With so much news developing about health these days, lots of people may feel a bit overwhelmed.
Fortunately, help may be at your fingertips. A new Web site, HealthNewsReview.org, is made to support excellence in health insurance and medical news reporting by grading stories on accuracy, balance and completeness.
"Healthcare consumers who use HealthNewsReview.org will learn to look for evidence in any claim created by any source, including 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 become not merely smarter consumers of healthcare but smarter consumers of news," he added.
A team of impartial reviewers at the website assesses the quality of medical 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 includes medical and public medical researchers, journalists and researchers. Funded by festival for Informed Medical Decision Making, the site does not provide medical advice-instead it helps readers decipher the often conflicting news about health claims.
"THE BUILDING BLOCKS for Informed Medical Decision Making believes that health care consumers should have access to the most timely, accurate and unbiased information when coming up with medical decisions," said Jack Fowler, president of the Foundation. "Since the media play such a significant role in how people obtain much of this information, HealthNewsReview.org is a natural extension of the Foundation's mission."
HealthNewsReview.org runs on the star system to rate the stories based on different criteria, including: the novelty and option of the idea; the existence of alternative options; costs of a treatment or procedure; sources of information in developing the story; and quantification of harms and great things about a treatment or procedure.
The Web site provides home elevators a variety of topics, including breast cancer research, the most recent on children's vaccines and the value of PSA tests. The website only reviews news stories that make a therapeutic claim about specific treatments, procedures, vitamins, nutritional supplements and diagnostic and screening tests. Does Prozac treat anorexia? Will acupuncture cure hot flashes? Every day, the site talks about news stories and helps readers make sense of information that affects individuals and their family and friends.
You can get a wholesome dose of useful information from the new Web site made to assess health reports.
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