subject: Health News Trends And Headlines - Understanding Health News [print this page] With a lot of news coming out regarding health nowadays, several people might feel a little overwhelmed.
Fortunately, help may be at your fingertips. A new Web site, HealthNewsReview.org, is created to support excellence in health and medical news reporting by grading stories on accuracy, balance and completeness.
"Health care consumers who use HealthNewsReview.org will discover how to look for evidence in any claim created by any source, such as news stories," said Professor Gary Schwitzer of the University of Minnesota School of Journalism and Mass Communication and publisher of the web site. "Readers will turn out to be not just smarter consumers of health care but wiser 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 using a standardized rating system. The team consists of medical and public health professionals, journalists and researchers. Funded by the nonprofit Foundation for Informed Medical Decision Making, the website does not supply medical advice-rather it assists readers decipher the often conflicting news about health claims.
"The Foundation for Informed Medical Decision Making believes that health care consumers should have access to the most timely, accurate and unbiased information when making medical decisions," stated Jack Fowler, president of the Foundation. "Since the media play such a significant role in how individuals obtain a lot of this information, HealthNewsReview.org is a natural extension of the Foundation's mission."
HealthNewsReview.org uses a star system to rate the stories based on various criteria, including: the novelty and availability of the idea; the existence of alternative options; expenses of a treatment or procedure; sources of information in developing the story; and quantification of harms and benefits of a treatment or procedure.
The website gives information on a variety of topics, such as breast cancer research, the latest on children's vaccines and also the value of PSA tests. The website only reviews news stories that create a therapeutic claim about particular treatments, procedures, vitamins, nutritional supplements and diagnostic and screening tests. Does Prozac treat anorexia? Will acupuncture cure hot flashes? Each day, the site looks at news stories and assists readers make sense of information that affects individuals and their friends and family.
You are able to get a healthy dose of useful information from a new site created to assess health reports.
