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Top Health Story? Everyone has an opinion.

Senior Fellow Liz Seegert is a healthcare journalist, writer, and consultant with a focus on social and human welfare.

This time of the year inevitably generates a plethora of “top 10” lists – the media’s bid to condense and summarize the “best of” or “worst of” [insert your topic here]. Health care, of course, is no different. A quick Google search of “top 10 health stories 2011” yielded a staggering two million plus results. Let’s get serious, folks.

Can there really be only ten health stories that are worthy enough to talk about? Or just one that rises to the top? Lists like these are so subjective. Boiling down this tumultuous year in the world of health into less than a dozen highlights all depends on perspective.

WebMD points to the changes in the food pyramid as a key issue, as well as changes in prostate cancer screeing guidelines and the widespread listeria outbreak from contaminated canteloupes. Fox News leaned more towards the sensational – asking if multivitamins were killing us, touting the ability to turn brown eyes blue with a laser, and reporting that baby shampoo may be toxic. Nothing like scaring millions of parents in one fell swoop.

The Atlantic Magazine focused on controversies – do cell phones harm people or not? Is coffee/red wine/chocolate good or bad for you? What about prostate exams? Or the fiery reaction provoked by HHS Secretary Sebelius’ decision to overturn the FDA’s proposal allowing the morning-after contraceptive Plan B to be sold over the counter? How about the links between autism and vaccines?

If you’re more of a policy wonk, then maybe your pick is the administration’s recent decision to allow states to determine minimum insurance benefits under health reform. Boston.com stretched their list to 15 top stories – including the full first face transplant, the resignation of Don Berwick, and a new way to look at the onset of Alzheimer’s disease. If you’re a baby boomer, then perhaps 50+ Magazine’s selections are more your speed – suicide prevention, stem cells, and Steve Jobs’s death were all high on this list.

Of course, this pre-election season could not go by without the candidates weighing in. Like when Michelle Bachman claimed that vaccines causes mental retardation. Or Mitt Romney tried to distance himself from his own Health Reform initiative when he was governor of Massachusetts. Newt Gingrich seemed to play both sides, as Salon magazine pointed out last week, while Ron Paul remained consistent in his libertarian views about the free market being the best option to control health costs.

However, perhaps the most chilling story that appeared on list after list is the growing childhood obesity epidemic in this country. As long as fast food chains, junk food, and soda manufacturers are allowed to aggressively market to children, it is unfortunately going to continue to be a top story well beyond 2012. If this problem isn’t brought under control soon, none of these other health stories will really matter.

Liz Seegert

December 19, 2011

author: Editorial Staff

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Senior Fellow Liz Seegert is a healthcare

HealthCetera

ReportingOnHealth.org covers CHMP’s Narrative Writing Program

Angilee Shah’s Career GPS blog for ReportingonHealth.org interviewed Senior Fellow James Stubenrauch, who co-taught the first narrative writing course to students in the Hunter-Bellevue School of Nursing along with CHMP Senior Fellow and Poet-in-Residence Joy Jacobson. Her post, Why Health Care Professionals Should Write, addresses the reasons and benefits of writing for health professionals. Jim’s quote “”It’s part of a self-care strategy as well as making a better provider out of whoever does this kind of work,” he told Career GPS. “What I’m trying to do in this course is give people permission to get their own voices in the room and down on paper.” Archived posts on Narrative Writing can be found here.

Reporting on Health is a project of USC Annenberg’s California Endowment Health Journalism Fellowships.

December 16, 2011

author: Editorial Staff

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Angilee Shah's Career GPS blog for ReportingonHealth.org

HealthCetera

2.5M young adults gain health insurance: Joe Shure “it’s a lifeline for young entrepreneurs”

CDC/NCHS, National Health Interview Survey, 2009-2011, Family Core component.

Yesterday, the Department of Health and Human Services released new data from the National Center for Health Statistics at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) illustrating that the Affordable Care Act helped 2.5 million additional young adults get health insurance. The young-adult provision, effective Jan. 1 for employers with calendar-year plans, was one of the first Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act mandates to go into effect, requiring employers to extend coverage to employees’ adult children up to age 26. This is making a difference in a population that is largely uninsured. I frequently find myself in conversations with folks who aren’t familiar with this benefit of the ACA. This media update can continue to impact the public’s understanding of the ACA.

Recently, I met Joe Shure, through The Roosevelt Institute Pipeline, where he is a Pipeline Fellow. He’s Associate Director and COO, at The Intersect Fund, a New Brunswick, New Jersey-based non-profit organization offering a host of services to low-income entrepreneurs in the area. He’s also a journalist and writes a business column for BusinessNewsDaily providing tips for small businesses. Over a cappuccino (he had Earl Grey Tea) and the best croissant in NYC (Ceci-Cela Patisserie) I learned a great deal about how his organization supports low-income entrepreneurs, many of them new immigrants. That led to a conversation about their health needs and access to health care. Joe mentioned a column he published in June in BusinessNewsDaily, Parent’s Health Insurance a Lifeline for Young Entrepreneurs. He writes, “Removing the cost of insurance from these would-be business owners’ financial obligations freed capital to invest in businesses and reduce the risk of entrepreneurship.” Read the full article here.

This provision of the ACA is supporting new economic growth – perhaps small but in a significant way for a segment of our young adults in the midst of tough economic times and a tight job market.

Barbara Glickstein is co-director of the Center for Health, Media & Policy and parent to two young adults who are benefiting from this ACA provision.