As part of a Health Literacy Month blog series about “engaging the patient,” my column on “How the News Media May Hurt – Not Help – Health Literacy Efforts,” is now posted.
I touch on three recurring themes:
Absolute versus relative risk/benefit data
Association does not equal causation
How we discuss screening tests
Other bloggers in the month-long series include:
Cindy Brach, Senior Health Policy Researcher at the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ)
Cynthia Baur, Ph.D, Senior Health Literacy Advisor at the Center for Disease Control (CDC)
Dr. Rima Rudd, Harvard University Senior Lecturer on Society
Dr. Darren DeWalt, Associate Professor of Medicine University of North Carolina
Dr. Hilary Seligman, Assistant professor of medicine University of California San Francisco
Dr. Matthew Wynia, Director of the Institute for Ethics at the American Medical Association
Andrew Jager, MA, Research Assistant at the American Medical Association Institute for Ethics
Opinions on other issues in news, journals, PR, advertising, marketing
Following a shift in journalism’s business model, a diverse ecosystem of publications, many covering science, has sprung up online. This has made it more difficult to sort out what qualifies as journalism, what doesn’t, and whether the public even cares.
https://t.co/qO2a27FiSe
Researchers and journalists do the public a grave disservice when they spin health study results to make them appear safer or more effective than warranted, says @HealthNewsRevu founder @garyschwitzer https://t.co/QIKsRbP6Ed
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