This conference took place on September 13, 2012, in Rockville, Maryland. Presenters and discussants examined, using examples from their professional experiences, where evidence and conventional wisdom collide and what has been learned that can inform communication strategies for the translation, dissemination and integration of evidence in support of clinical decisionmaking.

This second session addresses tensions when popular media and evidence-based care collide.

Presentations

Addressing Tensions When Popular Media and Evidence-Based Care Collide

Gary J. Schwitzer, B.A., Presenter
HealthNewsReview.org, St. Paul, Minnesota

• View Slides in Text Format (PDF; 108 KB)

The Tortoise and the Hare: When Media and Practice Collide

Jakob D. Jensen, Ph.D., Presenter
The University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah

• View Slides in Text Format (PDF; 75 KB)

Media, Messages, and Medication: Strategies To Reconcile What Patients Hear, What They Want, and What They Need From Medications

Richard L. Kravitz, M.D., M.S.P.H., Presenter
University of California, Davis, Sacramento, California

• View Slides in Text Format (PDF; 256 KB)

Addressing Tensions When Popular Media and Evidence-Based Care Collide

Annette Bar-Cohen, M.A., M.P.H., Discussant
National Breast Cancer Coalition, Washington, DC

• View Slides in Text Format (PDF; 77 KB)

Biosketches

Annette Bar-Cohen, M.A., M.P.H., has worked in the fields of public health and women’s health for nearly 30 years. She joined the National Breast Cancer Coalition (NBCC) in September 2002 and currently oversees operations of the Center for NBCC Advocacy Training. The Center includes the Online Center for Advocacy Training and Project LEAD^®, NBCC’s premier science and quality care training program that offers introductory-level to advanced-level courses throughout the United States and around the world. Project LEAD^® also includes the Annual Advocate Summit, the Emerging LEADers Program, and other leadership training seminars. Ms. Bar-Cohen has also overseen the development of the NBCC's global network of advocates as part of the NBCC's Breast Cancer Deadline 2020 initiative.

Before moving to Washington, DC, Ms. Bar-Cohen was the Education Director of the Cancer Control Section of the Minnesota Department of Health in St. Paul for 11 years. There she helped develop and manage the Minnesota Breast and Cervical Cancer Control Program, a free State-wide screening program for uninsured and underinsured women sponsored by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Ms. Bar-Cohen worked for many years on a primary care and community health program in Israel that was sponsored by the World Health Organization and focused on a range of women’s health issues, coalition building, outreach to diverse ethnic communities, and media development. She also worked as a psychotherapist at the Beer Sheva Psychiatric Hospital and taught at the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev Medical School for International Health.

Ms. Bar-Cohen holds an M.A. degree in psychology from Goddard College and an M.P.H. in maternal and child health from the University of Minnesota.

Jakob D. Jensen, Ph.D.,received his doctorate from the University of Illinois in 2007 and is currently an assistant professor at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City with a joint appointment in the Department of Communication and the Department of Health Promotion and Education. His research program focuses on the design and evaluation of strategic health communication. Broadly speaking, he studies whether mass communication (e.g., television, billboards, and interactive communication technologies) can improve public health.

Within health communication, Dr. Jensen is an expert in cancer communication, a subfield of cancer control that examines communication features, strategies, and technologies designed to increase cancer prevention and detection behaviors. Examples of his work include campaigns to increase colon and breast cancer screening, evaluations of skin cancer education materials, and the development of psychometric tools for assessing potentially problematic perceptions about cancer (e.g., fatalism, overload, worry).

Dr. Jensen has received the Distinguished Article in Health Communication award from the National Communication Association, the Kontos Faculty Fellowship from the Center for Families, and the 2011 Emerging Voices Award from the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication. His work has been funded by organizations such as the Regenstrief Center for Healthcare Engineering at Purdue University, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health, and the American Cancer Society and has been published in both communication and public health journals such as Cancer Causes & Control, Patient Education and Counseling, the Journal of Communication, Public Understanding of Science, the Journal of Health Communication, and Human Communication Research.

Richard L. Kravitz, M.D., M.S.P.H., is a professor and the Co-Vice Chair for Research in the Department of Internal Medicine at the University of California, Davis. His primary research interests include patients as agents for care quality, the causes and consequences of physician behavior, and improving care for mental health conditions in primary care settings.

More than 20 years ago, Dr. Kravitz and his Medical Outcome Study coauthors reported on the relationship between patient mix, utilization of health care services, physician specialty, and system of care. He has since examined patients' expectations for care, how physicians respond to patients' requests for services, and how direct-to-consumer advertising of prescription drugs influences physician decisionmaking for depression treatment. He is currently working on a project that is evaluating targeted and tailored messaging to enhance care seeking for depression in general medical practices. Two of his many publications have received national awards (Article of the Year from Academy Health).

Since 2009, Dr. Kravitz has served as Co-Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of General Internal Medicine. A fellow of the American College of Physicians and Academy Health, Dr. Kravitz is a graduate of Stanford University and the University of California San Francisco School of Medicine. He completed additional clinical and research training at the University of California, Los Angeles, where he served on the faculty until 1993 before joining the University of California, Davis.

Gary J. Schwitzer, B.A., specialized in health care journalism for almost 40 years. He is the publisher of the Web site HealthNewsReview.org and leads a team that grades daily health news reporting by major U.S. news organizations. He is the author of Covering Medical Research: A Guide for Reporting on Studies, published by the Association of Health Care Journalists (AHCJ). In 2009, his report on the state of U.S. health journalism was published by the Kaiser Family Foundation, and his Health News Watchdog blog has been voted Best Medical Blog.

Before founding HealthNewsReview.org, Mr. Schwitzer taught health journalism and media ethics at the University of Minnesota for 9 years. He also worked in television medical news for 15 years, including leading the CNN medical news unit. Throughout the 1990s, Mr. Schwitzer worked for the Foundation for Informed Medical Decision Making when it was based at Dartmouth Medical School, producing shared decisionmaking programs. In 2000, he was the founding Editor-in-Chief of MayoClinic.com at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN. He has taught health journalism workshops at the National Institutes of Health Medicine in the Media series; the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Medical Evidence boot camps; the AHCJ national conferences; AHCJ chapter meetings in New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, and San Francisco; and the National Cancer Institute workshops in Rio de Janeiro, Guadalajara, and Beijing.

Mr. Schwitzer's articles on health journalism have appeared in many different publications, including the Columbia Journalism Review, Nieman Reports, the Poynter.org Web site, the Journal of the American Medical Association, the British Medical Journal, PLoS Medicine, and the newsletters and Web sites of the AHCJ and of the American Society of News Editors.