Coverage of genomic medicine: information gap between lay public and scientists

News coverage of drug development: implications for the conveyance of health information

BACKGROUND

Technical information regarding health-related advances is sometimes esoteric for the general public. News media, therefore, plays a key role in public health promotion via health information conveyance. In this study, we use China as a sample country and analyze the claims and frames in news coverage of health-related advances, with special focus on news coverage of the development and performance of newly developed or tested drugs.

METHODS

A keyword search was performed to retrieve news articles from four representative news agencies in China. In total, 3029 news reports were retrieved, of which 128 were selected for further analysis.

RESULTS

Four aspects of news coverage of drug development were identified: (1) the characteristics of new drugs covered, (2) the sources of information, (3) the accuracy of health information in newspapers, and (4) textual features of news coverage.

CONCLUSIONS

Our findings reveal that guidelines should be established to facilitate more systematic news reporting on health-related advances. Additionally, literacy among the general public and professionalism in health information conveyance should be promoted to negate the "illusion of knowing" about health-related advances.

Evaluation of the awareness of novel advanced therapies among family medicine residents in Spain

Background

Advanced therapies are increasingly demanded by patients with the intent of treating some incurable conditions. Because family medicine professionals play an important role as health educators, their residency programs should incorporate new knowledge related to advanced therapies. To successfully implement these programs, how family medicine residents perceive these therapies should be investigated. The main components of perception, i.e. conceptual, procedural and attitudinal, refer to knowledge, skills and feelings, respectively.

Methods and findings

We designed a specific questionnaire to assess the components of perceptions of advanced therapies in 300 medical residents enrolled in the Spanish National Family Medicine Residency Program. Each component consisted of 4 or 5 topics and each topic contained 6 items. Respondents scored highest in the procedural component (average 4.12±1.00), followed by the attitudinal (3.94±1.07) and conceptual component (3.04±1.43). Differences among the three components were statistically significant (p<0.00017). Family medicine residents perceived that procedures to implement advanced therapies are well established, especially their application. However, they felt their cognitive background was insufficient to respond efficiently to the expectations generated by these new therapeutic tools, especially in the regulatory framework. High awareness of the risks and limitations of these treatments was reflected by residents’ preference for clinically tested therapies. Although they appropriately situated treatment with these therapies within hospital care, they associated the biofabrication of novel products with research centers, although these therapeutic tools can be produced in different facilities.

Conclusions

These results are potentially useful for designing future training programs and health policies for family medicine residents, and suggest the need to implement specific training programs in advanced therapies at the conceptual, procedural and attitudinal level.

A quantitative analysis of the mass media coverage of genomics medicine in China: a call for science journalism in the developing world

Science journalism is a previously neglected but rapidly growing area of scholarship in postgenomics medicine and socio-technical studies of knowledge-based innovations. Science journalism can help evaluate the quantity and quality of information flux between traditional scientific expert communities and the broader public, for example, in personalized medicine education. Newspapers can play a crucial role in science and health communication, and more importantly, in framing public engagement. However, research on the role of newspaper coverage of genomics-related articles has not been readily available in resource-limited settings. As genomics is rapidly expanding worldwide, this gap in newspaper reportage in China is therefore an important issue. In order to bridge this gap, we investigated the coverage of genomics medicine in eight major Chinese national newspapers, using the China Core Newspapers Full-text Database (CCND) and articles in scientific journals in PubMed from 2000 to 2011. Coverage of genomics medicine in these eight official government Chinese newspapers has remained low, with only 12 articles published per newspaper per year between 2000 and 2011. Between 2000 and 2011, over a 40-fold difference was observed in the number of genomics medicine-related articles in PubMed, as compared to that in newspapers. The numbers of genomics-related articles among the eight major newspapers from 2000 to 2011 were significantly different (p=0.001). Commentary/mini reviews and articles about gene therapy for specific diseases were most frequently published in 2006 and 2011. In parallel, we observed that "cancer gene therapy," "new susceptibility gene locus," and "gene technology revolution" were the top three thematic strands addressed in the newspapers, even though their volume remained low. This study reports on the under-representation of newspaper coverage of genomics medicine in China, despite the vast growth of scientific articles in journals in this knowledge domain. This underscores the need to enhance collaboration between scientists, medical professionals, and journalists as an important strand of overall communications efforts in disseminating genomic medicine knowledge to larger audiences. Yet a substantive question remains to be examined: would traditional journalism, alone, be adequate to address the advances and challenges in genomics medicine in the media? Conversely, should we invest in science journalism programs as a subspecialty in biomedicine so scientists and clinicians acquire the twin scholarship of science/clinical medicine and journalism in their formative education?