD

John Wong is Chief of the Division of Clinical Decision Making, Informatics and Telemedicine in the Department of Medicine at the Tufts-New England Medical Center Hospitals and the Tufts University School of Medicine. He is a Past President of the Society for Medical Decision Making and a Fellow of the American College of Physicians. Dr. Wong received his medical degree from the University of Chicago, Pritzker School of Medicine. He completed his postgraduate training in internal medicine at the Tufts-New England Medical Center, and Tufts University School of Medicine; where he received a National Library of Medicine Medical Informatics fellowship in Clinical Decision Making. His research has examined public health policy and individual medical management issues using decision analysis to help patients, physicians and policy makers choose among alternative tests, treatments or policies.

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