Just What We Need -- Dentzer Healthcare Reporting

No, really.

Susan Dentzer (editor-in-chief of Health Affairs and an on-air analyst on health policy for the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer) has an excellent and timely Perspective piece in the January 1 edition of the New England Journal of Medicine, “Communicating Medical News — Pitfalls of Health Care Journalism.”

Some of her comments include:

“Whether they realize it or not, journalists reporting on health care developments deliver public health messages that can influence the behavior of clinicians and patients. Often these messages are delivered effectively by seasoned reporters who perform thoughtfully even in the face of breaking news and tight deadlines. But all too frequently, what is conveyed about health by many other journalists is wrong or misleading.”

“Consider news reports on the findings of the Sequenced Treatment Alternatives to Relieve Depression (STAR*D) study, reported in March 2006. The STAR*D study was a complicated trial designed to test treatment approaches for seriously depressed patients who weren't helped by taking one antidepressant. The results showed that 50% of patients had improvement after pursuing additional treatment steps, such as switching or adding medications, taking a higher dose, undergoing cognitive therapy, or some combination of these. Arguably, for people with serious long-term depression, this was hopeful news. Yet on March 23, 2006, the Washington Post ran a story whose lead paragraph framed the study as a failure because half the patients had no improvement: ‘Antidepressants fail to cure the symptoms of major depression in half of all patients with the disease even if they receive the best possible care, according to a definitive government study released yesterday.’ Apparently, simply noting that half got better and half did not was not deemed sufficiently new or interesting.”

“But so uncertain and episodic has been past coverage of drug safety and efficacy that much of the news media now feel duty-bound to report on many drug-related findings whether reporters understand them or not. A recent high-profile example was coverage of the Ezetimibe and Simvastatin in Hypercholesterolemia Enhances Atherosclerosis Regression (ENHANCE) trial. Although the study in fact raised questions about whether ezetimibe yielded any benefit when added to statin therapy, its findings were almost consistently misreported. Some journalists asserted that it showed the drug had no benefits in preventing heart attacks and strokes — something it certainly did not show, since heart attacks and strokes were not end points in the trial. We will never know the cost of this misinformation in terms of panicked patients or physicians who, perhaps unnecessarily, discontinued use of the drug.”

“In my view, we in the news media have a responsibility to hold ourselves to higher standards if there is any chance that doctors and patients will act on the basis of our reporting. We are not clinicians, but we must be more than carnival barkers; we must be credible health communicators more interested in conveying clear, actionable health information to the public than carrying out our other agendas.”

The full article can be found here. 

Well done and well said Susan.