Journalist Andrew Holtz, one of our expert reviewers on HealthNewsReview.org, has some fun with a horserace-style look at low-carb versus low-fat diet research on his MDiTV.com site:
*This blog post was originally published at Gary Schwitzer's HealthNewsReview Blog*
When healthcare reform became law, HR and benefits professionals I spoke with had two reactions: surprise and annoyance. Surprise, because they thought reform was dead; annoyed, because the law was full of provisions that didn’t make sense to them. But it was partly their own fault.
Blogs and other social media were buzzing with healthcare reform talk for more than a year, and were more influential than ever. But HR and benefits professionals –- experts in the topic –- were mostly on the sidelines. They didn’t shape the debate, didn’t point out when people didn’t know what they were talking about, didn’t talk about how what was proposed would affect what they did for a living.
Don’t take my word for it. A study last year on social media use by HR professionals revealed some striking results:
Reform shows there are real consequences to this failure to participate in social media. If you’re not part of the conversation, you’re marginalizing yourself, losing influence within your organization and the world.
So let this be a wake-up call: Get involved in social media. Easy to say, but how do you get started? Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at See First Blog*
Better Health’s Dr. Val Jones recently expert-moderated TogoRun’s Digital Capital Week event entitled “Public Health: What’s Digital Got to Do With It?” featuring panelists Susannah Fox of the Pew Internet & American Life Project, Maya Linson of the National Association of Public Hospitals and Health Systems, and Erin Enke of TogoRun. A capacity crowd in attendance at the Pew Research Center and another group following on Twitter sparked a vibrant online discussion of how health institutions are using social media and how digital innovation is improving public health:
A conversation with Maya Linson about “Public Hospitals and the Social Media Imperative” followed via podcast:
My good friends, Tom H Van De Belt and Lucien JLPG Engelen from the Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Centre, just published a great systematic review in the Journal of Medical Internet Research about the definitions of medicine 2.0 and health 2.0 It was time to collect all the available data about these terms. An excerpt from the abstract:
Objective: The objective was to identify unique definitions of Health 2.0/Medicine 2.0 and recurrent topics within the definitions.
Methods: A systematic literature review of electronic databases (PubMed, Scopus, CINAHL) and gray literature on the Internet using the search engines Google, Bing, and Yahoo was performed to find unique definitions of Health 2.0/Medicine 2.0.
Results: We found a total of 1937 articles, 533 in scientific databases and 1404 in the gray literature. We selected 46 unique definitions for further analysis and identified 7 main topics.
Conclusions: Health 2.0/Medicine 2.0 are still developing areas. Many articles concerning this subject were found, primarily on the Internet. However, there is still no general consensus regarding the definition of Health 2.0/Medicine 2.0.
*This blog post was originally published at ScienceRoll*
If there’s one aspect of so-called “alternative medicine” and “complementary and alternative medicine” (CAM) is that its practitioners tout as being a huge advantage over what they often refer to sneeringly as “conventional” or “scientific” medicine is that–or so its practitioners claim–alt-med treats the “whole patient,” that it’s “wholistic” in a way that the evil reductionist “Western” science-based medicine can’t be.
Supposedly, we reductionistic, unimaginative physicians only focus on disease and ignore the “whole patient.” Of course, to me this claim is belied by the hectoring to which my own primary care physician has subjected me about my horrible diet and lack of exercise on pretty much every visit I’ve had with her, but then maybe she’s an anomaly, along with Dr. Lipson on this very blog and pretty much every other primary care doctor I’ve ever dealt with. Anecdotal experience, I know, but since alt-med mavens appear to value anecdotal evidence above pretty much all else I thought it appropriate to mention here. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Science-Based Medicine*
It’s no secret that doctors are disappointed with the way that the U.S. healthcare system is evolving. Most feel helpless about improving their work conditions or solving technical problems in patient care. Fortunately one young medical student was undeterred by the mountain of disappointment carried by his senior clinician mentors…
I am proud to be a part of the American Resident Project an initiative that promotes the writing of medical students residents and new physicians as they explore ideas for transforming American health care delivery. I recently had the opportunity to interview three of the writing fellows about how to…
Book Review: Is Empathy Learned By Faking It Till It’s Real?
I m often asked to do book reviews on my blog and I rarely agree to them. This is because it takes me a long time to read a book and then if I don t enjoy it I figure the author would rather me remain silent than publish my…
The Spirit Of The Place: Samuel Shem’s New Book May Depress You
When I was in medical school I read Samuel Shem s House Of God as a right of passage. At the time I found it to be a cynical yet eerily accurate portrayal of the underbelly of academic medicine. I gained comfort from its gallows humor and it made me…
Eat To Save Your Life: Another Half-True Diet Book
I am hesitant to review diet books because they are so often a tangled mess of fact and fiction. Teasing out their truth from falsehood is about as exhausting as delousing a long-haired elementary school student. However after being approached by the authors’ PR agency with the promise of a…
