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
We’ve written about the hype of liquid biopsies for years (see link in comment below). And now this…. https://www.statnews.com/2022/01/12/medicare-shouldnt-cover-liquid-biopsies-early-cancer-detection/
Case counts still matter. “(There) are stories that may not be told adequately if only hospitalizations and deaths are emphasized.” @garyschwitzer interviewed by @dbauder of @AP. https://apnews.com/article/omicron-changing-news-outlets-covid-data-da9272f7c4c8a109c3bfb56bed9e9c76
My friend Gary @garyschwitzer wrote to his city council representative in a Minnesota town about a Viva Las Vegas event scheduled for January.
The response he got seems to perfectly capture where we are now.
https://www.healthnewsreview.org/2021/12/2021-ends-with-covid-craziness-in-sports-and-politics/
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