Hans Rosling: Let My Dataset Change Your Mindset

I haven't had a chance to watch this one yet, but all of Rosling's talks are amazing. I wanted to post a link to this as soon as I realized he had a new TED talk out.

PRSA Health Academy Paper Competition

(Just wanted to pass along word on this...)


Quinnipiac University and the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) Health Academy announce the second annual PRSA Health Academy Paper Competition. The purpose of the competition is to encourage applied research of value to public relations professionals. The winner of the competition will present his/her paper at the PRSA Health Academy Spring Conference to be held in Chicago, Illinois in April of 2010. In addition, the winner will receive a $250 cash award and will be reimbursed for transportation and lodging costs.

Papers might address such issues as hospital public relations, pharmaceutical public relations, medical public relations, health policy, health management, medical device manufacturing public relations, insurance public relations, or current trends in healthcare. Papers may be submitted by professionals, doctoral students/candidates, master’s students/candidates, or faculty members of any rank. Papers may be solo-authored or co-authored. (Cash and reimbursement will be provided to lead author.) Papers should be between 15 – 30 pages (including references), double-spaced, in Times New Roman 12-point font including references. Papers should be prepared using APA style. Papers may be reports of original research or essays. Papers will be judged by a panel of reviewers including academics and members of the PRSA Health Academy Board. Among the factors judges will consider: usefulness of the paper to working professionals, clarity, writing quality, and contribution to the public relations body of knowledge.

The deadline for submissions is December 14, 2009. All papers should be submitted electronically in Microsoft Word and sent to Dr. Kurt Wise, APR, Chair, Public Relations Department, School of Communications, Quinnipiac University (kurt.wise@quinnipiac.edu). Identification material should not be included in the body of the paper. Identification of authors and contact information should be included only in e-mail messages and cover sheet. The winner will be announced by February, 2010. All questions should be directed to Dr. Wise.

Quinnipiac University is a private, coeducational university with more than 5,000 undergraduate and 2,000 graduate students. Quinnipiac University is located in Hamden, Connecticut, 90 minutes from New York City and two hours from Boston. Quinnipiac University offers both graduate and undergraduate degrees in public relations.

The PRSA Health Academy and Quinnipiac University would like to congratulate the winner of the 2009 competition, Dr. Brigitta Brunner of Auburn University. One of the largest Professional Interest Sections within PRSA, the Health Academy comprises nearly 800 members. Its members are mid- to senior-level public relations practitioners representing a broad spectrum of health care organizations such as hospitals and health systems, medical societies, long-term care providers, insurers, managed care organizations, biotech and medical device manufacturers, alternative medicine providers, pharmaceutical companies, government agencies and public relations firms with health care practices.

The PRSA Heath Academy Mission: Through the convergence of health care and public relations, the PRSA Health Academy promotes excellence in communications and an educational dialogue across the entire health care industry for the professional enhancement of its members.

Jon Stewart as Trusted Journalist

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Exclusive - Betsy McCaughey Extended Interview Pt. 1
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Healthcare Protests

I swear that this isn't just a reason to post a clip from The Daily Show. Really.

A couple days ago Stewart interviewed Betsy McCaughey about healthcare reform. It was a pretty intense and entertaining segment, which they cut short on TV due to time constraints - they posted the full interview online. During the segment Stewart and McCaughey argued about death panels and what end of life counseling might mean for seniors and the incentives in place in the healthcare system regarding end of life counseling and care.

The entire interview came just a couple weeks after a poll found Stewart was the most trusted journalist in America. (The poll was conducted right after Walter Cronkite passed away.) I'm guessing that Stewart's credibility may have its roots in his memorable appearance on CNN Crossfire and took Tucker Carlson and Paul Begala to task. (That may be my favorite television moment ever.)

In any event, I wonder what Stewart's coverage of the healthcare debate may be doing to the conversation surrounding healthcare reform. While he has lambasted people showing up to disrupt the town hall meetings, he has also been relatively critical of Obama's inability to make a clear case for reform. I'm curious on healthcare in particular how Stewart's credibility might stack up against CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, etc. I'd guess that it would be pretty favorable, which is why I'm disappointed he's going on a 3-week vacation at the moment - in my opinion he provides a valuable voice to the mix.

Sexuality Education in Texas

I was presenting at a conference on adolescent health in Texas today, and there was a really interesting presentation from one of the other speakers about sexuality education in Texas. The report, Just Say Don't Know, is great and includes a lot of amazing (and not in a good way) quotes from actual educational materials used in Texas public schools. Check it out.

NPR Planet Money

I'm a huge fan of NPR Planet Money in general, and right now they're in the middle of doing some serious coverage about healthcare reform. In a recent podcast they interviewed Emily Oster, an economist who looks at incentives in healthcare and health behavior. At right is a TED talk featuring Oster, it's quite good.

I really enjoyed her thoughts on what was really driving behavior change regarding HIV/AIDS - not health campaigns, but global trade and economic development. Definitely an interesting look at health promotion, take a listen/look.

NIH Research Radio and Anti-Smoking PSAs

For anyone out there who doesn't currently subscribe to NIH Research Radio, you might want to check out the podcast.

I was listening to the latest episode this morning while making some coffee, and the most interesting story (for me) was about low-involvement and high-involvement anti-smoking PSAs. The research discussed found that people remember the lower-involvement PSAs better, because they're being processed in a more rational way. This isn't necessarily surprising, but it does point to two competing priorities - rational processing vs. the need to create a message that cuts through the advertising clutter to get people's attention.

I know I've worked on projects where participants' responses to what I would consider lower-involvement PSAs is that they're boring - they want to be scared. They remember posters and things designed to scare people about sexually transmitted infections, and they think that all PSAs should engage/frighten them that way. What does that mean for blending formative research ("Scare us!") with findings like those discussed in the podcast? I think it means people need to do a good job mixing primary research and the literature - perhaps not a surprise, but probably harder to accomplish in practice than we'd prefer.

Call for Papers, Posters, and Panels: Kentucky Conference on Health Communication

Just helping to spread the word here...

The 11th biennial Kentucky Conference on Health Communication invites competitive papers, posters, and panel proposals to be submitted for its 2010 conference in Lexington, Kentucky. The theme for this year’s conference is Health Communication Theory and Practice. While this call seeks original contributions in all areas related to issues in health communication, special consideration will be given to those that address issues related to the conference theme.

Information about the conference is at http://comm.uky.edu/kchc/.

Lack of Study Volunteers Hurting the Cancer Fight

The New York Times had an article yesterday about one of the major hurdles to advancing the fight against cancer - not enough patients enrolled in clinical trials. It raises a lot of interesting issues, including the fact that a lot of trials that are out there don't accomplish much, because they don't include enough patients or they're designed to fine-tune treatments with existing drugs.

The article points to some issues that discourage participation in clinical trials, including the fact that they typically lose money for oncologists. It's also a complicated decision to participate in a trial or pick the "right" treatment plan, of course. Here's a bit of the article discussing the treatment options for a man dealing with cancer:

Choice No. 1: no chemotherapy, no further treatment. Thirty-one of 100 patients like him who chose no further treatment were alive and cancer-free for at least five years. But 30 of 100 relapsed, and 39 died of other causes, like a heart attack.

Choice No. 2: the most aggressive chemotherapy, including 48-hour intravenous infusions of a drug with serious side effects. If he chose that regimen, he would have a 43 percent chance of being alive and cancer-free in five years. But he also had a 14 percent chance of relapsing. And he had a 44 percent chance of dying of something else.

The bottom line, Dr. Eisenberg said, is that 11 people of 100 who get this chemotherapy are alive and well because of it. But that also means that almost 9 of 10 who opt for this treatment are not helped — they either relapse or die of other causes within five years.

Choice No. 3: a less aggressive chemotherapy with a smaller improvement in survival rate.

But there was another option. He could join a Phase 3 clinical trial sponsored by a drug company, ImClone. He would be randomly assigned to receive chemotherapy with or without ImClone’s drug, Erbitux, approved for people with colon cancer more advanced than his. The aim was to find out whether Erbitux could also help those with earlier colon cancer.

“The trial may help you or it may hurt you because the drug may make you sick,” Dr. Eisenberg said.

The part about that which is probably most interesting is the breakdown in outcomes for Choice 1 vs. Choice 2. Toss in Choice 3 (a messy middle area) and the option to enroll in a clinical trial (with REALLY unknown outcomes) and the patient ends up feeling extremely overwhelmed. It's hard to imagine many people making an informed decision on this. A lot of people might think they're informed, but are they really understanding all the percentages and odds?

As I was reading this I was also thinking back to a class exercise I gave students a couple years ago in a health communication class - to design a communication strategy to get people enrolled in clinical trials for an HIV vaccine. While getting people to participate in clinical trials related to cancer is probably marginally easier (from the point of view of communication/persuasion), it's clear that there are a lot of other factors here causing additional problems.

In any case, a very good article from the NYT that comes at this problem from a lot of different perspectives.