![\"\"](\"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2021\/12\/SteveWoloshin_web.jpg\")
<\/a>Woloshin and Schwartz used the innovative and popular Medicine and Media program, which has been paused since 2012, to train more than 500 journalists from major media outlets in the U.S. and abroad.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s an amazing opportunity and I\u2019m really grateful to the foundation because it\u2019s going to make it possible to restart this important work that Lisa and I did together along with my co-investigator Barry Kramer,\u201d says Woloshin, who hopes to make the program self-sustaining in the future.<\/p>\n
\u201cProblems with health journalism are well-known\u2014reporting is often exaggerated, oversimplified, lacking in context, or uncritical,\u201d he explains.<\/p>\n
\u201cMany studies have documented that news about medical research often omits key information audiences need to understand the findings or decide whether to believe them.\u201d<\/p>\n
This matters, he says, because the media not only educates but also influences individuals\u2019 health beliefs and behaviors, and policy makers\u2019 actions. \u201cPoor medical journalism harms individuals when it promotes unrealistic beliefs about health risks and treatment benefits, which can lead to wasteful or harmful health decisions,\u201d Woloshin says. \u201cAnd it harms public health when it promotes bad decisions by policy makers.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Medicine and Media program\u2019s curriculum, which is offered in a comprehensive four-day workshop as well as half-day seminars, is designed to help journalists address many of the major challenges they face in reporting on medical research.<\/p>\n
This includes enhancing their ability to grasp medical evidence and relate it in an understandable fashion, convey the strengths and limitations of common study designs and statistical analyses, and how to use patient anecdotes appropriately in medical stories. \u201cWe\u2019ve also developed a set of tools, including tip sheets, online primers and practice modules, to help journalists do a better job of understanding and then communicating the results of research,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
In addition to the Arnold Foundation grant to fund the Medicine in Media program, Woloshin has received a related grant from the National Institute for Health Care Management (NIHCM) to develop guidelines for journalists to follow when publishing press releases on medical research.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne of the main sources for journalists are press releases, and they\u2019re a key input to reporting,\u201d says Woloshin, who conducted some of the first studies on the effectiveness of press releases with Schwartz. \u201cWe found that press release quality is highly variable and often poor. And that there is a very strong relationship between the quality of press releases and the quality of subsequent news stories.\u201d<\/p>\n
With support from the NIHCM grant, Woloshin will work with colleague Mary O\u2019Keeffe, PhD, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Sydney, Australia, to create a series of expert panels\u2014which will include press officers, journalists, editors, members of the public, and researchers\u2014to craft a set of guidances that can be tested and then broadly distributed.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo one\u2019s ever done this kind of research project before, focused on this key area of communication,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s very exciting to have the opportunity to help turn press releases into more valuable, useful, and reliable sources of information for journalists\u2014and hopefully, improve the quality of the news.\u201d<\/p>\n
Founded in 1797, the\u00a0Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth <\/strong>strives to improve the lives of the communities it serves through excellence in learning, discovery, and healing. The Geisel School of Medicine is renowned for its leadership in medical education, healthcare policy and delivery science, biomedical research, global health, and in creating innovations that improve lives worldwide. As one of America\u2019s leading medical schools, Dartmouth\u2019s Geisel School of Medicine is committed to training new generations of diverse leaders who will help solve our most vexing challenges in healthcare.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Steven Woloshin, MD, MS, a professor of medicine, community and family medicine, and of The Dartmouth Institute, has received grants from the Arnold Foundation and the National Institute for Health Care Management to continue his work to train journalists for more reliable reporting on medical research. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":15565,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1,8],"tags":[115,45],"class_list":["post-15564","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-research","tag-steven-woloshin","tag-tdi","author-26"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2021\/12\/SteveWoloshin_featured.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4r3h1-432","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15564","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/26"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15564"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15564\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15567,"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15564\/revisions\/15567"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15565"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15564"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15564"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15564"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}