Joy Victory is deputy managing editor of HealthNewsReview.org. She tweets as @thejoyvictory
‘Tis the season of oral, head, and neck cancer screenings, with a plethora of free public events taking place at health clinics and hospitals all over the country right now.
Judging by the abundant and largely uncritical news coverage, it’s been a major PR win for the Head and Neck Cancer Alliance, which runs the trademarked “Oral, Head and Neck Cancer Awareness Week” and states it “promotes a high volume of free screenings all over the world.”
As we’ve said before and will say again, public screening events deserve a harder look from news outlets. One of the biggest pieces of misinformation touted at these events is that screening saves lives. But as the US National Cancer Institute explains in its page on oral and oropharyngeal cancer screening, “No studies have shown that screening would decrease the risk of dying from this disease.”
To help foster more thoughtful public discussion on this issue, six years ago we recommended journalists explore these three questions as a starting point, and they’re still relevant:
Yet, in our look at numerous local news stories about oral/head/neck cancer this week, no one answered these questions. (Readers: If you do see one that does so, please send it our way–we’d love to shine a light on them!)
In this era of volatile health costs and increasingly spotty health insurance coverage, there’s another topic journalists should be broaching.
“The problem with health fairs is that they often do not … ensure that people getting screened actually have the resources to be further evaluated or treated for any problems that are identified through screening,” said Richard Hoffman, via email. Hoffman is a professor of Internal Medicine and Epidemiology, and Director of the Division of General Internal Medicine for the University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine/Iowa City VA Medical Center.
Dr. Virginia Moyer, former member chair of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, concurred.
“The screening may be free, but an appointment with a specialist at a hospital is really expensive–not just the physician’s fee, but also the “facility fee” (which private offices can’t charge) and that often doubles the total bill,” said Moyer via email, who is the Vice President for Maintenance of Certification and Quality at the American Board of Pediatrics. “And then there is the money to be made on imaging.”
As this op-ed explains, cancer screening is a lucrative business. For this reason, we suggest journalists ask a fourth (and two-part) question: If a suspicious lesion is detected at a screening event, who is responsible for ensuring a person receives follow-up care? And who pays for that care?
Another problem with public screening events is the lost opportunity for shared decision-making. Ideally, before a person agrees to any medical service, they’re informed of the evidence-based benefits and risks (including costs of treatment). They’re told what it will take to analyze a suspicious-looking spot; how often such spots turn out to be nothing; and what harms might occur along the way. Should they agree to treatment, they’re (ideally) also guaranteed access to a medical provider to help with decision-making. These are things that don’t happen as a matter of course at mass screening events, but should–and journalists need to point that out.
The news stories we looked at instead focused on the number of people diagnosed each year, the signs and symptoms to look out for, and known risk factors–framing that’s strikingly similar to the PR materials put out by the Head and Neck Alliance. Examples include these stories from Fox News Carolina, The Herald-Dispatch in Huntington, N.Y., The Chronicle in Orange County, N.Y., ArkLaText.com News in Shreveport, La., and The Connecticut Post.
News-6 Orlando was one of the few news outlets that went beyond the news release materials and interviewed a patient and a surgical oncologist, and discussed symptoms and some risk factors. The Maui News, meanwhile, focused on one man’s struggle with oral cancer, and didn’t promote free local screening. It also wisely recommended a Cancer.gov link for people to read more.
On the surface, public screenings like this communicate compassion, caution, and common sense prevention by sponsors who clearly have your best interest in mind. But are there other interests at play? If you’re a journalist, is it cautious and compassionate to uncritically promote screening–and all that it could lead to–if the evidence, so far, is lacking?
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