E-DRUG: Teaching media and drug literacy
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Dear E-druggers,
I have been asked to summarize the responses to my media and drug
literacy posting, so here it goes.
Peter Mansfield of MaLAM recommended the HAI report: Blurring the
Boundaries. New Trends in Drug Promotion by Barbara Mintzes, Health
Action International, Amsterdam, 1998 as being the best writing on
medicinal drug articles in the general media as well as a report titled
Healthy Profits written by Melissa Sweet for the Sydney Morning Herald
and reprinted by MaLAM thus available on the International Editions
section of MaLAM's Web site www.camtech.net.au/malam. He also recommended
a forthcoming critical appraisal of pharmaceutical promotion teaching
materials expected in draft form in a few weeks time.
Ellen 't Hoen of La revue Prescrire recommended a very good report from
the British Columbia Office of Technology Assessment titled: One report
by Dr. Isabelle Savoie e.a. on the health messages women received through
the lay media about heart disease, entiteled: "Women, the media and heart
disease: for better or for worse?". She found that these messages
encouraged inappropriate use of cholesterol lowering drugs. Their web site
address: http://www.chspr.ubc.ca
David Gilbert of King's Fund, UK recommended a paper he gave today,
September 9th here in Stockholm at the seminar The Need for Critical
Reporting on Evidence Based Medicine and the Media organised by the
Swedish Health technology Assessment Board SBU. As I was there I can also
recommend the presentation by Dr. Lawrence Altman of the New York Times,
criticizing the whole peer-review process in a novel and thorough way, a
paper worth getting (I could perhaps facilitate this if anyone is
interested).
David's presentation was a 'consumer' perspective of what people 'want to
read', adapting the work they have done at the King's Fund on the quality
of patient information (out in September) to media reporting. He also
explored how the media can move 'beyond hope and fear' in its reporting.
This means both 'worlds' (media and researchers) need to go beyond mutual
hostility and defensiveness. Also, for reporters to be better able to
appraise the reliability of the source of information, especially
regarding new treatments.
He further recommended 'Discern: An instrument for judging the quality
of written consumer health information on treatment choices' (available
from the University of Oxford, Division of Public Health and Primary
health Care, Institute of Health Sciences, Old Road, Headington, Oxford,
OX3 7LF).
'Discern' covers issues like whether it is clear what sources of
information were used to compile the publication? Is it balanced and
unbiased? Does it provide details of additional sources of support and
information? etc, etc. with 'hints' to help make that judgement. It is
reminiscent of the instrument advocated in the article A scientific
index of quality of lay reporting which appeared in Oxman AD, Guyatt GH,
Cook DJ, Jaeschke R, Heddle N and Keller J. An Index of Scientific
Quality for Health Reports in the Lay Press. Journal of Clinical
Epidemiology 1993;46 (9): 987-1001. Furthermore, as E-druggers will
probably remember, David has just penned a very interesting report on
Direct-to-Consumer Advertising for Scrip.
Joel Lexchin, Toronto, recommended a Canadian magazine called 'Adbusters',
a current issue of which contains a deconstruction of an ad now running
in Canadian mass media magazines about cholesterol lowering. The articles
points out how the ad misuses statistics to present an overly positive
view about this group of drugs. More info on this at web site
www.adbusters.org/main2.html. He also recommended an article by Anke van
Trigt, which is part of her 1995 PhD thesis 'Making News about Medicines',
University of Groningen, the Netherlands.
Richard Laing of Boston University School of Public Health recommended
the work done by Pat Bush at USP on children and pharmaceuticals'
education and gave her e-mail which is pjb@usp.org.
Sidney Wolfe at Public Citizen's Health Research Group recommended their
web site at www.citizen.org and particularly the Health Research Group
part of the web site.
That's all for now.
David
David Finer
Medical writer/Research student
Health communication
IHCAR (Division of International Health Care Research)
Department of Public Health Sciences
Karolinska Institutet
SE-171 76 Stockholm, SWEDEN
Facsimile: +46 8 31 15 90
Tel: +46 8 517 76489
Email: David.Finer@phs.ki.se
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