Course Director: Steven Woloshin
What is Medicine in the Media?
A free, in-person 3 ½ day workshop held at Dartmouth College (Hanover, NH) to help journalists hone their skills in reporting on medical research. The workshop is led by expert faculty including Steven Woloshin and Barry Kramer with over a decade of experience running a similar workshop in the past, sponsored by the National Institutes of Health. The workshop is now funded by the Arnold Ventures philanthropy.
Who for? Journalists who primarily cover health news for print, broadcast or online media
Where? At Dartmouth College, Haldeman Center, 29 N Main St, Hanover, NH
When? Monday Aug 26 to midday Thursday Aug 29, 2024
Costs? The workshop is free, and lodging (if needed) subsidized, thanks to a generous grant from the Arnold Foundation. Participants pay for their own travel and meals.
Workshop funded by a grant from the Arnold Foundation
Contact for general information:
Claudine Louis, Project Manager
claudine.a.louis@dartmouth.edu
Apply by July 12, 2024
Space limited to 30 journalists
***Click here for the APPLICATION form***
Click here to see draft workshop agenda
Background. Problems with health messages in the news, press releases, public health messages, blogs and social media are well known. Messages are often exaggerated, oversimplified, lacking in context, or uncritical. As a result, the public often lacks key information and context needed to make sense of the health claims or decide whether to believe them. Such poor communication matters because it may promote unrealistic beliefs about health risks and treatment harms and benefits, and may lead to wasteful or harmful health decisions.
Workshop goals. The key goals of the Workshop are to enhance participants’ critical thinking skills, and encourage a sense of healthy skepticism and foster the confidence to apply it. Participants will learn how to interpret and reliably report the results of medical research:
o Understand medical evidence, convey it in understandable fashion, and distinguish it from opinion
o Examine their own or others’ preconceived views about medicine and health to de-bias reporting
o Recognize limitations inherent in science (i.e., inference from limited samples to broad populations)
o Convey the strengths and limitations of common study designs and statistical analyses
o Address external issues that inhibit presenting the full story (e.g., financial or other conflicts of interest, editorial biases)
o Provide an advanced set of tools (tip sheets, online primers and practice modules) to place new research findings in the context of the results of other studies on the same or similar topic
o Hone skills in covering stories that hold meaningful messages for the public (i.e., identify studies with high quality evidence assessing patient important outcomes)
o Address appropriate use of patient anecdotes in medical stories to avoid “stacking the evidence” in an unwarranted direction
o Optional skills sessions covering for example, searching for reliable medical research, understanding systematic reviews, grading evidence.
The 3 ½ day workshop builds on the very popular, highly interactive curriculum developed in over a decade of teaching journalists. Topics covered include:
Basic study design, common statistical and epidemiologic concepts, principles of risk communication, medical screening, overdiagnosis.
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FACULTY DIRECTOR BIO
Steven Woloshin, MD, MS is a professor of medicine and Director of the Center for Medicine in the Media at the Dartmouth Institute (Hanover, NH, USA). He is an internationally recognized expert in evidence-based medicine and risk communication. Dr. Woloshin has worked to improve the communication of medical evidence to physicians, journalists, policymakers, and the public to help them see through excessive fear and hope created by exaggerated and selective reporting in medical journals, advertising, and the news. He is the former editor of the journal Effective Clinical Practice, and serves on the editorial board of JAMA Internal Medicine. He co-authored 2 books, Know Your Chances: Understanding Health Statistics (University of California Press) and Overdiagnosed (Beacon Press). His work with the late Dr. Lisa Schwartz was awarded the American Medical Writer's Association’s John P. McGovern award “for pre-eminent contribution in research and enhancing the communication of medical evidence” and the Society of Medical Decision Making’s John M. Eisenberg Award for “sustained leadership in translating medical decision making research into practice, and [having] taken exceptional steps to communicate the principles and/or substantive findings of medical decision making research to policy makers, to clinical decision makers, and to the general public.”. He founded the Lisa Schwartz Foundation for Truth in Medicine which is dedicated to improving medical decision making through better communication about the benefits, harms and limitations of medicine.
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