Health Issues in the Headlines: Learning to Read Between the Lines
Dark chocolate, red wine, and stem cells - what do these have in common? All have been reported in the news as having health benefits. Often the first place your patrons will hear about health issues is in the media. This interactive, hands-on CE course will introduce participants to the environment of health reporting. Participants will learn about how health is reported in the news as well as how to evaluate the accuracy and validity of science and health stories. The impact of celebrity illness will also be discussed. By the end of this course, participants will be better equipped to help their patrons look more critically at health issues that are being reported in the news media. Actual news articles and research reports will be included for critique.
Original Author: Gail Kouame, Former Public Health Outreach Coordinator, National Network of Libraries of Medicine, Pacific Northwest Region
At the end of this class, participants will be able to:
- describe the environment of medical reporting;
- gain a deeper level of knowledge of the origins of health news stories, including the impact of celebrity illness;
- gain an understanding of the responsibilities of scientists in conducting and describing their research to the public; and
- know how to critically evaluate health news stories and the research reports on which they are based.
Class Handout (November, 2017): Health_Issues_Headlines_handout.pdf
This course is approved for 4 MLA CE credits.
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