"National" and "Universal" Healthcare?

I'm a big fan of NPR's On The Media, and this week's episode included a couple interesting health-related stories that are worth listening to.

Unhealty Reporting features a conversation with a Columbia Journalism Review editor discussing the mainstream media's relatively poor reporting of the health plans in the current election. One of the more telling points she makes is that the media is able to get away with this largely because most Americans simply don't care to hear the full details of either candidate's plan.

I Am Whatever You Say I Am includes a discussion of media coverage of genetics and genomics. It seems quite likely that this is going to become another big issue in terms of how the media could/should be reporting on developments in genetics research. And as someone teaching in an advertising department, I also think it will be quite interesting to see how mass media advertising of genetic testing products evolves over time...

On the Media is almost always a great show, but this particular episode had a strong focus on health - always a pleasant surprise.

NPR: Health Care for All

NPR has a great series starting called Health Care for All, which is going to involve in-depth looks at how five different European countries manage their healthcare systems. I just finished listening to the episode about Germany, which was very interesting. Their system has been working for over 100 years, so at the very least it seems to be a model that has some history behind it.

Stay tuned to NPR for more episodes as they come out in the next few weeks, these shows could provide some interesting context and topics for the debate about healthcare reform in the U.S.

The Power of Personal Health Records

I got an e-mail from RWJ today about a new series of podcasts coming out about the power of Personal Health Records (PHRs). This is a four-part series, with one new podcast coming each week. I've already downloaded Part 1, which I suspect I'll be listening to tomorrow at some point. The RWJ website has a page on The Power of PHRs has more information.

Third Biennial NCA Preconference in Health Communication

This came through the e-mail list for NCA Health Communication members...


Every other year, the Health Communication Division hosts a preconference session for doctoral and early career professionals. This is one of those years! Please consider registering for the preconference and inviting your students and interested colleagues to participate as well. It is a great way for emerging scholars to meet the people whose work has influenced them and to get advice on job hunting, research, teaching, funding, inter- and cross-disciplinary collaboration, and more.

Doctoral/Early Career Preconference in Health Communication
(PC09 in Conference Registration)
8:15 am-4:30 pm
Thursday, November 20, 2008
San Diego

This year, participants will have the opportunity to meet the following scholars and editors: Dan O'Hair, Rajiv Rimal, Eileen Berlin Ray, Austin Babrow, Carma Bylund, Teresa Thompson, Gary Kreps, Jon Nussbaum, Elissa Foster, Jay Baglia, Rebecca Cline, David Buller, Linda Bathgate, Ashley Duggan, CJ Koenig, Dale Brashers, Elaine Hsieh, Jim Query, and more.

Sign up via the NCA website when you register for the conference. Cost to take part in the preconference is $50.

For more information, contact preconference co-chairs Athena du Pré or Evelyn Y. Ho.

TED: Dean Ornish

This talk just popped up via a TED podcast, and I thought it was an interesting and quick view of how behaviors can impact genetics. The TED description of the talk:

Dean Ornish shares new research that shows how adopting healthy lifestyle habits can affect a person at a genetic level. For instance, he says, when you live healthier, eat better, exercise, and love more, your brain cells actually increase.

This talk is short, so if you're looking for more Dean Ornish here is an older talk from TED.

Genomics and Information Seeking

Earlier today I read an interesting article by Johnson et al.¹ about information seeking in the context of genomics and genetic testing. What I found to be most interesting - both in the article and then thinking about it since - is the complicated relationship between personal-level variables (e.g., health literacy) and external considerations (e.g., is the health condition something the person can do something about?) that work together to influence how people might seek genetic testing and/or health information about a particular health condition.

For anyone with an interst in genetics or information seeking research, this is a pretty interesting article worth checking out. The abstract states:

The intersection of the genetics era and information age poses unique and daunting challenges for health consumers who may not have the health literacy to keep pace. While rapid advances in genetics research promise enhanced care, the inherent complexities and individualistic nature of genetic information have resulted in a challenging information environment. The technical possibilities for acquiring genomic information are increasing at an exponential pace, as are the scientific advances relating to it. Furthermore, societal reactions to genomics, and possible privacy and discrimination issues, may constitute significant constraints. The health care infrastructure also has its limits, given the severe shortage of qualified cancer genetic counselors and general practitioners who are unprepared to address genetics, creating a demand for creative approaches to service delivery. The combination of individual salience, low health literacy, the consumer movement, and important policy problems, then makes genomics the perfect information seeking research problem.

For those with online access to the journal, the article is online here.

1. Johnson, J. D., Case, D. O., Andrews, J. E., & Allard, S. L. (2005). Genomics - The Perfect Information-Seeking Problem. Journal of Health Communication, 10 (4), 323-329.

Car Seats for Kids

For those of you who are fans of Freakonomics, you might already be familiar with Levitt's work. I thought this video from TED was an interesting look at child car seats, why parents buy into them (even if the data might not support their beliefs in increased safety), and general presentation style. As always, he offers an intriguing view on the break between "common sense" and what data tells us about the world.

Our Daily Meds

Working my way through some podcasts this morning, I listened to an episode from OnPoint with Tom Ashbrook titled "Our Daily Meds." It revolves primarily around an interview with author Melody Petersen who recently wrote a book titled Our Daily Meds: How the Pharmaceutical Companies Transformed Themselves Into Slick Marketing Machines and Hooked the Nation on Prescription Drugs. The segment also includes some good calls from listeners, including drug reps, doctors, etc.

For anyone with an interest in DTCA of prescription drugs, it's definitely worth checking out. It's online here for online listening.

While there are certainly some pharma marketing practices that aren't the greatest, I have a hard time with authors or people that appear to have such a slant to their thinking. In one part of the interview there is a comment made regarding the qualifications of people in advertising agencies to be writing up research results. While (of course) I don't think it's an acceptable practice to have articles written by advertising agencies and then have some other researcher or doctor stamp their name on a journal article, I do know from spending time at agencies that there are definitely people who are more than qualified to write research articles for scientific journals.

Anyway, it's an interesting episode, certainly worth 45 minutes of time.

Another Perspective on the Tomato Scare

Related to my last post, Ad Age has an interesting story today about what marketers can learn from the tomato scare. One of the primary points was that marketers affected by tomato problems didn't take full advantage of search-based communication. Increased use of blog posts, press releases, and keyword purchases could have positioned these companies to communicate more effectively regarding these problems. It's an interesting, very non-CDC perspective on things.

You Say Tomato...

Who uses the CDC website?

On the actual CDC website, there are links at the bottom suggesting that potential audiences include individuals, public health professionals, the media, healthcare providers, students, healthcare providers, researchers, and policymakers. Just landing on the CDC website, I'm impressed by the fact that it's organized much more by target audience/interest than the internal organization of the CDC. (This is quite a challenge, as I've been in enough organizations that had websites designed around the internal structure of the organization - with the end result that the website was totally incomprehensible to the general public. But I digress.)

Anyway, it seems like the news is currently featuring a lot of stories about the salmonella outbreak infecting tomatoes. My iGoogle home page featured three different stories about it, including this article over at WebMD. This got me thinking about the CDC website, and what it might look like at the moment. Here's a screenshot from this evening:


There are five tabs/main stories at the top of the home page, none of which have to do with the salmonella/tomatoes problem. I was a little surprised about that, but I found it even more odd that the only place that really appears on the home page right now is in the right side where the current Top 20 at CDC.gov are listed. The number one story on that list is, not surprisingly, the CDC info on the salmonella outbreak.

Having run a large website myself, I can certainly understand some of the logistical issues involved in managing a large website like this. But I think healthcare organizations in general can learn an important lesson here - if a lot of your visitors are coming to your website for some specific and timely bit of information (whatever it might be), websites must be designed in a flexible enough manner to quickly meet those needs. The CDC and related healthcare organizations have great credibility when it comes to health news and issues - we just need to be sure that their websites are usable enough that the credibility doesn't go to waste if users can't easily find what they're looking for.