This week, Dartmouth celebrated the publication of a paper 40 years ago that it seemed no one wanted to publish.
It was Jack Wennberg’s Science magazine paper, “Small Area Variations in Health Care Delivery.”
In the Los Angeles Times today, Dartmouth’s Gil Welch writes:
“Similar populations living in different regions of the United States get exposed to wildly different amounts of medical care.
If that sounds like an old story, it is. It’s now four decades old. But it is an important story to reflect on as we consider the path forward for our medical care system. …
(Wennberg) concluded the 1973 Science article with a decidedly different take: “the possibility of too much medical care and the attendant likelihood of iatrogenic illness is as strong as the possibility of not enough.”
Following the #wennberg13 Twitter hashtag, you can see what’s been tweeted from the Dartmouth “Location as Destiny” event – from people like Glyn Elwyn, Harlan Krumholz, Shannon Brownlee and others.
I first met Jack when I interviewed him for a CNN story in 1984 – 30 years ago. Then I had the honor of working right down the hallway from him throughout the 90s at Dartmouth Medical School. He was co-founder of the Foundation for Informed Medical Decision Making, for whom I produced shared decision-making programs. That foundation was the sole sponsor of my HealthNewsReview.org project from July, 2005 to July, 2013.
As I’ve said before, it was from Jack that I learned the unforgettable lesson to question conventional wisdom in health care. That should be the starting point for any health care journalist.
Addendum on October 17: Dartmouth announced that it has established a John E. Wennberg Distinguished Professorship.
————————
Follow us on Twitter:
https://twitter.com/garyschwitzer
https://twitter.com/healthnewsrevu
Opinions on other issues in news, journals, PR, advertising, marketing
A great read on this weekend’s NYT claims of a cure for Type 1.
Cure for Type 1 diabetes? We’ve been down this road before with NY Times https://www.healthnewsreview.org/2021/11/cure-for-type-1-diabetes-weve-been-down-this-road-before-with-ny-times/
"But it is the framing and the emphasis of the #journalism by a leading science journalist at a leading newspaper that demands scrutiny. It has an impact on readers and on sick people that may cause harm by promoting false hope about extremely preliminary research"
👍👏💪 truth https://twitter.com/garyschwitzer/status/1465399358137024518
Why we should still miss healthnewsreview. https://twitter.com/garyschwitzer/status/1465399358137024518
Comments
Please note, comments are no longer published through this website. All previously made comments are still archived and available for viewing through select posts.
Comments are closed.
Our Comments Policy
But before leaving a comment, please review these notes about our policy.
You are responsible for any comments you leave on this site.
This site is primarily a forum for discussion about the quality (or lack thereof) in journalism or other media messages (advertising, marketing, public relations, medical journals, etc.) It is not intended to be a forum for definitive discussions about medicine or science.
We will delete comments that include personal attacks, unfounded allegations, unverified claims, product pitches, profanity or any from anyone who does not list a full name and a functioning email address. We will also end any thread of repetitive comments. We don”t give medical advice so we won”t respond to questions asking for it.
We don”t have sufficient staffing to contact each commenter who left such a message. If you have a question about why your comment was edited or removed, you can email us at feedback@healthnewsreview.org.
There has been a recent burst of attention to troubles with many comments left on science and science news/communication websites. Read “Online science comments: trolls, trash and treasure.”
The authors of the Retraction Watch comments policy urge commenters:
We”re also concerned about anonymous comments. We ask that all commenters leave their full name and provide an actual email address in case we feel we need to contact them. We may delete any comment left by someone who does not leave their name and a legitimate email address.
And, as noted, product pitches of any sort – pushing treatments, tests, products, procedures, physicians, medical centers, books, websites – are likely to be deleted. We don”t accept advertising on this site and are not going to give it away free.
The ability to leave comments expires after a certain period of time. So you may find that you’re unable to leave a comment on an article that is more than a few months old.
You might also like