Health News Trends And Headlines – Understanding Health News
With a lot of news being released regarding health these days, several people may feel a bit overwhelmed.
Fortunately, help might be at your fingertips. A new Website, HealthNewsReview.org, is designed to support excellence in health and medical news reporting by grading stories on accuracy, balance and completeness.
“Health care clients who make use of HealthNewsReview.org will learn how to search for evidence in any claim created by any source, including news stories,” stated Professor Gary Schwitzer of the University of Minnesota School of Journalism and Mass Communication and publisher of the web site. “Readers will become not only wiser consumers of health care but smarter consumers of news,” he added.
A team of impartial reviewers at the site assesses the quality of the health stories that run in the nation’s top 50 newspapers, the evening network newscasts, Associated Press wire services and weekly news magazines utilizing a standardized rating system. The team consists of medical and public health professionals, journalists and researchers. Financed by the nonprofit Foundation for Informed Medical Decision Making, the site does not provide medical help and advice-instead it helps readers figure out the often conflicting news about health claims.
“The Foundation for Informed Medical Decision Making is convinced that health care consumers should have access to the most timely, accurate and unbiased information when making medical decisions,” said Jack Fowler, president of the Foundation. “Since the media play a very significant role in how individuals obtain a lot of this info, HealthNewsReview.org is really a natural extension of the Foundation’s mission.”
HealthNewsReview.org makes use of a star system to rate the stories established on various criteria, such as: the novelty and availability of the idea; the presence of alternative choices; expenses of a treatment or procedure; sources of info in creating the story; and quantification of harms and benefits of a treatment or procedure.
The web site gives information on a variety of topics, such as breast cancer research, the latest on children’s vaccines and the value of PSA tests. The web site simply reviews news stories that create a therapeutic claim regarding specific treatments, procedures, vitamins, nutritional supplements and diagnostic and screening tests. Does Prozac treat anorexia? Will acupuncture cure hot flashes? Each day, the website looks at news stories and helps readers make sense of information that affects people and their friends and family.
You are able to get a healthy dose of helpful info from a new site designed to assess health reports.
