Nov. 7, 2006

SJMC panel discusses media coverage of health issues

Marcia Angell, M.D., senior lecturer in the Department of Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School, took part in a CMCIS/SJMC panel discussion of “Media Coverage of Health: Opportunities and Challenges" on the afternoon of Thursday, November 2. Former editor-in-chief of the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine and this year’s Saunders Lecturer in the USC School of Medicine, Dr. Angell led off the panel by addressing the question of conflicts of interest among sources for news stories in medicine and health. She stressed the need for health journalists to understand that medical researchers may have significant financial stakes in how their results are presented to the public, a dimension she feels is too often ignored in health news coverage.

Journalism faculty member Dr. Andrea Tanner followed with results from her own research related to broadcast news coverage of health issues, complemented by remarks from The State newspaper consumer health reporter Linda Lamb on the realities of her daily work. SJMC’s Dr. John Besley described his ongoing research on public meetings about health risks, and Dr. Sooyoung Cho presented her research on contrasts in news media framing of lung cancer versus breast cancer.

The panel was moderated by SJMC’s Dr. Sonya Duhé, who fielded questions from an audience that included faculty and students from the USC School of Medicine, the Arnold School of Public Health, and the School of Library and Information Science, in addition to those from the School of Journalism and Mass Communications.

This event reflects the evolving collaboration between CMCIS/SJMC and other programs on campus that are also interested in improving the effectiveness of health communication and access to health information. A joint task force of faculty from the School of Public Health’s Promotion, Education and Behavior, the School of Library and Information Science, and the School of Journalism and Mass Communications is currently exploring ways to enhance the cross-disciplinary training of graduate students in each of the three fields. The task force is chaired by CMCIS Research Director Dr. Susanna Priest, who organized the panel.