Who We Are

What is Health News Review?
HealthNewsReview.org is a website dedicated to:
• Improving the accuracy of news stories about medical treatments, tests, products and procedures.
• Helping consumers evaluate the evidence for and against new ideas in health care.

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:
• Promote understanding and adoption of informed medical decision-making.
• Organize and frame medical evidence in an unbiased manner to help people evaluate their options, particularly in cases where differences in individual preferences and perspectives are likely to affect personal choice.
• Sponsor research to expand knowledge of how to improve decision quality in health care.

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 Health News Review

Gary Schwitzer
Associate Professor, University of Minnesota School of Journalism & Mass Communication, Health Journalism MA program

Gary Schwitzer is the Publisher of HealthNewsReview.org. He specialized in health care journalism in his 30-year career in radio, television, interactive multimedia and the Internet. He joined the faculty of the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Minnesota in Fall 2001, and is director of graduate studies for the School's MA in Health Journalism program.

In 2000, Schwitzer was the founding Editor-In-Chief of the MayoClinic.com consumer health web site.

During the 1990s, he produced multimedia and videotape "shared decision-making" programs for the Foundation for Informed Medical Decision Making.

He has worked in television medical news for 15 years - at CNN in Atlanta, WFAA-TV in Dallas, and WTMJ-TV in Milwaukee. He was head of the medical news unit at CNN, leading the efforts of ten staff members in Atlanta and Washington, D.C.

He was elected twice to the board of directors of the Association of Health Care Journalists, for whom he authored a journalists' Statement of Principles.

Schwitzer has written about the state of health journalism in JAMA, BMJ, the American Journal of Bioethics, the Journal of Medical Internet Research, PLoS Medicine, Minnesota Medicine, Minnesota Health Care News, Minnesota Physician, Quill, CJR Daily, Poynter.org, and MayoClinic.com.

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

David Arterburn, MD, MPH
David Arterburn is Assistant Investigator at the Center for Health Studies 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 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.

Michael J. Barry, MD
Michael J. Barry is Chief of the General Medicine Unit at Massachusetts General Hospital and Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Barry has been President of the Society for Medical Decision-Making (SMDM) and the Society of General Internal Medicine. He was the PI of the Prostate PORT-II. He is currently PI of a project comparing screening and treatment intensity and prostate cancer mortality in the Connecticut and Seattle SEER areas. He heads the Endpoints Committee for the Prostate cancer Intervention Versus Observation Trial (PIVOT). His research interests include the evaluation and treatment of prostate disease, health status measurement, technology assessment, and the use of decision aids to facilitate patients' participation in decision-making.

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.

L. 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.

Karen 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.

Karen H. Costenbader, MD, MPH
Karen H. Costenbader graduated from Harvard Medical School and Harvard School of Public Health, and did her internal medicine and rheumatology training at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. Dr. Costenbader now sees patients and does conducts clinical research in the Robert B. Brigham Arthritis Center at the Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston. As a rheumatologist, her clinical interests are in Systemic Lupus Erythematosus and Rheumatoid Arthritis, diseases that disproportionately affect young women with high rates of disability and suffering. As an epidemiologist, she is investigating the causes and possible prevention of these diseases and their consequences. She is also interested in patient-doctor communication and informed medical decision making for patients with rheumatic diseases.

Harold J. DeMonaco, MS
Harold J. DeMonaco is a Senior Clinical Associate in the Decision Support and Quality Management Unit (DSQMU) of the Massachusetts General Hospital. He formerly served as the Director of Drug Therapy Management and the Director of Pharmacy. In addition to his responsibilities in the DSQMU, he is the co-chair of the Council for Technology Adoption and Innovative Process Promotion and chairs Panel A of the Human Research Committee. Mr. DeMonaco is currently a Visiting Scholar at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Sloan School of Management for 2005 and 2006 in the Technological Innovation and Entrepreneurship Group.

Kathleen 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 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 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.

Jean 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.

Ruth 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.

Carol 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 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 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.

Michael 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.

Neil Powe, MD, MPH
Neil Powe is Director of the Welch Center for Prevention, Epidemiology and Clinical Research at Johns Hopkins University and a Professor in the Department of Internal Medicine of the School of Medicine at Johns Hopkins University.

Karen 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.

Diana L. Stilwell, MPH
Diana L. Stilwell is a Senior Research Associate in the Clinical Evidence Section of the Foundation for Informed Medical Decision Making. In collaboration with clinical experts, Diana L. Stilwell ensures the accuracy of the clinical evidence included in all Foundation materials. Before joining the Foundation in 2001, she was Executive Editor of Weekly Briefings from The New England Journal of Medicine, a regular contributor to the consumer newsletters HealthNews and Heart Watch, and former managing editor of the Healthwise Handbook, Healthwise for Life and the Healthwise Knowledgebase™.

Craig Stoltz
Craig Stoltz served as editor of The Washington Post health section for six years. More recently, he was editorial director of Revolution Health. He has testified before the White House Commission on Complementary and Alternative Medicine and served as a panelist and instructor at the National Institutes of Health's annual Medicine in the Media course, which teaches journalists how to interpret medical studies. At the Post and Revolution he created a variety of editorial products that explain medical studies to the public. He has a master's degree in English from the University of Maryland.

John 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 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.