Since its inception in the early 2000s, the annual Medicine in the Media workshop, has helped journalists specializing in medicine and science sharpen their reportorial skills in an era of increased mis- and disinformation. Steven Woloshin, professor of health policy and clinical practice, who has worked to improve the communication of medical evidence to physicians, journalists, policymakers, and the public, organized the conference with financial support from the Houston-based Arnold Ventures, as well as the Geisel School of Medicine, Dartmouth, and Dartmouth Health.
This year’s workshop, held Aug. 24-27 at Dartmouth, as well as locations across the Upper Valley, convened 25 journalists, researchers, doctors and scientists from across the nation to analyze the persistent challenges of reporting on the complex American health care system.
Among those attending the workshop were journalists from NPR, the New York Times, the Journal of the American Medical Association, and STAT News, as well as universities and online news sources focusing on health and medicine.
Subjects covered included: AI’s potential effect on healthcare; shifts in federal vaccine and health policies; lack of government funding for research; federal government cuts to Medicaid; highlighting rural healthcare stories; and the use of AI Large Language Models to create texts.
In introductory remarks at the Irving Institute for Energy & Society on the conference’s first day, Jennifer Hunt, dean of the Geisel School of Medicine and chief academic officer at Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center, told the assembled journalists that the warp speed at which scientific information is now disseminated runs counter to the methodology of rigorous peer review and testing honed over years and even decades.
“Today, we live in a world of instantaneous proclamations, anecdotes that are co-opted into evidence and opinions that look and sound and masquerade like science,” Hunt said.
This spring the Pew Research Center released the results of a 2025 survey that polled 5,000 Americans on their confidence in the veracity of medical information they receive through the media. While respondents indicated they tended to trust their own doctors, more than 50 percent of those polled were unsure which news sources to trust when it came to untangling conflicting information on health care issues.
How can journalists persuade their audiences that their reporting on science and healthcare is truthful, nonpartisan and accurate given the layers of information they must evaluate?
Woloshin urged those in the introductory session to “develop and employ the critical thinking and quantitative skills that you need to evaluate health messages, and not to accept things at face value. Ask hard questions and learn to identify the health claims and evidence behind them.”
The Medicine in Media workshop was originally funded by the NIH, Woloshin said. Woloshin and Lisa Schwartz, a professor of The Dartmouth Institute and of Community and Family Medicine at the Geisel School of Medicine who passed away in 2018, took over running the conference after a few years. Participants attend free-of-charge.
Additional issues that emerged during the workshop included how to understand perceived, actual and relative risk; the implications for patients of overdiagnosis; the potential for psychedelic-assisted therapy; and the media’s tendency to report medical or scientific findings with either an exaggerated sense of threat or an unrealistic promise of cures.
For example, Woloshin showed a social media influencer paid endorsement for a drug that claims to completely resolve migraines within an hour, an assertion that Woloshin debunked. “I've been a doctor for a long time. I've never seen it,” he said.
Photo Gallery (Photos by Rob Strong):
Journalists also attended a panel discussion and Q&A focused on obstacles facing both rural healthcare providers and rural populations, and how to bring these stories to the public. Moderated by former New York Times journalist Jacques Steinberg ’88, panelists included Dartmouth Health CEO Joanne Conroy, Dean Jennifer Hunt, the recently named director of the Dartmouth Cancer Center, Roy Herbst, and director of The Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice, Amber Barnato.
Dartmouth Health is well-positioned, Conroy said, “to have a really sharp lens on the challenges of rural healthcare–not only because, where we're located, but the fact that we have the research and the education and the long history studying rural healthcare and the impact of decisions on rural healthcare.”
Twenty percent of people in the U.S. live in rural areas, Conroy said. “And they want to know how they can stay healthy,” she added, which means improving access to transportation, among other issues.
In a similar vein, Herbst said that at the Dartmouth Cancer Center, the increased use of personalized and precision medicine in targeting cancer points to the urgency of making “sure that advances that we have get to patients at the point of care.”
Hovering over the future of American healthcare are the nearly $1 trillion cuts to federal health care spending, including to Medicaid and SNAP food benefits.
“Moreover, core infrastructure elements of our health care delivery system that are disproportionately funded through Medicaid, such as substance use disorder treatment programs that all members of the community rely upon, may wither,” Barnato said. “There's going to be a huge heterogeneity in the way states manage the new requirements and the changes in funding from the federal government,” with wealthier areas better positioned to absorb the cuts without adversely affecting community service availability.
Freelance journalist Rod McCullom, who was a Knight Journalism Fellow at MIT and has written for Scientific American and MIT Technology Review, appreciated the chance to be with his peers. “It was great to be around a table and bounce ideas off each other,” McCullom said.
The conference “amplified the need for clear, easy, simple, accessible language. Scientists and researchers and journalists often use jargon or acronyms because they're easier. But I think sometimes, as journalists, we fall into the trap of trying to sound too smart,” said McCullom.
Karen Fisher, a freelance journalist from New Mexico, said she now has a “good, foundational knowledge of what I’m looking at. We don’t always have the tools to assess what’s trustworthy and what’s not. We do the best with the information we have.”
After four days listening to medical and scientific experts explain how to decipher data, Fisher said she has a better sense of how to “look at a study and know what’s statistically significant, and what’s not.”
Written by Nicola Smith